…and piss off a terrorist!

(As a special Val’s day present, I direct you to one of my favorite Valentine’s Day stories)

Malkin:

The SFChron reports that “some council members added that they felt they owed U.S. troops an apology as well the many Berkeley residents who were ashamed and offended by their position. ‘To err is human but to really screw up it takes the Berkeley City Council,’ said council member Gordon Wozniak. ‘We failed our city. We embarrassed our city.’”

But.

The council refused to officially apologize. And the troop-haters remain unrepentantly bigoted.

Read the whole thing.  It’s huge.

It’s something Americans don’t have much of.

Years ago, I read The Tunnels of Cu Chi, which told the story of the Viet Cong/North Vietnamese who built the immense labyrinth of tunnels in South Vietnam during their 35 years of war.  The line that’s stuck with me was from one of the officers who fought against the Americans in the tunnels; “to Americans, a year is ancient history; to us, 25 years is like yesterday”.

America’s enemies can count on the fact that America’s attention span is short, and getting worse.

And that’s got Michael Chertoff worried:

Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff‘s eyes narrow and his voice develops a stern, urgent tone as he reveals America’s biggest vulnerability to terrorism.

“The great weapon they have is persistence and patience, and the one weakness that we have is the tendency to lose patience and become complacent,” Chertoff tells WTOP.

“It strikes me as hard to accept that anybody would believe the threat is over. There is nothing these terrorists are doing or saying that could lead a reasonable person to believe that they have somehow lost interest. Our biggest challenge is making sure we do not drop our guard because time passes.”

Chertoff recognizes it has been more than six years since al Qaida launched the Sept. 11 attacks, but some experts say that’s how long it took to plan them, suggesting the U.S. may close in on another spectacular attempt by Osama bin Laden to topple the U.S. economy.

It’s like needing the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor every couple of years to keep people on track.

I’ve been convinced – chagrinned, but convinced – for years that the only thing that’s going to cause Americans to take this seriously is another 9/11.  And then another, five years after that.  Lather, rinse and repeat.

We’ll see.

When Harry Reid says “jump” in the summer, Nancy Pelosi says “off what?” in the winter:

“The purpose of the surge was to create a secure time for the government of Iraq to make the political change to bring reconciliation to Iraq,” Pelosi said on CNN’s “Late Edition.” “They have not done that.”

Pelosi is depending on the raw ignorance of her own base, here; the surge was intended to kill terrorists and make it safe, or at least much, much safer, to live in Iraq. Without that, noodling about with politics is superfluous.

But, perhaps sensitive about the mess that her friends in the Bay Area are creating, she hastened to add:

The speaker hastened to add: “The troops have succeeded, God bless them.”

One has to wonder; is Nancy Pelosi that ignorant a slapnuts? Or does she merely know that her base is?
Speaker Pelosi: If the troops have succeeded, what did they succeed at? Their mission? The one you declared a “failure” just a few seconds earlier?

Oh, yeah – and while counterinsurgency is a matter of patience and subtlety, she’s wrong anyway.

Go here, and vote for anything but Black Sabbath.  Because I totally hate Black Sabbath.

Yes – for the first and only time in my life, I’m running a campaign based purely on hatred.

Do it for the children.

 Thanks.

Berkeley not only tries to shut down a Marine recruiting station, it gives Code Pink preferential treatment to carry out their harassment!

[the Berkeley City Council] voted 8-1 to tell the U.S. Marines that its Shattuck Avenue recruiting station “is not welcome in the city, and if recruiters choose to stay, they do so as uninvited and unwelcome intruders.”

OK, so we’re used to Berkeley (and San Francisco, and Minneapolis for that matter) “sending” stupid “messages”. 

But this bit here… 

In a separate item, the council voted 8-1 to give Code Pink a designated parking space in front of the recruiting station once a week for six months and a free sound permit for protesting once a week from noon to 4 p.m.

In other words, in parking-strapped Berkeley, the City Council is lending city property to a protest group!

Can every protest group expect that sort of consideration?

Doy…:

“I believe in the Code Pink cause. The Marines don’t belong here, they shouldn’t have come here, and they should leave,” Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates said after votes were cast….The recommendation to give Code Pink a parking space for protesting and a free sound permit was brought by council members Linda Maio and Max Anderson.

Some peoples’ freedom of speech is more important than yours, obviously.  At least, it is in Berkeley.

Code Pink on Wednesday started circulating petitions to put a measure on the November ballot in Berkeley that would make it more difficult to open military recruiting offices near homes, parks, schools, churches libraries or health clinics. The group needs 5,000 signatures to make the ballot.

