Washington Post- 'Lost Tomb of Jesus' Claim Called a Stunt

'Lost Tomb of Jesus' Claim Called a Stunt
Archaeologists Decry TV Film

By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 28, 2007; A03

Leading archaeologists in Israel and the United States yesterday denounced the purported discovery of the tomb of Jesus as a publicity stunt.

Scorn for the Discovery Channel's claim to have found the burial place of Jesus, Mary Magdalene and -- most explosively -- their possible son came not just from Christian scholars but also from Jewish and secular experts who said their judgments were unaffected by any desire to uphold Christian orthodoxy.

"I'm not a Christian. I'm not a believer. I don't have a dog in this fight," said William G. Dever, who has been excavating ancient sites in Israel for 50 years and is widely considered the dean of biblical archaeology among U.S. scholars. "I just think it's a shame the way this story is being hyped and manipulated."

The Discovery Channel held a news conference in New York on Monday to unveil a TV documentary, "The Lost Tomb of Jesus," and a companion book about a tomb that was unearthed during construction of an apartment building in the Talpiyot neighborhood of Jerusalem in 1980.

James Cameron, the filmmaker who explored the wreck of the Titanic and directed an Oscar-winning feature film based on its sinking, is executive producer of the documentary. Its claims are based on six ossuaries, or stone boxes for holding human bones, found in the tomb.

The filmmakers contend that the inscriptions on the boxes say Yeshua bar Yosef (Jesus son of Joseph), Maria (Mary), Yose (Joseph), Matia (Matthew), Mariamene e Mara (Maria the Master) and Yehuda bar Yeshua (Judah son of Jesus). They maintain that "Mariamene e Mara" is Mary Magdalene and that Yehuda bar Yeshua may be her son by Jesus.

Simcha Jacobovici, the film's Israeli-born director, said in a telephone interview yesterday that he commissioned four statistical studies that concluded that the odds of those particular names appearing in a single family tomb from the 1st century are "somewhere between 600 and 2.4 million to one."

Jacobovici also said tests on the patina, or surface residue, of the "James Ossuary," which surfaced in 2002, indicate that it also came from the Talpiyot tomb. Israeli authorities have pronounced the James Ossuary, which purportedly held the bones of a brother of Jesus, a forgery and are prosecuting its owner. Jacobovici, who made a 2003 Discovery Channel film about it, maintains it is real.

Dever, a retired professor of archaeology at the University of Arizona, said that some of the inscriptions on the Talpiyot ossuaries are unclear, but that all of the names are common.

"I've know about these ossuaries for many years and so have many other archaeologists, and none of us thought it was much of a story, because these are rather common Jewish names from that period," he said. "It's a publicity stunt, and it will make these guys very rich, and it will upset millions of innocent people because they don't know enough to separate fact from fiction."

Similar assessments came yesterday from two Israeli scholars, Amos Kloner, who originally excavated the tomb, and Joe Zias, former curator of archaeology at the Israeli Antiquities Authority. Kloner told the Jerusalem Post that the documentary is "nonsense." Zias described it in an e-mail to The Washington Post as a "hyped up film which is intellectually and scientifically dishonest."

Jodi Magness, an archaeologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, expressed irritation that the claims were made at a news conference rather than in a peer-reviewed scientific article. By going directly to the media, she said, the filmmakers "have set it up as if it's a legitimate academic debate, when the vast majority of scholars who specialize in archaeology of this period have flatly rejected this," she said.

Magness noted that at the time of Jesus, wealthy families buried their dead in tombs cut by hand from solid rock, putting the bones in niches in the walls and then, later, transferring them to ossuaries.

She said Jesus came from a poor family that, like most Jews of the time, probably buried their dead in ordinary graves. "If Jesus' family had been wealthy enough to afford a rock-cut tomb, it would have been in Nazareth, not Jerusalem," she said.

Magness also said the names on the Talpiyot ossuaries indicate that the tomb belonged to a family from Judea, the area around Jerusalem, where people were known by their first name and father's name. As Galileans, Jesus and his family members would have used their first name and home town, she said.

"This whole case [for the tomb of Jesus] is flawed from beginning to end," she said.

Inconvenient Truths- About Global Warming

Inconvenient Truths
Novel science fiction on global warming.

By Patrick J. Michaels

This Sunday, Al Gore will probably win an Academy Award for his global-warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth, a riveting work of science fiction.
The main point of the movie is that, unless we do something very serious, very soon about carbon dioxide emissions, much of Greenland’s 630,000 cubic miles of ice is going to fall into the ocean, raising sea levels over twenty feet by the year 2100.

Where’s the scientific support for this claim? Certainly not in the recent Policymaker’s Summary from the United Nations’ much anticipated compendium on climate change. Under the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s medium-range emission scenario for greenhouse gases, a rise in sea level of between 8 and 17 inches is predicted by 2100. Gore’s film exaggerates the rise by about 2,000 percent.

Even 17 inches is likely to be high, because it assumes that the concentration of methane, an important greenhouse gas, is growing rapidly. Atmospheric methane concentration hasn’t changed appreciably for seven years, and Nobel Laureate Sherwood Rowland recently pronounced the IPCC’s methane emissions scenarios as “quite unlikely.”

Nonetheless, the top end of the U.N.’s new projection is about 30-percent lower than it was in its last report in 2001. “The projections include a contribution due to increased ice flow from Greenland and Antarctica for the rates observed since 1993,” according to the IPCC, “but these flow rates could increase or decrease in the future.”

According to satellite data published in Science in November 2005, Greenland was losing about 25 cubic miles of ice per year. Dividing that by 630,000 yields the annual percentage of ice loss, which, when multiplied by 100, shows that Greenland was shedding ice at 0.4 percent per century.

“Was” is the operative word. In early February, Science published another paper showing that the recent acceleration of Greenland’s ice loss from its huge glaciers has suddenly reversed.

Nowhere in the traditionally refereed scientific literature do we find any support for Gore’s hypothesis. Instead, there’s an unrefereed editorial by NASA climate firebrand James E. Hansen, in the journal Climate Change — edited by Steven Schneider, of Stanford University, who said in 1989 that scientists had to choose “the right balance between being effective and honest” about global warming — and a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that was only reviewed by one person, chosen by the author, again Dr. Hansen.

These are the sources for the notion that we have only ten years to “do” something immediately to prevent an institutionalized tsunami. And given that Gore only conceived of his movie about two years ago, the real clock must be down to eight years!

It would be nice if my colleagues would actually level with politicians about various “solutions” for climate change. The Kyoto Protocol, if fulfilled by every signatory, would reduce global warming by 0.07 degrees Celsius per half-century. That’s too small to measure, because the earth’s temperature varies by more than that from year to year.

The Bingaman-Domenici bill in the Senate does less than Kyoto — i.e., less than nothing — for decades, before mandating larger cuts, which themselves will have only a minor effect out past somewhere around 2075. (Imagine, as a thought experiment, if the Senate of 1925 were to dictate our energy policy for today).

Mendacity on global warming is bipartisan. President Bush proposes that we replace 20 percent of our current gasoline consumption with ethanol over the next decade. But it’s well-known that even if we turned every kernel of American corn into ethanol, it would displace only 12 percent of our annual gasoline consumption. The effect on global warming, like Kyoto, would be too small to measure, though the U.S. would become the first nation in history to burn up its food supply to please a political mob.

And even if we figured out how to process cellulose into ethanol efficiently, only one-third of our greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation. Even the Pollyannish 20-percent displacement of gasoline would only reduce our total emissions by 7-percent below present levels — resulting in emissions about 20-percent higher than Kyoto allows.

And there’s other legislation out there, mandating, variously, emissions reductions of 50, 66, and 80 percent by 2050. How do we get there if we can’t even do Kyoto?

When it comes to global warming, apparently the truth is inconvenient. And it’s not just Gore’s movie that’s fiction. It’s the rhetoric of the Congress and the chief executive, too.

— Patrick J. Michaels is senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and author of Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media.

More Global Warming Politics of the Left

February 13, 2007

On Comparing Global Warming Denial to Holocaust Denial

By Dennis Prager

In her last column, Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman wrote: "Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers . . . "

This is worthy of some analysis.

