Libertarian Leanings

Jane Arraf

Jane Arraf is a journalist embedded with American troops in Iraq whose reports appear on the website Iraq Slogger.  In today's article she describes a house to house search for fighters and weapons in a Baquba neighborhood suspected of harboring al-Qaeda.

The sunshine hasn’t begun to burn yet as soldiers from the Strykers 5th battalion 20th Infantry Regiment go from house to house looking for fighters and weapons in neighborhood thought to harbor al-Qaeda. There are no polite knocks. They operate on the assumption that when the gate or the door swings open there could be gunmen behind it.

At this house they’re met at the gate by Selma and her two eldest daughters, determined to leave for school despite the soldiers and armored vehicles in the streets and the possibility of getting caught in crossfire. The girls, dressed in black skirts and flowing white blouses with blue headscarves covering their hair, are more worried about being late. They’re sitting for high-school exams and the school was closed for the last two days because of fears by the government the students would be kidnapped.

“It will take us an hour to get there and we want to be on time,” says Yasmine, who is 17.

She and her sister Sabreen want to be teachers.

There are no taxis in the part of town and no cars in the street. Many of the families have fled to safety for Syria or northern Iraq. The girls’ father, a farmer, is too ill to take them to school. The phones don’t work and there is no local radio or TV station to tell them whether the school will be open.

“It won’t be dangerous for them?” her mother asks me. “I’m so afraid for them. Should I tell them it’s alright to go?” she asks me to ask the soldiers.

The platoon commander, 1st Lt Thomas Gaines tells her it’s fine. He radios to his soldiers moving through the neighborhood to let them know that the girls will be walking through the area.

Iraq Slogger CEO is none other than Eason Jordan, formerly the head of CNN.  His tenure there ended shortly after he accused American troops -- with no basis whatever -- of targeting journalists in Iraq.  He was also notorious for admitting that he had agreed to put a rose colored filter on the news from Saddam Hussein's Iraq as condition for maintaining CNN's presence in Baghdad.  So, it comes as something of a surprise that Iraq Slogger does not seem to be marked by the usual anti-Americanism displayed by many mainstream news outlets.

The elusive front

According to the Washington Times, Lebanon is the new trendy hot spot for the jihadist set.

NAHR EL-BARED, Lebanon -- Heavily armed foreign jihadists have been entering Lebanon from Syria from around the time Western authorities noticed a drop in the infiltration of foreign fighters from Syria to Iraq, Lebanese officials say.

Theories abound.  Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi, commander of Lebanon's Internal Security Forces, believes that the terrorists Lebanese forces have been battling have been battle hardened in Iraq.

"They are very dangerous," he said in an interview. "We have no choice, we have to combat them."

Officials traveling with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said before Miss Rice's meeting with her Syrian counterpart in Egypt early this month that Syria appeared to be taking "positive" steps to guard its border with Iraq, resulting in a reduced number of jihadists crossing the border.

But U.N. officials running the Nahr el-Bared camp told The Washington Times that a large band of foreigners carrying mortars, rockets, explosive belts and other heavy weapons entered the camp in a group several months ago.

That is near the time that infiltration of militants from Syria into Iraq fell off, according to Lebanese authorities, who suspect the jihadists were simply redirected by Damascus.

Maybe the jihadists, having heard congressional Democrats claim that Iraq is a distraction from the war on terror, have gone in search of it in Lebanon.  But then , John Edwards said there is no a war on terror.  Mortars, rockets, explosive belts and other heavy weapons -- probably nothing more than a fashion statement.

A run to the left

It's been the practice of Democratic presidential aspirants to campaign on the far left in primary season, then swing back to the center for the general election.  It's one of the reasons Democratic presidents are so rare a commodity.  Hillary Clinton's vote against funding the Iraq war is a case in point.  It's her appeal for votes from MoveOn.org and the Daily Kos crowd.  But can she get back to the center from that far left?

The vote marks the end of Mrs. Clinton's post-9/11 positioning as a national security hawk. Her 2002 speech supporting war in Iraq was among the most forceful in the Senate, and for a while she admirably stuck with that conviction. But as the antiwar furies have built in her party, she has bent with them and now says and does whatever it takes to deny Mr. Obama or John Edwards any running room to her left. Perhaps this will win her the Democratic nomination, but it will complicate her Presidency if she ever does make it to the Oval Office. The Iranians, among others, will have seen that she can be turned when the going gets tough.

