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

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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.

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.

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.

Finally, almost seven years after the attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the attacks of September 11th, 2001, will stand trial today before a military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It is about damn time.

For starters, thank God that this pathetic excuse for a human being will not be given the same rights as an American citizen by being allowed to enter the civil justice system in this country. This man will stand before a Marine colonel, Judge Ralph Kohlmann, and answer for the crimes against humanity and this nation in particular that caused the death of thousands of innocent civilians. The only good that has come from this thug is that, due to the fact that we had the balls to water board him, he has provided actionable intelligence that has allowed us to thwart additional threats to this nation. He should be convicted in short order for these crimes… And then what?

My first instinct is to drag him into the streets and allow a wounded soldier one last hunt. If convicted I would suggest that he be shot in public with the footage spinning on every news channel available, but there is one problem with that. It is exactly what he wants.

Mohammed has requested a death sentence so that he may see himself as being martyred for his faith, as if God would grant glory to a coward who strikes innocent civilians while hiding in caves in the hills of Afghanistan. No. Killing him is far to good a fate for this example of walking human excrement.

I know the perfect thing. Convict him and sentence him to life if prison without the possibility of parole. Then tell him that he is to be denied a Qur’an and daily prayer. Also, let him know that he will have plenty of friends in his new prison, but they will be much shorter of stature and possess curly little tails and flat snouts. Not only should he be jailed with swine, but let him know that he will subsist on a diet of bacon, pork chops, sausage and ham. We will allow him certian concessions like all the alcohol he wants and the gay porn channel only on cable TV. We should give him the finest healthcare available to keep him alive as long as possible, but let him know that even in death he will not be alone. We should promise him that when he dies we will bury him with the pigs that have become his companions.

I know this may sound cruel and unusual and some people may even see it as torture, but the pigs can handle it. I am sure they would not mind making this sacrifice for their country.

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.

Thanks to Scrappleface for shedding such light on these issues:

(2007-12-11) — When the director of Central Intelligence appears today before a closed-door hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee to explain the destruction of recordings of CIA terrorist interrogations including the controversial technique of waterboarding, he plans to present the panel with several “alternate tapes” that have been preserved, which he said “unquestionably show episodes of torture.”

[More..]

Read the entire article at ScrappleFace CIA Chief Offers Torture Tapes to Senate Panel

Last week news broke of the internally released CIA document detailing the destruction of two video tapes covering the interrogations of al Qaeda members. The tapes were apparently made in 2002 and then subsequently destroyed in 2005 to protect the identities of the interrogators, the methods of interrogation and because they possessed no further intelligence value according to the CIA.

Today, we are once again witnessing the endless calls for investigation of the CIA, just as we have seen with the Plame case and former Attorney General Gonzales. In both cases, no crimes actually occurred, but our government wasted valuable time and billions of dollars in useless investigations of non-existent crimes. Are we again to be subjected to this?

CIA Director Michael Hayden has already responded to the inquiries by stating that the tape were destroyed to protect the interrogators so no one could retaliate against then and the methods so that our enemies cannot train to resist them. He has also stated that the tapes held no additional intelligence value and that the Senate Intelligence Committee was informed of their destruction before it was carried out.

Already Democrats are screaming about obstruction of justice and destruction of evidence, which actually could only apply if these tapes were involved in an ongoing criminal investigation. They are accusing the CIA of attempting to cover up the use of water boarding as an interrogation technique. This accusation does not make sense at all since one of the individuals on the tape is alleged to be Abu Zubayda whom the CIA fully admits was water boarded to gain information after weeks of being completely uncooperative. Therefore the argument that they are covering up a method of interrogation that they have openly admitted to using on the specific subject on the tape seems irrelevant at best. (NOTE: Abu Zudayda lasted 35 seconds under water boarding after holding out under traditional methods of interrogation for weeks on end. The answers he provided led to many key moves against al Qaeda including the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the masterminds of 9/11.)

There are really three questions that should be asked here:

1. Were the destroyed tapes part of any current or ongoing criminal proceedings?

There are currently no legal proceedings on which these investigations bear any relevance. However, if it is found that at the time of their destruction there were criminal proceedings which these tapes related to directly, then there may be cause for further investigation.

2. Is it official policy of the CIA to destroy information which may expose agents, methods or operations in order to protect such assets?

If this is outside of the official CIA procedures for handling sensitive information that could possibly expose assets and place them at risk, then perhaps we should take a closer look. However, if the CIA has a practice of destroying information that could potentially put its assets at risk, then there is nothing to investigate in the destruction of these tapes.

3. Were the proper people informed of the tapes and their eventual destruction?

According to the CIA the Senate Intelligence Committee was aware of methods of interrogation to be used before the interrogations occurred. Apparently some members of Congress were concerned that the methods would not be harsh enough to extract information, but the all approved of the methods used. They were also aware of the tapes as early as 2002. The CIA has also indicated that it informed select members of Congress in 2003 of their eventual intent to destroy the tapes to protect the agents and the methods. Congressional members immediately denied this, even though in 2003 Representative Jane Harman (D-Ca) issues a letter to the CIA expressing her concern over the planned destruction of the tapes. This would tend to indicated that the CIA did in fact notify Congress as early as 2003 of their eventual intent to destroy the tapes to protect their assets, just as they have claimed. If this is actually the case, then no crime has been committed and we should allow the intelligence agencies of this nation to continue to do their jobs.