First, it reflects a major difference between the way in which the Left and Right tend to view each other. With a few exceptions, those on the Left tend to view their ideological adversaries as bad people, i.e., people with bad intentions, while those on the Right tend to view their adversaries as wrong, perhaps even dangerous, but not usually as bad.

Those who deny the Holocaust are among the evil of the world. Their concern is not history but hurting Jews, and their attempt to rob nearly six million people of their experience of unspeakable suffering gives new meaning to the word "cruel." To equate those who question or deny global warming with those who question or deny the Holocaust is to ascribe equally nefarious motives to them. It may be inconceivable to Al Gore, Ellen Goodman and their many millions of supporters that a person can disagree with them on global warming and not have evil motives: Such an individual must be paid by oil companies to lie, or lie -- as do Holocaust deniers -- for some other vile reason.

The belief that opponents of the Left are morally similar to Nazis was expressed recently by another prominent person of the Left, George Soros, the billionaire who bankrolls many leftist projects. At the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, Soros called on America to "de-Nazify" just as Germany did after the Holocaust and World War II. For Soros, America in Iraq is like the Nazis in Poland.

A second lesson to be drawn from the Goodman statement is that it helps us to understand better one of the defining mottos of contemporary liberalism: "Question authority." In reality, this admonition applies to questioning the moral authority of Judeo-Christian religions or of any secular conservative authority, but not of any other authority. UN and other experts tell us that there is global warming; such authority is not to be questioned.

Third, the equation of global warming denial to Holocaust denial trivializes Holocaust denial. If questioning global warming is on "a par" with questioning the Holocaust, how bad can questioning the Holocaust really be? The same holds true with regard to Nazism and the George Soros statement. Claiming that America in the Iraq War is morally equivalent to Nazi Germany in World War II trivializes the unparalleled evil of the Nazis.

Fourth, the lack of response (thus far) of any liberal or left individual or organization -- except to defend Ellen Goodman -- or from the Anti-Defamation League, the organization whose primary purpose has been to defend Jews, is telling. Just imagine if, for example, an equally prominent Christian figure had written that denying America is a Christian country is on a par with denying the Holocaust. It would have been front-page news in the mainstream media, the individual would have been excoriated by just about every major liberal individual and group, and the ADL would have cited this as an example of burgeoning Christian anti-Semitism and Holocaust trivialization. But not a word at the ADL on Soros's comments about de-Nazifying America or Goodman's Holocaust-denial comment.

Fifth, and finally, the Ellen Goodman quote is only the beginning of what is already becoming one of the largest campaigns of vilification of decent people in history -- the global condemnation of a) anyone who questions global warming; or b) anyone who agrees that there is global warming but who argues that human behavior is not its primary cause; or c) anyone who agrees that there is global warming, and even agrees that human behavior is its primary cause, but does not believe that the consequences will be nearly as catastrophic as Al Gore does.

If you don't believe all three propositions, you will be lumped with Holocaust deniers, and it would not be surprising that soon, in Europe, global warming deniers will be treated as Holocaust deniers and prosecuted. Just watch. That is far more likely than the oceans rising by 20 feet. Or even 10. Or even three.

Copyright 2007 Creators Syndicate

A Very Enlightening Article on Global Warming from Dennis Prager

June 20, 2006

Why Liberals Fear Global Warming More Than Conservatives Do

By Dennis Prager

Observers of contemporary society will surely have noted that a liberal is far more likely to fear global warming than a conservative. Why is this?

After all, if the science is as conclusive as Al Gore, Time, Newsweek, The New York Times and virtually every other spokesman of the Left says it is, conservatives are just as likely to be scorched and drowned and otherwise done in by global warming as liberals will. So why aren't non-leftists nearly as exercised as leftists are? Do conservatives handle heat better? Are libertarians better swimmers? Do religious people love their children less?

The usual liberal responses -- to label a conservative position racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic or the like -- obviously don't apply here. So, liberals would have to fall back on the one remaining all-purpose liberal explanation: "big business." They might therefore explain the conservative-liberal divide over global warming thus: Conservatives don't care about global warming because they prefer corporate profits to saving the planet.

But such an explanation could not explain the vast majority of conservatives who are not in any way tied into the corporate world (like this writer, who has no stocks and who, moreover, regards big business as amoral as leftists do).

No, the usual liberal dismissals of conservatives and their positions just don't explain this particularly illuminating difference between liberals and conservatives.

Here are six more likely explanations:

-- The Left is prone to hysteria. The belief that global warming will destroy the world is but one of many hysterical notions held on the Left. As noted in a previous column devoted to the Left and hysteria, many on the Left have been hysterical about the dangers of the PATRIOT Act and the NSA surveillance of phone numbers (incipient fascism); secondhand smoke (killing vast numbers of people); drilling in the remotest area of Alaska (major environmental despoliation); and opposition to same-sex marriage (imminent Christian theocracy).

-- The Left believes that if The New York Times and other liberal news sources report something, it is true. If the cover of Time magazine says, "Global Warming: Be Worried, Very Worried," liberals get worried, very worried, about global warming.

It is noteworthy that liberals, one of whose mottos is "question authority," so rarely question the authority of the mainstream media. Now, of course, conservatives, too, often believe mainstream media. But conservatives have other sources of news that enable them to achieve the liberal ideal of questioning authority. Whereas few liberals ever read non-liberal sources of information or listen to conservative talk radio, the great majority of conservatives are regularly exposed to liberal news, liberal editorials and liberal films, and they have also received many years of liberal education.

-- The Left believes in experts. Of course, every rational person, liberal or conservative, trusts the expertise of experts -- such as when experts in biology explain the workings of mitochondria, or when experts in astronomy describe the moons of Jupiter. But for liberals, "expert" has come to mean far more than greater knowledge in a given area. It now means two additional things: One is that non-experts should defer to experts not only on matters of knowledge, but on matters of policy, as well. The second is that experts possess greater wisdom about life, not merely greater knowledge in their area of expertise.

That is why liberals are far more likely to be impressed when a Nobel Prize winner in, let us say, physics signs an ad against war or against capital punishment. The liberal is bowled over by the title "Nobel laureate." The conservative is more likely to wonder why a Nobel laureate in physics has anything more meaningful to say about war than, let us say, a taxi driver.

-- People who don't confront the greatest evils will confront far lesser ones. Most humans know the world is morally disordered -- and socially conscious humans therefore try to fight what they deem to be most responsible for that disorder. The Right tends to fight human evil such as communism and Islamic totalitarianism. The Left avoids confronting such evils and concentrates its attention instead on socioeconomic inequality, environmental problems and capitalism. Global warming meets all three of these criteria of evil. By burning fossil fuels, rich countries pollute more, the environment is being despoiled and big business increases its profits.

-- The Left is far more likely to revere, even worship, nature. A threat to the environment is regarded by many on the Left as a threat to what is most sacred to them, and therefore deemed to be the greatest threat humanity faces. The cover of Vanity Fair's recent "Special Green Issue" declared: "A Graver Threat Than Terrorism: Global Warming." Conservatives, more concerned with human evil, hold the very opposite view: Islamic terror is a far graver threat than global warming.

-- Leftists tend to fear dying more. That is one reason they are more exercised about our waging war against evil than about the evils committed by those we fight. The number of Iraqis and others Saddam Hussein murdered troubles the Left considerably less than even the remote possibility than they may one day die of global warming (or secondhand smoke).

One day, our grandchildren may ask us what we did when Islamic fascism threatened the free world. Some of us will say we were preoccupied with fighting that threat wherever possible; others will be able to say they fought carbon dioxide emissions. One of us will look bad.