The betrayal of South Vietnam

From the New York Sun, a pop quiz.  How many U.S. troops were still fighting when the 94th congress pulled the plug on support for South Vietnam?

It turns out that when the Congress pulled the plug on Vietnam, the number of our U.S. troops in Vietnam was zero. When, in the 1974 elections, the Democrats widened their majority in the Congress and then, in the spring of 1975, finally defied President Ford and ended support for the free Vietnamese government in the South, the number of GIs was something on the order of two or three dozen, mostly embassy guards.

[...]

In January 1974, according to a timeline at PBS.org, the North Vietnamese were then "still too weak to launch a full-scale offensive," but had "rebuilt their divisions in the South" and "captured key areas." Watergate was gathering, and on August 9, 1974, President Nixon resigned. At this point, there was only a doughty little government in South Vietnam that was standing alone against the combined might of the Soviet Union and the Communist Chinese. And it was prepared to fight on for another generation.

The Congress, however, wasn't prepared to stake them, despite the fact that South Vietnam was our ally in the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization. In October 1974, the 93rd Congress voted to end foreign aid to Vietnam. President Ford vetoed the measure. Congress, after an election that expanded the Democratic majority by 48 seats in the House and five in the Senate, overrode the veto. In the Spring, the 94th Congress blocked military appropriations for the South Vietnamese. It was not about our GIs. They had long since gone. A country of 50 million individuals who had sided with America and yearned for freedom was cast into the dark night of communist tyranny.

As the Democrats haggle over funding for the Iraq war, this is something to keep in mind.  It wasn't about the GIs then and it's not about the troops now.

Clinton seeks out the elderly

It's Bill, not Hill, and it's not votes he's after.  According to Dick Morris, Bill Clinton is connected to a firm that makes its money by identifying elderly people who are likely to be susceptible to scam.  InfoUSA, an Omaha, Neb. company that provides databases to anyone willing to buy, has been paying former President Bill Clinton every year since he left the White House. 

As The New York Times reported on Sunday, InfoUSA compiled and sold lists of elderly men and women who would be likely to respond to unscrupulous scams. The company advertised lists such as: "Elderly Opportunity Seekers" - 3.3 million older people "looking for ways to make money "Suffering Seniors" - 4.7 million people with cancer or Alzheimer's disease; "Oldies but Goodies" - 500,000 gamblers over age 55. It described one list: "These people are gullible. They want to believe that their luck can change."

Internal e-mails show that InfoUSA employees were aware that they were selling this data to firms under investigation for fraud - but kept on selling the information, even as the scammers used the lists to bilk millions from the elderly.

Last week, Hillary Clinton sought and obtained an extension of time to file her financial-disclosure statement for the presidential race. This will tell us more than her Senate statements - she's required to list not just the sources of Bill's income but exactly how much they paid him. While Sen. Clinton offered no reason for the postponement, we can't help suspecting that she hopes to conceal InfoUSA's payments to her husband while the company is under fire.

The relationship between Bill Clinton and Vinod "Vin" Gupta, InfoUSA's CEO and chairman, is longstanding and deep.

War on terror continues in Lebanon

In an address to his nation on Thursday Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora vowed that his government would root out the terrorists who are battling the Lebanese army from a Palestinian refugee camp.

"We will work to root out and strike at terrorism, but we will embrace and protect our brothers in the camps," Saniora said in a televised speech, insisting Lebanon has no quarrel with the 400,000 Palestinian refugees who live in the country.

His address came a day after the Lebanese defense minister issued an ultimatum to the Fatah Islam militants barricaded in the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp - many of whom are believed to be Arabs from other countries - to surrender or face a military assault.

Saniora said the Fatah Islam militant group holed up in the camp was "a terrorist organization that claims to be Islamic and to defend Palestine" and was "attempting to ride on the suffering and the struggle of the Palestinian people."