For several years the argument has raged over what happened to the chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs that Iraq was thought to have prior to our resumption of hostilities with them four years ago.

In the intervening years between the Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom, United Nations weapons inspectors and agents of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) scoured Iraq looking for weapons programs and stockpiles of materials that could be used to reconstitute those programs. Some were found and destroyed during this time period, but Saddam Hussein constantly thwarted the efforts of inspectors and restricted their access to certain areas in Iraq, leading everyone to believe that Iraq still possessed the capability and will to develop these programs.

I will not attempt to argue with the idiocy that spews forth from the left about there never being any weapons in the first place. If there actually were no weapons ever present in Iraq, then Hussein had fooled the entire world into believing he had them. Yes, that includes our government, both executive and congressional, as well as the governments of Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Australia and many others. We even had specific targets we hit during the opening volleys of the war that were intended to deny him the ability to deploy these weapons against our troops. Advancing Army and Marine Corps troops wore their cumbersome NBC gear during the entire advance to Baghdad and were ready to don them at a moments notice because they fully expected to be hit with biological or chemical weapons. The fact that they were not surprised everyone.

My question is what happened to those weapons? Jenn over at ScrewLiberals posted up found a great article about General Georges Sada and his book about Hussein’s weapons programs. Sada’s assertions that these weapons were extradited to other nations, specifically Syria and Iran is disturbing at the very least and frightening in light of recent developments in these nations. Could these be what jump started Iran’s race for its own nuclear weapon? Were these the tons of Sarin gas that was confiscated off of al-Qaeda members in Jordan? Was this part of what Israel destroyed recently? If any of these things are true, then what else left Iraq in the days before the war? Where did it go and who helped Saddam get these materials out of the country?

I invite you to read this article in its entirety. It was a good find from Jenn.

Saddam’s Secrets

In a speech today Democrat presidential hopeful, Barack Obama said that the United States should be prepared to strike at al’Qaeda targets inside Pakistan, even without that government’s approval. He also warned that Pakistan should take a more aggressive role in the elimination of terror organizations within its borders, else the United States would be left with little choice but to strike within Pakistan.

While I do not disagree with the young Democratic Senator in this matter, I do find his willingness to commit military forces for the pursuit of al’Qaeda inside another sovereign nation without their permission kind of odd.

I guess it comes down to one basic question. I have recently asked this to two people with whom I was discussing the recent military successes we have had in Iraq. Both of these people were of the mindset that we need to be out of Iraq as quickly as possible. One was reasonable and was hoping to see troop withdrawals slowly begin by the end of the year, while the other had been drinking some of the kool-aid and wanted them home by the end of the week. The question I posed to them pretty much ended the discussion and left them unable to give a response that would not show the error in their philosophy or unwilling to give one that would.

The question is simple, but is in two parts. The first part: Should we hunt down al-Qaeda? No matter where they are, no matter where they hide, should we go after them?

Both individuals almost immediately answered that of course we should hunt down al-Qaeda. It should be our top priority. One even commented that we should have been doing this instead of going after Iraq.

Both individuals having answered this question so unequivocally and without hesitation, I asked the second part: If that is the case then why would you want us to retreat from engaging them in Iraq where a great many of them are terrorizing innocent citizens and our soldiers, regardless of the arguments that al-Qaeda is only in Iraq because we went there first or any of the other Democratic talking points? They are obviously in Iraq. So if you think that we should hunt them down and engage them where ever we find them, why would we not do so where they obviously focusing their efforts? Why would we cut and run in Iraq in the face of the very people we should be hunting down?

Neither of them had an answer for that. One did comment that we are not fighting al’Qaeda the way we should be fighting them. Again, on that point I tend to agree. I do not think that the American people have the will or the stomach to fight them like we truly need to. In World War II, when facing a fanatical enemy, we did what we had to do to eliminate the threat that the world faced. Casualties were expected. We knew that innocent civilians and young soldiers would die in the effort to eliminate the scourge that preyed on Europe. Our isolationism and unwillingness to fight for the freedoms of others, nearly cost us all of Europe. Britain was on the verge of collapse when we were violently awoken from our selfish slumber one December morning. Had we not entered the war then, Hitler would have broken England and been able to turn all his might towards Russia and swallow up the rest of Africa and the Middle East.

Instead, the might of the American military was turned against the Axis powers. With unfettered veracity we threw ourselves into the conflict and annihilated both Germany and Japan. We destroyed Germany’s entire infrastructure and leveled entire Japanese cities to bring the swiftest end to the war. Once we had utterly defeated them, we reached out our hand and pulled them up from the ashes. We rebuilt them as best we could to ensure that no such threat would ever rise from those countries again. We do not have the will to fight such a war today.

I agree that we should fight al’Qaeda when ever and where ever find them. I also think that we should throw the full might of the United States against them and not be petrified by political correctness or political maneuvering. I think we should stay in Iraq until there are no al’Qaeda left for us to hunt. It just blows my mind that the Democrats think we belong in Pakistan fighting al’Qaeda or in Dafur fighting oppression and genocide, but not in Iraq doing the very same thing. Amazing. No, I take that back. Astounding.