Copyright 2006 Creators Syndicate

THE MODERATE MOSQUE- The Oxymoron

THE MODERATE MOSQUE

Steyn on Britain and Europe

Wednesday, 21 February 2007

“Mosque” is a term that covers a multitude of architectural sins these days, but the one at Regents Park in London is the real deal. Big golden dome above the tree tops, 140-foot minaret. I used to live nearby and I must have strolled past it hundreds of times and, if I ever did give it a second glance in those days, it was only to marvel: “Wow! That Hindu temple is totally awesome.” I walked by it the other week for the first time in a long time. How did it get to sit on such a piece of prime London real estate? Well, you can thank His Majesty’s Government for that. In 1940, they allocated a hundred thousand pounds to buy land for a London mosque. The British Empire had millions of Muslim subjects and on the whole they’d been supportive of the war effort and it seemed appropriate that this should be acknowledged in the heart of the metropolis. King George VI opened the Islamic Cultural Centre on the site in 1944. It’s the best attended mosque in Britain. If there is a “moderate” Islam in the west, this is it. So what goes on there? Well, if you swing by the bookstore, you can pick up DVDs of hot preachers like Sheikh Feiz, who does these hilarious pig noises every time he mentions the Jews – “Oh, Muslim, behind me is the Jew. [snort-snort] Come and kill him. [snort-snort].” You can also buy tapes from Sheikh Yasin, a celebrity American “revert” (ie, convert) to Islam, in which he explains that you should “beat women lightly”, and that a Muslim can never be friends with a non-Muslim, and that Christian missionaries deliberately introduced Aids to Africa by putting it in the vaccines for other diseases. Another “revert”, Jermaine Lindsay, got the jihad fever at the mosque and then went and self-detonated in the July 7th bombings. If the Regents Park Mosque has been “radicalized”, then there are no non-radical mosques. When I lived in the neighborhood, you’d see t-shirted tourists snapping each other with the dome in the background. That’s what it was for most of us: an exotic backdrop. Inside, one assumed, they talked about Allah and Mohammed, and where’s the harm in that? We looked on it in multicultural terms – that’s to say, as a heritage issue: a link for immigrants back to the old country. It never occurred to us that it was an ideological bridgehead. But listen to Dr Ijaz Mian, secretly taped by Britain’s Channel 4 at the Ahl-e-Hadith mosque in Derby: “King, Queen, House of Commons: if you accept it, you are a part of it. If you don’t accept it, you have to dismantle it. So you being a Muslim, you have to fix a target. There will be no House of Commons. From that White House to this Black House, we know we have to dismantle it. Muslims must grow in strength, then take over… You are in a situation in which you have to live like a state-within-a-state - until you take over.” Where’s the religious content? Where’s the contemplation of the divine? Don’t look for it at the Sparkbrook mosque in Birmingham recently praised by Tony Blair for its contribution to tolerance and diversity. Last June they were celebrating the killer of a British Muslim soldier in Afghanistan: “The hero of Islam is the one who separated his head from his shoulders.” These aren’t sermons and these men aren’t preachers. They’re ideological enforcers on an explicitly political project with branch offices on Main Streets across the western world. Imagine the Second World War with St Adolf’s Parish Church on every English village green, or the Cold War with a Soviet Orthodox Church in every mid-sized town in all 50 states. Dr Mian trained in Saudi Arabia. The bookstore at the Regents Park Mosque is run by a company headed by a Saudi diplomat, Dr Ahmad al-Dubayan. The Saudis control mosques, and schools, and think-tanks, and prison chaplaincy programs and much else, too. I’d be calling for a blue-ribbon commission to investigate Saudi subversion of the US but pretty much everyone who’d wind up sitting on it would be on the Saudi gravy train one way or another. As Christopher Hitchens put it: “If, when reading an article about the debate over Iraq, you come across the expression ‘the realist school’ and mentally substitute the phrase ‘the American friends of the Saudi royal family,’ your understanding of the situation will invariably be enhanced.” Very droll. The trouble is there are so many “American friends of the Saudi royal family”. Jimmy Carter’s Carter Center was founded on King Fahd’s mountain of cash and, in the last year, its biggest donors included Saudi Prince Al-Walid bin Talal. It never occurred to me in the fall of 2001 that five years on nothing would have changed, except that we’d be shoveling even more gazillions of petrodollars into Saudi Arabia and they in turn would be shoveling even more back at us in a brilliantly synergized subversion operation, funding not only the radical imams and their incendiary progeny but also the think-tanks and study groups and Nobel Prize winners who ponder the best way to appease them. The Saudis are hollowing out Britain from within, and in America are hollowing out significant non-military components of national power - diplomatic, academic and cultural. Listen to the men in those mosques and then ask: Where’s our ideological offensive? from National Review, January 29th 2007

Blair Is Right On Troops- Who Are Our Real Allies?

Mark Steyn: Blair is right on troops

• Eighty per cent of the violence in Iraq takes place within 50km of Baghdad

  ---

• February 23, 2007

ACCORDING to my dictionary, the word "ally" comes from the Old French. Very Old French, I'd say. For the New French, the word has a largely postmodern definition of "duplicitous charmer who undermines you at every opportunity".

For the less enthusiastically obstructive NATO members, "ally" means "wealthy country with no military capability that requires years of diplomatic wooing and black-tie banquets in order to agree to a token contribution of 23.08 troops." Incidentally, that 23.08 isn't artistic licence on my part. The 2004 NATO summit in Turkey was presented as a triumph of multilateral co-operation because the 26 members agreed to contribute between them an additional 600 troops and three helicopters to the Afghan mission. That's 23.08 troops and a ninth of a helicopter per ally. In fairness, Turkey chipped in the three helicopters single-handed, though the deal required them to return to Ankara after three months.

And these days troops is something of an elastic term, too. In Norwegian, it means "fighting men who are prepared to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Americans, as long as they don't have to do any fighting and there are at least two provinces between their shoulders and the American ones". That's to say, Norway is "participating" in Afghanistan, but, because its troops are "not sufficiently trained to take part in combat", they've been mainly back at the barracks manning the photocopier or staging amateur performances of Peer Gynt for the amusement of US special forces who like nothing better than to unwind with five acts of Ibsen after a hard day hunting the Taliban.

Alas, even being in the general vicinity of regions where fighting is taking place got a little too much so the Norwegians demanded a modification of their rules of non-engagement and insisted their "soldiers" be moved to parts of Afghanistan where there's no fighting whatsoever by anyone at all. Good luck finding any.

Which brings us to that brave band of countries who still use "ally" in the more or less traditional sense. The Old French word it comes from is "alier", which means "to bind to". Au contraire, these days to be an ally of America is to be in a bind. John Howard has just announced that things are pretty tough in Iraq so this is no time for Australia to be heading home. Tony Blair has just announced that things are going well in Iraq so this is exactly the time for Britain to begin heading home. But either way it makes no difference: both Prime Ministers have been greeted with jeers and catcalls, and each man's position has been assumed to undermine the other's, and both by extension to undermine George W. Bush.

Howard, as the most rhetorically surefooted of the Anglosphere's three musketeers, had a good comeback to the suggestion that the Bush surge and the Blair drawdown are mutually incompatible: "Anybody who studies Iraq for five minutes," he said, "knows that controlling Baghdad is infinitely more challenging than controlling Basra in the south. That is the reason why the Americans are increasing their numbers and the reason why, because of the relative improvement in Basra, the British are reducing their numbers."

That would appear to make sense. I had the privilege of being in the Oval Office a couple of months back when Bush observed that 80 per cent of the violence in Iraq took place within 30 miles of Baghdad. If the object is to transfer control to a competent Iraqi military, it would seem likely that a largely Shia army would be more likely to be able to assume control in the largely Shia south before it's ready to police Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle. But to the media and much of the political class throughout the Western world, almost by definition there can be no good news from Iraq: the Bush surge in Baghdad is bound to fail, the Blair handover in the south is bound to fail, and therefore Howard's support for both or either or vice-versa is deluded. In strict numbers, London has been reducing - or "redeploying" or "withdrawing" - forces since 2003, when 46,000 British troops were holding down the southern third of Iraq single-handed.

Within a year, it was a fifth of that, and this latest drawdown is significant only because of the opportunity it affords Bush-bashers (and Howard-bashers) for some political sport. The southern provinces are as stabilised as they're likely to get under any regime short of multi-decade colonialisation.

And those British troops who remain will provide serious muscle when the Iraqi authorities need it: the Blues and Royals are shipping out in a few weeks, including Second Lieutenant Wales - that is, Prince Harry - who, according to The Times, "has already made his wishes clear. He wants to be with his squadron, not locked away in a staff job in a heavily protected base."