Monica Goodling testifies

Monica Goodling finally testified before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday, after having been granted immunity from prosecution.  Goodling claimed she would take the 5th if called to testify before congress, not because she had committed a crime, but because she believed congressional Democrats would spring a perjury trap.  Her testimony does not add to the furor over the dismissal of those U.S. attorneys.  As it happens, her testimony did not not diminish the credibility of Attorney General Roberto Gonzales.  It attacked his accuser instead.

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department's former White House liaison denied Wednesday that she played a major role in the firings of U.S. attorneys last year and blamed Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty for misleading Congress.

McNulty's explanation about the dismissals, on Feb. 6, "was incomplete or inaccurate in a number of respects," Monica Goodling told a packed House Judiciary Committee inquiry into the firings.

She added: "I believe the deputy was not fully candid."

McNulty was said to have turned the firing of U.S. prosecutors into a political fiasco with his congressional testimony in February.

Friends of Sampson were angry at McNulty's testimony on Feb. 6 when he told the Senate Judiciary Committee that most of the U.S. attorneys were removed for performance reasons.

In testimony that angered even Gonzales, according to a Justice Department e-mail, McNulty said that one prosecutor, H.E. Cummins 3rd of Arkansas, was dismissed solely to make room for J. Timothy Griffin, who had been named as the temporary replacement with the backing of Karl Rove, the senior White House political adviser.

Friends of McNulty said he had tried to be candid about what he knew of the firings. In his secret congressional testimony, McNulty said he did not realize until later the extensive White House involvement in Griffin's appointment or Sampson's nearly yearlong effort to compile a firing list.

Although McNulty claimed he had been mislead about the firings, he was also said to have been unhappy in his role as second-in-command under Gonzales.  Whether or not that had anything to do with the accuracy of his testimony is anybody's guess.  But Goodling had this to say in her testimony.

Of McNulty, Goodling said he "simply didn't communicate all that he knew" during his Senate testimony, which focused on whether the prosecutors were fired for underperforming. "I'm not saying it was deliberate," she added.

Let's see how long Democrats will be able keep this faux scandal alive.

Threats from the anti-war left

The Washington Post reports that MovOn.org has sent out an email alert to its 3.2 million members encouraging them to voice their opposition the supplemental spending bill that will fund the Iraq war without demanding a timeline for withdrawal.

MoveOn.org, a leading antiwar group, rallied its 3.2 million members in an e-mail alert yesterday morning that declared that "every single Democrat must oppose this bill." The group warned that it would consider backing primary challengers to Democrats who vote yes. Other organizations issued similar angry threats.

"This is going to be a very important vote," said Eli Pariser, MoveOn.org's executive director. "It will signal who is very serious about ending the war, and who is posturing."

Backing the primary challenger in Connecticut in 2006 didn't work all that well for them.  I'm a bit surprised they'd make that threat.

Reconciliation

News from Iraq Slogger indicates the possibility that reconciliation among Iraqis may be closer than we thought.  Pro-American Sunni tribal leader Sheikh Hamid al-Hayis taveled to Sadr City to meet with representatives of radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

In an unprecedented step, a top leader of the pro-US tribal alliance in Anbar Province traveled to Sadr City Tuesday to meet with leaders of the Sadrist current.

Sheikh Hamid al-Hayis, who leads the armed wing of the US-backed movement known as the Anbar Awakening, or the Anbar Salvation Council, held a rare meeting with Sadrist leaders in Baghdad’s Sadr City, the bastion of support for the young cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and stronghold of the Mahdi Army.

“This meeting is a message to Iraqi politicians to get rid of their differences and to seek real reconciliation,” Hayis said, according to the AFP.

Moral high ground

Investor's Business Daily says by dropping demand for a withdrawal timeline this week the Democratic leadership has ceded the moral high ground to President Bush.

Only a short time ago, Democrats were cockily promising they would send the president a pullout bill as many times as it would take, until finally he would have to relent. Just last Friday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were insisting on a timeline in negotiations with the White House on a war funding bull.

But the tables have now been turned on congressional Democrats. All of a sudden, it is they who face a deadline: If Congress does not manage to pass a war spending bill that the president is willing to sign before the Memorial Day recess, Democrats become vulnerable to the charge of refusing to fund our combat troops.