You don't have to be third in line to the throne to feel that way. Most soldiers from serious militaries want to be doing something real and tough when they're sent halfway round the world. The Americans accept (a little too easily, I'd say) the political reality that these days a military coalition will be 95 per cent US, 4 per cent Britain and 1 per cent everybody else, with the detachment of Royal Marines from Tonga ranking as a greater per capita contribution than any NATO member. But, given the relatively small numbers, they should at least be doing something when they get there.

The British Prime Minister is in a bad position, facing a hostile backbench on his own side and a bunch of contemptible opportunists among the Tory ranks. Howard is, to that degree, in an enviable position: his party supports him, and even Labor would supposedly do no more than withdraw 500 or so personnel from the wider Middle East, which makes Kevin Rudd a more or less loyalish Opposition by the standards of Washington, London and Ottawa.

In other words, it's not the war, it's the home front. If their job is all but done in the Shia south, why could not Blair redeploy British troops to Baghdad to share some of the burden of the Yankee surge? Well, because it's simply not politically possible. Not even for a leader who shares exactly the same view of the Islamist threat and the importance of victory in Iraq as President Bush.

In that sense, the Blair reduction is not a withdrawal from Iraq so much as a withdrawal from the assumptions of the broader Anglo-American relationship: the Prime Minister's successor, Gordon Brown, is likely to prefer something a little more distant, not as distant as those Norwegians in Afghanistan but a little closer to the default NATO model of being supportive without being helpful.

Thus, even for reliable allies with capable militaries, the political price of marching into battle alongside the Great Satan is steep and getting steeper. This does not bode well for the general health of the planet. When the wilier Democrats berate Bush for not maintaining an adequate military, they have a sort of crude point, albeit not the one they think they're making: if the time, money and energy expended in getting pseudo-allies to make pseudo-contributions were to be spent instead on the Vermont National Guard, you'd get more troops more quickly with more capability. Yet for wealthy countries to deny Washington even the figleaf of token multilateralism is, in the end, to gamble with their own futures.

Howard is perhaps the last Western leader to understand this. If he is a pathetic Bush poodle, he was a poodle long before most folks had even heard of Bush. He first committed Australia to supporting American military action against Iraq in 1998, back when Bill Clinton was in the Oval Office. All that's changed is the scale of the threat: an American defeat - or perceived defeat - in Iraq would embolden all kinds of forces around the globe, including in Indonesia and the Pacific.

The French and the Norwegians will never be meaningful American allies again, and even the British will be ordering a la carte. To modify Howard's words on September 11, even if 80 per cent of the allies have gone, this is no time to join them.

Mark Steyn, a Canadian columnist, is a regular contributor to The Australian's opinion page.

Do You Support The Religious Left?

Do You Support The Religious Left?
By Frank Pastore
Sunday, February 25, 2007

I’m a big believer in full disclosure, truth in advertising, and getting what you pay for – especially when it comes to discussing my two favorite topics, politics and religion. I hate euphemisms, deceptive labeling, half-truths, and any bait and switch. People should be honest about who they are and what they believe. They should be as plain-speaking, clear, and direct as possible – especially when it comes to important issues.

I believe people are supporting organizations like the National Council of Churches and other groups on the religious Left, without knowing – in clear terms – what these groups believe. Beneath their soaring and winsome rhetoric lies poli-cies and positions that betray their professed compassion. They sound so sensitive, caring, and empathetic, but the poli-cies they support – if implemented – would be the proverbial “medicine worse than the disease.” Their solutions would only make matters worse. It is my contention that if people actually knew the views of these groups and the conse-quences of their policies they would withdraw their support.

See how many of these position statements listed below representative of the religious Left that you agree with.

On Theology

1. God is morally neutral with regards to religion – it’s the act of faith, not the object of faith, that counts. There are no false religions – all religions have some truth. Jesus is not the “only way” to heaven. The Bible is neither inerrant nor infallible, it is filled with many errors and must be properly interpreted by experts.

2. Man is not depraved, there is no original sin; man is innately good, it is society that is evil. To improve the world, it is better to create good social institutions than to waste time trying to create good men.

3. God grades on a curve, there is no Hell. Everybody goes to heaven, eventually, if there is an afterlife.

4. Terms like “good” and “evil” are offensive, polarizing, and non-productive. They should never be used to describe in-dividuals, groups, societies, governments, nations, or religions.

5. Since objective truth is unknowable, public policy cannot be deduced from theology. Theology can only be formed inductively from policy preferences. (E.g., Homosexuality is no longer a sin in our faith community.)

On Abortion, Homosexuality and Global Warming

6. Episcopal churches who still believe homosexuality is a sin – and who therefore refuse to honor the ordination of ac-tive homosexuals (e.g., Gene Robinson) – should have their church property seized by the denomination.

7. All K-12 curricula should embrace the full spectrum of families, and no longer honor just the stereotypical “mother and father” family. Motherhood and fatherhood are equally expendable. The gender – and number – of parents is ir-relevant, as long as they are loving.

8. Some humans are more valuable than others. The killing of a fetus is moral because it prevents the mother from suf-fering an unwanted pregnancy. Similarly, the killing of a human embryo is moral if it can prevent the suffering of an-other human being by advancing medical breakthroughs. Both abortion and embryonic stem cell research are morally acceptable practices.

9. Man is responsible for all temperature fluctuations on the planet. Dissent is prohibited.

On Politics

10. God is morally neutral with regards to politics and economics – She’s neither a Democrat nor a Republican; She doesn’t prefer capitalism over socialism, communism, or Marxism; nor does She favor democracy over aristocracy, monarchy, or tyranny. We suspect She may prefer freedom to slavery, however.

11. All cultures are morally equal, except for Western culture which has been largely immoral. Allowing displays of American patriotism to occur in public is counterproductive to world peace. Multiculturalism good, American excep-tionalism bad.

12. The United Nations is morally superior to the Congress of the United States, just as the World Court is morally supe-rior to the Supreme Court of the United States.

13. National boundaries and rights of citizenship are exclusive and offensive to non-citizens, and therefore immoral.

14. The purpose of the state is not to restrain evil or to secure rights, but to redistribute wealth and to administrate social services. Ending poverty, not national security, is the primary job of the state. No single state or nation has the moral authority to act in a sovereign manner, only the collective deliberation and moral weight of the United Nations should be entrusted with martial and judicial authority.

On Economics

15. Budgets are moral documents, forcing us to prioritize our collective value system through legislative debate. In this debate, we must emphasize that Americans always spend too much on defense, and too little on domestic social pro-grams and foreign aid. Raising taxes on “the rich” to expand the welfare state is always our primary political end.

16. Marxism is morally superior to capitalism. Capitalism is evil. Socialism is but an incremental step along our path to-ward the moral high ground of communism. It is better to have no rich and no poor, than few rich and many poor. As the progressive tax rate reveals, it is morally acceptable to steal from the rich and to give to the poor. Tax rates on the rich can never be too high, and those on the poor can never be too low.

17. Poverty causes both crime and terrorism. End poverty, and end both crime and terrorism.

On War and Peace

18. All violence is immoral, even in self-defense. Jesus teaches us to love our neighbor as our self. As pacifists, we be-lieve this love of neighbor never requires a use of force on the neighbor’s behalf – there’s always an alternative to violence, since violence only begets more violence. Peace is a higher value than justice. Better to live as a slave in peace, than to live free in war.

19. The United States has never been involved in a just war. All wars are immoral. Christians ought not volunteer for military service. “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and peacemakers are pacifists. Our only hope in dealing with those who seek to do us harm is to participate in multilateral negotiations with them at the U.N. A truly moral and enlight-ened people prefer the path of appeasement that leads to surrender than the immoral path of military confrontation that leads to victory.

So, how’d you do on the quiz?

Good, well-meaning, pure-hearted, sincere, compassionate and loving people can be wrong – especially on the big things. Take poverty, for example.

What’s more loving, to empathetically feel someone’s pain or to actually implement policies that eliminate the pain?

Even if a doctor is well intended, he’s a bad doctor nonetheless if he doesn’t know the medicine he’s prescribing is what is keeping the patient sick. Doctors are supposed to know better.

Pretty words like “love, compassion, caring, and support” have their place. They’re nice. But, when it comes to actually doing something to solve problems rather than just talk about them, I’m far more interested in policies that actually work. Aren’t you?

The Frank Pastore Show is heard in Los Angeles weekday afternoons on 99.5 KKLA and on the web at kkla.com, and is the winner of the 2006 National Religious Broadcasters Talk Show of the Year. Frank is a former major league pitcher with graduate degrees in both philosophy of religion and political philosophy.

Major Weapons Cache Seized in Iraq

Major Weapons Cache Seized in Iraq
Associated Press | February 26, 2007
BAQOUBA, Iraq - U.S. and Iraqi forces have seized a large weapons cache that includes parts for sophisticated roadside bombs that are believed to originate in Iran, U.S. military investigators said.

Details of the find were expected to be announced Monday at a news conference in Baghdad.

But military officials told The Associated Press that the arsenal is one of the biggest found north of the Iraqi capital and contains components for so-called EFPs - explosively formed projectiles that fire a slug of molten metal that can penetrate armored vehicles.

The U.S. military has said elite Iranian corps are funneling EFPs to Shiite militias in Iraq for use against American troops. The area where the cache was found is dominated by Sunni insurgents but also includes pockets of Shiites.

Earlier this month, U.S. officials showed reporters in Baghdad pieces of EFPs they said were directly traceable to Iran.

An informant tipped off Iraqi police to the weapons stash Saturday, the military said in a statement to the AP. It was discovered near Baqouba, the provincial capital of Diyala province, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.

Along with the EFPs, the weapons cache contained more than two dozen mortars and 15 rockets. There were enough metal disks to make 130 EFPs, the military said.

The origin of the weapons seized Saturday was being investigated, said Lt. Col. Michael Donnelly, spokesman for Multinational Division-North.

"This local tip led to what is the most potentially lethal IED cache seized in northern Iraq in the past eight months," Donnelly said.

Last week, U.S. troops found a suspected Shiite weapons hideout in the southern city of Hilla that also included parts to make the lethal roadside bombs. The New York Times reported that the stash included a bomb-rigged fake boulder made of polyurethane that was apparently ready to be placed for an attack.

A statement from the U.S. military Monday said that 63 weapons caches have been discovered during major U.S.-Iraqi security sweeps around Baghdad that began Feb. 14. The arsenals included anti-aircraft weapons, armor-piercing bullets, bomb components and mortar rounds, the statement said.

Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

A Violent End to 2006

Read this article and get a perspective of how many soldiers have been killed in the Middle East defending Iraq's freedom. The Liberal press makes me want to puke every time they quote body count and try to turn Iraq into another Vietnam.

_______________________________________________________

A Violent End to 2006
California cops come under fire.

By Jack Dunphy

Dan Bessant was killed by a sniper last month, five days before Christmas. He was on patrol and assisting a comrade when the gunman, driven by an ideology altogether foreign and incomprehensible in civilized society, cut him down with a rifle shot from more than 100 yards away. He left behind a wife and an infant son, born only last October. He was 25.

Bessant was not a soldier or Marine serving in Baghdad or Ramadi or on some barren slope in Afghanistan. He was a police officer in Oceanside, California, in northern San Diego County, the kind of pleasant suburban town where such things are not supposed to happen. But even pleasant suburban towns can have pockets of trouble, neighborhoods where not everyone is so neighborly. Bessant was the second Oceanside police officer to be murdered in less than four years.

After Bessant was shot, cops from across the county and beyond swept in and combed the neighborhood. A 17-year-old was arrested and has been charged as an adult in the murder. He has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors say he confessed to the crime, saying he shot the officer to enhance his status in a local street gang. He now faces the prospect of enjoying this enhanced status in prison for the rest of his life.

Two days after Bessant was killed, Bryan Tuvera was one of several San Francisco police officers engaged in a manhunt for an escaped convict. The escapee led officers over fences and through backyards for several minutes before taking refuge in a garage. When Tuvera entered the garage he was shot in the head and died at a hospital later that night. Other officers shot and killed the suspect. Tuvera’s widow is also a San Francisco police officer; they had been married only two months.

Earlier that same day, in Long Beach, California, Officers Abe Yap and Roy Wade tried to make a traffic stop on a man who had been seen acting suspiciously in a gun store. The suspect stopped his car without warning in the middle of the street then jumped out and raked the police car with rifle fire. Neither officer was able to return fire or even get out of the car. Both were critically injured but were saved through the efforts of emergency-room workers at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center. Wade had graduated from the police academy only three weeks earlier.

Long Beach detectives identified the shooter as Oscar Gabriel Gallegos, 33, an illegal immigrant previously arrested and deported no less than three times for various felonies. Gallegos was tracked to a strip mall in Santa Ana, Calif., and when officers moved in to arrest him he again opened fire. The result was more satisfactory this time: Gallegos was hit several times and died at the scene. Though the strip mall was dotted with bullet holes and littered with casings, no officers or bystanders were injured.

Dan Bessant and Bryan Tuvera were the last of the 142 American police officers who died in the line of duty in 2006. Some died in accidents or from duty-related illnesses, but 68 of them were victims of criminal assaults. And this year’s grim count has already begun. On January 6, Trooper Calvin Jenks of the Tennessee Highway Patrol was shot and killed during a traffic stop in Tipton County. He was 24.

U.S. News & World Report reports this week on the recent upsurge in violent crime in the United States. Based on preliminary figures from America’s largest cities, 2006 saw a 6-percent increase in murders over the previous year, when 16,692 criminal homicides were reported nationwide out of a total of 1,390,695 violent crimes.

One hears much complaining these days that Iraq has yet to be pacified even after almost four years of U.S. military engagement. To those who offer such complaints I remind them of this: The United States has been around for 230 years and it hasn’t been pacified yet, either.

— Jack Dunphy is an officer in the Los Angeles Police Department. “Jack Dunphy” is the author's nom de cyber. The opinions expressed are his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management.

The Reality Behind Extreme Makeover Home Making for Officer Ripatti

I had the pleasure of working several days on this Extreme Makeoever House for Officer Ripatti to show her family and our community how thankful we are for their sacrifice.

I highly recommend that if you ever have a chance to make an impact in your community like this, to please do it. You would not believe how many of your peers are looking for an opportunity to give back to our community and all they need is an example to be the catalyst for this.

God bless all of our people in uniform at home and abroad.

Brad
__________________________________

Unstoppable
A wounded cop gets a new home.

By Jack Dunphy

There are moments, blessedly rare in this country, when the very best of mankind comes into sudden, violent conflict with its very worst. One such moment came the night of last June 3, as Los Angeles Police Department officers Kristina Ripatti and Joe Meyer patrolled Southwest Division, one of the city’s most violent areas. They were driving down a residential street not far from the police station when a man appeared as if from nowhere and ran in front of their car. The officers did not know it at the time, but that man, James McNeal, 52, was a career criminal who moments earlier had robbed a nearby gas station at gunpoint. He had nearly made it to the safety of his home when the officers came down the street.

Though unaware of the robbery, Ripatti and Meyer were experienced enough to know that something was surely amiss and that McNeal needed to be stopped and investigated. McNeal ran into the yard of his home and then onto the front porch with Ripatti and Meyer now chasing him on foot. Ripatti reached him first and grabbed him, but in the darkness neither she nor Meyer saw the .22 caliber pistol in McNeal’s hand. McNeal fired, hitting Ripatti twice before Meyer shot and killed him on the spot. Ripatti was wearing a Kevlar vest, but one bullet struck her in an unprotected area under her left arm and tore through her chest.

Meyer put out the broadcast on the radio, the one dreaded by cops everywhere: “Officer needs help . . . shots fired . . . officer down!” Four members of the LAPD’s SWAT team had just finished their shift and were leaving the nearby police station when they heard the call. Officers Ralph Ward, Gary Koba, Gil Pinel, and Keith Bertonneau, all of whom are trained as EMTs, were at Ripatti’s side in less than a minute, joining Meyer and Sergeant Robin Brown, a plainclothes vice officer who was the first to arrive. Together they worked to stop Ripatti’s bleeding during the seemingly interminable period it took for fire department paramedics to arrive.

Among the many other cops who also rushed to the scene was Ripatti’s husband, Tim Pearce, who was patrolling another part of South Los Angeles a few miles away. He knew the area where the shooting occurred, and he knew Kristina spent much of her time focusing on the street gangs in that neighborhood. He arrived to find his worst fears confirmed. Kneeling at her side, he held her hand and kissed her, fearing it would be for the last time.

By the time paramedics arrived Ripatti was very near death, with her blood pressure dropping quickly. The visible bleeding had been stanched but there was no way of knowing how much she may have been bleeding internally. A firefighter drove the ambulance to downtown L.A.’s California Hospital, allowing both paramedics and an additional firefighter to work on Ripatti on the way. Police cars and motorcycles raced ahead of the ambulance, saving valuable seconds by clearing traffic at every intersection along the route.

Once at the hospital, Ripatti was immediately surrounded by doctors, nurses, and technicians who worked feverishly to save her. As her husband looked on helplessly, her blood pressure continued to fall even as she was infused with one unit of blood after another. A fire captain occasionally stepped from the room to report on Ripatti’s condition, and these bulletins were passed from the cops lining the hallway to those now filling the parking lot outside and the street beyond. Things were not looking good. The pace of activity in Ripatti’s room was beyond frenetic, an ominous sign to those looking on.

Finally, after six units of blood and about 45 minutes of the most intense medical attention imaginable, the activity in Ripatti’s room began to calm. She was out of immediate danger though still in critical condition. But the doctors still had been unable to locate the bullet, and it wasn’t visible on X rays taken with a portable system in the emergency room. A CT scan would be required to find it and determine the next step in Ripatti’s treatment.

Flanked by an escort of uniformed cops and with her husband at her side, Ripatti was taken upstairs to the radiology department where the CT scan confirmed what had been feared: the bullet, smaller than the eraser at the end of a pencil, had severed her spine and was still lodged there. She would be paralyzed from the chest down.

But Kristina Ripatti’s story is one of triumph, not tragedy. Less than a week after the shooting she was sitting up in bed and greeting visitors, amazing those who had seen her hovering so near death only days before. Her voice was clear and strong, her handshake firm, her color restored. It is as much a testament to her own grit as it is to the skill of those who cared for her that she survived that first night. She has continued to receive the best of medical and therapeutic care, but it is that inexhaustible grit that has marked her recovery and made her an inspiration to so many.

Though this episode in Kristina’s life began with a chance encounter with the worst sort of man imaginable, she has attracted the very best of people to her side since then. Her story was brought to the attention of the producers of ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and in October Kristina, Tim, and their 20-month-old daughter Jordan came home to their brand new house in Redondo Beach. Less than a week earlier, the old home was smashed to kindling by the LAPD’s SWAT team, after which more than 1,500 volunteers worked around the clock to build a home more hospitable to Kristina’s needs. The finished product is spectacular, complete with an overhead track system that can carry Kristina anywhere in the house by using voice commands.

I was grateful to be among the thousands of people lining the street to watch as the new home was revealed to Kristina and her husband for the first time. The moment was entirely beyond my ability to describe it, so I encourage you to watch when the special two-hour episode airs this Sunday, December 10. You’ll be very glad you did.

— Jack Dunphy is an officer in the Los Angeles Police Department. "Jack Dunphy" is the author's nom de cyber. The opinions expressed are his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management.

North Korea Comes Back for Some More

North Korea Comes Back for Some More
The deal just keeps getting better for Kim Jong Il.

By John O'Sullivan

Rudyard Kipling put it well a century ago:

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:—
“Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

The Dane in this week’s crisis is Kim Jong Il, the grand panjandrum of North Korea. Last week there was modified rapture in the chancelleries of the six great powers engaged in talking to Kim—Japan, China, Russia, India, South Korea and the United States—because they had negotiated a brand new compromise with him.

This brand new compromise is very similar, if not identical, to the bad old compromise that was agreed between Kim and the Clinton administration, broken by Kim, formally renounced by the incoming Bush administration, and finally resurrected again by the whirligig of time and diplomacy and by a president and a secretary of State desperate for a diplomatic success—any “success”—to stock the legacy cupboard.

The essential deal here is that the North Koreans should shut down their nuclear facilities and accept weapons inspections by the International Atomic Energy Authority in return for normalized relations with the U.S. and large sums in aid and fuel from Japan, South Korea, and the U.S.—i.e., Danegeld.

Is it really that simple?

No. There is some uncertainty about whether the North Koreans will actually get rid of all their nuclear facilities, or merely some, especially since they cheated last time. U.S. officials have responded to this anxiety by claiming that the North Koreans won’t get any aid until they have met a series of “benchmarks” in dismantling the nuclear program. But will the U.S. be able to hold the South Korean government, which was desperate for a deal, to this condition. That must be doubtful.

Who came up with this ridiculous idea?

Ex-President Jimmy Carter. No, really. I know it sounds too good to be true, but when President Clinton seemed prepared to take serious action against North Korea, Carter flew to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, and negotiated the first such compromise with the North Korean regime. In effect Carter substituted his own foreign policy for that of the elected president. And we have been living with variations on that policy ever since. Given Carter’s record, it is hardly surprising that today the North Koreans have more nuclear weapons, an advanced nuclear program, offers of money and fuel up to the kazoo, and the diplomatic world beating a path to their door.

But can Kim be trusted to keep his side of the bargain this time?

Well, it’s true that this deal is so good for him and the North Korean government that he really doesn’t need to cheat. Kim gets to keep his rocket programs and his chemical and biological stockpiles; he gets normalized relations with the U.S., which means the removal of North Korea from the State Department’s list of “terrorist nations”; and he gets international respectability. What reasonable despot with a despicable human rights record could ask for more?

At the same time he may not be able to stop himself cheating. He knows that the U.S. government, anxious to parade its sole diplomatic achievement, will be keen to turn a blind eye to any violations of this agreement. So he can probably cheat with impunity. Also, Kim is a very odd duck. Only yesterday, for instance, he saw a Japanese car blocking the road and ordered that all Japanese cars be seized. As South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported dryly, however, this order may not be carried out since the few cars on North Korean roads are almost all Japanese. Still, it’s an odd order for even a despot to issue when he is relying on the Japanese government to come up with subsidies agreed to only last week.

So what will happen?

No one really knows, but one good bet is that even if this deal “works,” it will prove to be a powerful incentive to nuclear proliferation worldwide. The U.S. and its partners in the six-party talks—especially China—have told the rest of the world that one certain way to gouge aid out of the West and the U.S. is to start a nuclearization program for the express purpose of receiving bribes to close it down. As the Geico Gecko says: “Are they going to say ‘I’m so rich that I’m not going to bend down to pick up the cash?’” Probably not. Incidentally, this deal almost certainly explains the otherwise slightly mysterious departure of Ambassador John Bolton a few weeks ago. Bolton was never comfortable with diplomatic humbug, and this deal sinks to depths of humbuggery, into which he probably preferred not to descend.

But surely the only alternative to this deal was war?

Remember that argument well: it is the excuse invariably offered for bad diplomacy. And it doesn’t even have the merit of being true. There is a different diplomatic approach available in the North Korea Human Rights Act. It is backed by an extraordinary bipartisan group including major leaders of the Korean-American community, North Korea policy scholars from the Brookings and Hudson Institutes, the Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God Church, the National Director of Americans for Democratic Action, and the Executive Directors of Freedom House and the Open Society Policy Center. It argues that the U.S. should not merely respond to Kim’s agenda but should instead demand that human rights violations in North Korea (and in China) be on the negotiating table. And it requires that if (modest) concessions are to be offered to North Korea, then Kim must offer in return an improvement in the people’s rights as well as an abandonment of nuclearization.

That policy has at least a chance of alleviating the sufferings of the North Korean people; the current policy merely rewards their oppressors. As Kipling pointed out, the moral is plain:

So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:—
“We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame.
And the nation that plays it is lost!”

— John O’Sullivan is editor-at-large of National Review and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. He is the author of The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister. This article first appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times and is reprinted with permission.

Charles Krauthammer- Strange Democratic Ways

Strange Democratic Ways
They'll complicate and shirk responsiblity.

By Charles Krauthammer

The United States has fought many wars since 1941, but never again declared one. Abroad, no one declares war anymore either, perhaps because it has the anachronistic feel of an aristocratic challenge. Whatever the reason, today Congress doesn't declare war; it “authorizes” the “use of force.”

In October 2002, both houses of Congress did exactly that with open eyes and large majorities. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a Democratic member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who had access to all the relevant information at the time, said, “I have come to the inescapable conclusion that the threat posed to America by Saddam's weapons of mass destruction is so serious that despite the risks — and we should not minimize the risks — we must authorize the president to take the necessary steps to deal with that threat.”

Now, more than four years later, the Democrats want out of the resulting war. Most, such as Rep. John Murtha, want to do so for a simple reason: They think the war is lost. If you believe that, then getting out is the most reasonable and honorable and patriotic policy.

Congress has the power to do that by cutting off the funds. But Democrats will not, because it is politically dangerous. Instead, they are seeking other ways, clever ways. The House is pursuing a method, developed by Murtha and deemed “ingenious” by antiwar activist Tom Andrews of Win Without War, to impose a conditional cutoff of funds, ostensibly in the name of protecting the troops. Unless the troops are given the precise equipment, training and amount of rest Murtha stipulates — no funds.

Unfortunately for the Democrats, Murtha is not disingenuous enough to have concealed the real motives for these ostensibly pro-readiness, pro-troops conditions. He has chosen conditions he knows are impossible to meet — “We have analyzed this and we have come to the conclusion that it can’t be done'' — in order to make the continued prosecution of the war very difficult, if not impossible, for the commanders in the field.

But think of what that entails. It leaves the existing 130,000 troops out there without the reinforcements and tactical flexibility that the commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, says he needs to win.

Of course, the Democrats believe that the war cannot be won. But if that’s the case, they should order a withdrawal by cutting off the funds. They shouldn’t micromanage the war in a way that will make winning impossible. That not only endangers the troops remaining in the field, it makes the Democrats’ the-war-is-lost mantra a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Murtha’s ruse is so transparent that even Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, who opposes the war, will not countenance it: “I think that sends the wrong message to our troops.”

Levin has a different idea — change the original October 2002 authorization. “We’ll be looking at modification of that authorization in order to limit the mission of American troops to a support mission instead of a combat mission,” says Levin. “That is very different from cutting off funds.”

While this idea is not as perverse as Murtha’s, it is totally illogical. There is something exceedingly strange about authorizing the use of force — except for combat. That is an oxymoron. Changing the language of authorization means — if it means anything — that Petraeus will have to surround himself with lawyers who will tell him, every time he wants to deploy a unit, whether he is ordering a legal “support” mission or an illegal “combat” mission.

If Levin wants to withdraw our forces from the civil war in the cities to more secure bases from which we can continue training and launching operations against al Qaeda, he should present that to the country as an alternative to (or fallback after) the administration's troop surge. But to force it on our commanders through legalisms is simply to undermine their ability to fight the war occurring on the ground today.

Slowly bleeding our forces by defunding what our commanders think they need to win (the House approach) or rewording the authorization of the use of force so that lawyers decide what operations are to be launched (the Senate approach) is no way to fight a war. It is no way to end a war. It is a way to complicate the war and make it inherently unwinnable — and to shirk the political responsibility for doing so.

(c) 2007, The Washington Post Writers Group

Why David Geffen Hates Hillary & Bill Clinton

Thursday, Feb. 22, 2007 1:11 p.m. EST

Why David Geffen Hates Hillary & Bill Clinton

Why does movie mogul David Geffen hate the Clintons so much?

His personal attack made this week on Hillary Clinton harkens back to then-President Bill Clinton’s refusal to pardon an American Indian activist Geffen believes was falsely convicted of murder.

DreamWorks co-chairman Geffen and Bill Clinton were once close, and Geffen raised some $18 million for Clinton. He was even a guest in the White House's Lincoln Bedroom during the Clinton presidency.

Geffen turned his back on his friend when he pardoned fugitive financier Marc Rich in the last days of his administration – after rebuffing Geffen’s request for a pardon for Leonard Peltier.

In June 1975 – during protests by the American Indian Movement – federal agents entered a ranch on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. Following a shootout, two agents were found shot at close range through the head.

Peltier, who was on the reservation that day, fled to Canada but was later extradited, convicted of murder and sentenced to two consecutive life terms. He remains behind bars. Supporters, including Geffen, have claimed that authorities falsified evidence and withheld other evidence at the trial, and have long sought a pardon for Peltier, now 62 and in poor health.

In his recent anti-Clinton remarks that were quoted by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, Geffen called Bill Clinton a "reckless guy,” criticized Hillary’s stand on the Iraq war, and asked if there is "anybody more ambitious than Hillary Clinton?”

Geffen, who is supporting Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination for president, also said: "Marc Rich getting pardoned? . . . Yet another time when the Clintons were unwilling to stand for the things that they genuinely believe in.”

Word from Hollywood sources was the Geffen, at first, had taken Clinton’s decision not to pardon Peltier in stride.

But Geffen went ballistic when he learned that President Clinton issued pardons to wrongdoers like Rich and 139 others in his final days in office. Among the pardons that sparked the most controversy:

Marc Rich was indicted on tax evasion, commodities fraud and other charges in 1983 and fled to Switzerland. After Clinton pardoned him, a House committee probing Clinton’s pardons sought testimony from Rich’s ex-wife Denise, who had been a major contributor to Democratic causes – including Hillary’s Senate campaign and the Clinton Presidential Library. Denise Rich invoked the Fifth Amendment.

Almon Glenn Braswell was pardoned of his mail fraud and perjury convictions after paying about $200,000 to Hillary’s brother, Hugh Rodham, to represent his case for clemency. He later returned the payments, but he too invoked the Fifth Amendment during a Congressional hearing.

In 2000, Clinton pardoned Vonna Jo Gregory, owner of the carnival company United Shows International, and her husband Edgar for a 1982 bank fraud conviction. After the pardon, the company gave Hillary’s brother Anthony Rodham $107,000 in "loans” that he has never repaid.

On his last day in office, Clinton pardoned his old friend Susan McDougal, who had already completed her sentence for her role in the Whitewater scandal.

Clinton also pardoned his brother Roger on drug charges, and former Housing secretary Henry Cisneros, who was convicted of lying to the FBI about payments to a mistress.

Clinton slashed the prison sentences of four men convicted of stealing millions in federal grants. The men were from a community of Hasidic Jews in New Square, N.Y., which voted 1,400 to 12 in favor of Hillary Clinton in her first Senate race.

Clinton also commuted the sentences – over the objections of the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office – of 11 members of a Puerto Rican nationalist group that set off more than 100 bombs in the U.S. The large Puerto Rican community in New York City supports Democrats.

"Everybody in politics lies, but they [the Clintons] do it with such ease, it’s troubling,”

Saturday, February 24, 2007

"Everybody in politics lies, but they [the Clintons] do it with such ease, it’s troubling,”

Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 7:51 AM

The title quote is of course from David Geffen, and it launched the first big dust-up of the 2008 campaign. Rudy Giuliani told me that he thought the collision was accidental. Others see a careful plan --but disagree which side had it laid out. Lost in all the analysis has been a focus on what Geffen asserted about both Clintons: Are the Clintons particularly inclined to lie? I asked Juan Williams and Charles Krauthammer on yesterday's show about the substance of Geffen's attack: HH: Let me follow up with both of you about the substance of the Geffen assertion. Juan Williams, do you think the Clintons are unusually good liars? JW: (laughing) Well, I must say, there’s substance there. There’s no question that if you look at some of these things, everything from you know, some of the scandals they were involved in even before Monica Lewinsky, you’d have to wonder about is, is, as the former president’s famous for having said. HH: So Geffen was not out of line to make the comment that he did? JW: Well, I think, you know, gosh, it was a gutter comment. Is it out of line? Lots of people do lots of things. I mean, this was meant to harm. This was a personal and vindictive comment by a guy who says that for all the money he gave to Bill Clinton, apparently was disappointed that when he wanted somebody pardoned, his guy didn’t get pardoned. Instead, Marc Rich got pardoned, and he thinks that that was a reprehensible act, and he was lied to. So this is a personal thing between Geffen and the Clintons. HH: But one more time. Was it true? JW: Was it…I don’t know if…I don’t know if President Clinton had promised him… HH: Oh, no, not that, that they’re unusually good liars. Do you believe that’s a true statement? JW: I don’t know. I mean, gosh, how do you judge such a thing? What I said to you was I do believe there are times when the Clintons have lied. HH: Charles, do you think it was a true statement? CK: Well, I’m reminded of what the great retired political columnist, William Saffire wrote in the late 90’s. I can’t remember exactly when it was, but he called Hillary, I think I have this right, a congenital liar, and then he got a whole bunch of columns out of it, and explaining what he meant by congenital. And you know, this is not a new story. I never slept with that woman, that’s him, and then there was the Rose documents that showed up miraculously in the White House, their performance on Flowers in 1992 when the story came out on the eve of the New Hampshire primary. These people are pretty good at, let’s say, dissimulating, all right? That’s a cleaner, a nicer word. HH: But I think the real story here… CK: And that they’ve got a history of this. HH: The real story here is not the kafuffle between Obama and Hillary, it’s that no one stepped up to say that Geffen was wrong, Juan Williams. No one came out to defend the Clintons. CK: Well, yeah. JW: Well, but wait a second. The Clintons came out. HH: Well, that’s… JW: They came out and said they wanted Obama to apologize. They didn’t ask for Geffen’s apology. They tried to use it against Obama, which is, I think, forward looking. Yeah, that’s the danger. But you’re right. I mean, how’s anybody going to defend, I think Charles laid it out for you in terms of not only Monica, but some of these other scandals they’ve been involved in. Dissembled? You know, they have a way of trying to skirt around issues, define it in a way that benefits them. Is that politics? Maybe it’s politics. Maybe that’s the way the game is played. But I think people called him Slick Willy for a reason. CK: I’ll tell you, he’s unusually good liar. She is not that good a liar. HH: She’s not that good of a liar (laughing). CK: And that’s the big difference. And that’s her liability. HH: She tries with more practice. CK: He’s a great liar. He’s the best that we’ve had in fifty years.

Shhhh... The Surge is Working- And definitely something that the media doesn't want you to know.

Shhhh... The Surge is Working By Patrick Ruffini Saturday, February 24, 2007 Send an email to Patrick Ruffini

A gloomy haze has settled over the nation's prosecution of the War on Terror as of late. It seems like we can only watch helplessly as Nancy Pelosi and Jack Murtha size up new angles of attack for undermining the war effort. The media is chomping at the bit the tell the story of an America, bruised and humbled and exhausted, heading for the exits in Iraq. But something interesting is happening on the way to the "new direction." Early indications are that the troop surge into Baghdad is working. It hasn't been reported on widely, but murders in Baghdad are down 70%, attacks are down 80%, Mahdi Army chief Moqtada al-Sadr has reportedly made off for Iran, and many Baghdadis who had fled the violence now feel it's safe enough to return. The strategy that Congress is busy denouncing is proving to be our best hope for victory. In Iraq, there's a sense that change is in the air -- literally. Omar of Iraq the Model spots a B-1 Bomber in the skies of Baghdad for the first time since the end of the major combat. On the ground, Omar writes that the signs that Iraqis are getting serious about security are more palbable. With the help of Compstat-like technology, security forces are cracking down at checkpoints (even ambulances are getting stopped) and getting nimbler about locating them strategically so the terrorists don't know what to expect. This turnaround in Baghdad is confirmed at home by the media's near-deafening silence. If it seems like you've heard less about how Iraq is spiraling into civil war in the weeks since the surge was announced, this is why. Even some discordant voices in the media are starting to wonder what's happening. Time magazine worries that it's "Quiet in Baghdad. Too quiet." That's right -- a dramatic reduction in violence is actually bad news. It's too early to claim victory just yet; the operation is just two weeks old. But U.S. troops have been able to accomplish all of this with just one more brigade in-country, with four more on the way by May. These encouraging early returns show the potential for success when we apply concentrated military force to the security problem. When the Army and Marine Corps are on offense, carrying out combat operations and clearing out insurgent strongholds, we win. When we lay back, carrying out routine patrols and playing Baghdad beat cop, we lose. The key to success is staying power. The always incisive Daffyd ab-Hugh has a good read on this dynamic. Counterinsurgency in Iraq has often been compared to a game of whack-a-mole -- secure an area, only to have the insurgents pop up somewhere else. But if we slammed a mallet into the hole, and kept it there, then picked up a new one... and did the same? This is a new game called Seal-a-Hole , and it has a very different dynamic from Whack-a-Mole: the normal game is one of futility; the game continues until the player gets tired and quits or he runs out of money. But Seal-a-Hole actually has a victory point: when all the holes are sealed, the game is over -- and the player, America, has won. Even though Seal-a-Hole is not futile, it nevertheless requires a great deal of patience; there are many, many holes, and each hole has a mole who must be whacked. Some of the holes, such as Sadr City, are very big and will require many mallets to properly seal. But if we have the courage and fortitude of our American forebears, we will seal those holes... and we will win. Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, left, greets the Allied Forces Commander in Iraq U.S. Lt. General David Petraeus on his arrival at the Prime Minister's residence 10 Downing Street, London, Tuesday Feb. 6, 2007. (AP Photo/Max Nash/pool) On the political front, the White House also seems to have dislodged a major roadblock to victory: Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's reluctance to allow U.S. troops to take the fight to Sadr and his militias. Returning American troops have expressed their frustration at having to walk on eggshells when it came to came to entering Shi'ite areas, a backbone of support for the government. Thankfully, the rules of engagement are changing. American troops are now freer to take on all comers, and the results are clear in both Sunni and Shi'ite areas. In the coming days and weeks, these rules of engagement will face their ultimate test with the decision to enter Sadr City, the Mahdi Army's key stronghold. And enter we must. Those intent on turning Iraq into a breeding ground for al-Qaeda won't be convinced of our seriousness until we confront the key sources of violence on both sides of the sectarian divide. When things don't go well in Iraq, we see the endless B-roll of chaos and carnage. When things are on the upswing, we tend to hear more about Anna Nicole Smith. The media will never acknowledge victories in Iraq, so we'll have to settle for an absence of bad coverage. But even in this relative lull in Iraq, it's important to understand and appreciate the short-term victories so we can create more of them. And finish the job.

Patrick Ruffini is an online strategist dedicated to helping Republicans and conservatives achieve dominance in a networked era. He has seen American politics from every vantagepoint — as a campaign staffer, activist, and analyst.

Open Letter in Support of Our Troops

Open Letter in Support of America's Armed Forces

Signers: 149376

Republics win wars. Thus is the verdict of history, and this truth has not been lost on America's Armed Forces. In the current war against Islamist terrorism, they have been called upon to defend our republic and to promote its virtues in an ideological struggle against those who would destroy it. As Thomas Jefferson once said, "Although a republican government is slow to move, yet when once in motion, its momentum becomes irresistible." Jefferson spoke truly, as evidenced in the actions of our nation's military in the years following the deliberate attack on our countrymen on September 11, 2001. Since that time, U.S. forces have been called upon to wage war against Islamist terrorists in every corner of the globe: Afghanistan, Iraq, the Philippines, sub-Saharan Africa and other places around the world.

The Bush Doctrine of preemptive action, possibly the most singularly significant addition to American foreign policy since the Truman Doctrine of the Cold War, has resulted in a deployment of the U.S. Armed Forces unparalleled in some 40 years as our nation combats the threat of global terrorism. And through their actions abroad, America's Armed Forces have demonstrated that they can win not the war only, but they can win the peace as well. We remain the proud and the free because Patriots -- American Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coastguardsmen -- have stood bravely in harm's way, and remain on post today. For this, we, the American People, offer our heartfelt thanks.

Please sign this Open Letter to express your gratitude.