In other words, zoning them like pr0n shops.

But here’s the part I like; it’s not entirely one-sided!

Because not only does the story note (as I did, years ago) that the Pinkers are stupid and ignorant – they’re lousy neighbors!:

Even though the council items passed, not everyone is happy with the work of Code Pink. Some employees and owners of businesses near the Marines office have had enough of the group and its protests.

“My husband’s business is right upstairs, and this (protesting) is bordering on harassment,” Dori Schmidt told the council. “I hope this stops.”

An employee of a nearby business who asked not to be identified said Wednesday the elderly Code Pink protesters are aggressive, take up parking spaces, block the sidewalk with their yoga moves, smoke in the doorways, and are noisy.

“Most of the people around here think they’re a joke,” the woman said.

A joke?  Really?  Seems a little…

…well, accurate.  It seems their Pinkers aren’t any smarter than ours are:

Fran Rachel, 90, a Code Pink protester who spoke at the council meeting, said the group’s request for a parking space and noise permit was especially important because the Marines are recruiting soldiers who may die in an unjust war.

“This is very serious,” Rachel said. “This isn’t a game; it’s mass murder. There’s a sickness of silence of people not speaking out against the war. We have to do this.”

“Our opponents are mentally ill”.

Oh, I’m looking forward to seeing those dimwitted old crones at the RNC.

Really, really, I am.

UPDATE WITH BOOYAH:  The American Legion says “Berkeley Delenda Est“.  Legion leader Marty Conatser does to the Berkeley Flower Children and the Pinkos what the Marines did to Peleliu (via Michelle):

“Osama bin Laden couldn’t have said it better,” American Legion National Commander Marty Conatser said of the Berkeley City Council Resolution, which tells the Marines that they are not welcome there. “Disgraceful, disloyal, ungrateful. These words are too kind in describing the actions of the public officials in Berkeley, who voted for this disgrace. Nonetheless, our Marines continue to bravely serve and in so doing, allow Americans to spout such foolishness. The American Legion not only strongly condemns this action by the City Council but also believes that a sincere apology is in order to all Marines, past and present.”…“I have been a recruiter in the National Guard and I know that it’s tough duty, with long hours,” Conatser said. “What these recruiters do is essential to our national security. Without recruiters we have no military. And I don’t think we can count on the flower children from Berkeley to protect this nation when it comes under attack. They have to remember that Marines are not the enemy; the terrorists are.”

“Remember”?  They have to learn it in the first place.

Remember; if some tinhorn city government can vote to make the Marines (or any other body of government) “unwanted and unwelcome intruders”, they can do it to anyone. 

Along with Robert Kaplan, no author has done more to expose Americans to the theory and practice of counterinsurgency warfare than Max Boot.

And has he notes in the title of his latest piece in the Weekly Standard, We Are Winning; We Haven’t Won.

Today we know that the surge has succeeded: Iraqi and American deaths fell by approximately 80 percent between December 2006 and December 2007, and life is returning to a semblance of normality in much of Baghdad. Now the danger is that public opinion may be turning too optimistic. While Iraq has made near-miraculous progress in the past year, daunting challenges remain, and victory is by no means assured.

I saw many achievements and an equal number of obstacles during 11 days touring the American brigades spread across central and northern Iraq. (I was traveling in the company of my friend and fellow author Bing West at the invitation of General David Petraeus.) In broad strokes, the picture that emerged was of an Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) organization that is on the run but not yet fully eliminated. AQI has been largely chased out of the capital and its southern and northern belts, but the terrorists have taken refuge in the rural areas of Diyala, Salahaddin, and Ninewa provinces, where, as part of a new operation called Phantom Phoenix, American and Iraqi troops are starting to root them out. Likewise, the Jaysh al-Mahdi, the Shiite extremist group headed by Moktada al Sadr, has seen its influence curbed and its ranks splintered, but it remains a threat.

As always with Boot, you gotta read the whole thing.  Like Kaplan, he has no interest in pulling punches.

George Soros apparently doesn’t care what he has to do to buy public perception.

First, it was his attempts to flood the media market with left-leaning propaganda – “Media Matters for America” and the the “Center for Independent Media”.

And now – abject anti-war lies:

A STUDY that claimed 650,000 people were killed as a result of the invasion of Iraq was partly funded by the antiwar billionaire George Soros.Soros, 77, provided almost half the £50,000 cost of the research, which appeared in The Lancet, the medical journal. Its claim was 10 times higher than consensus estimates of the number of war dead.

The American left; if you can’t win the war of ideas, buy it.

The study, published in 2006, was hailed by antiwar campaigners as evidence of the scale of the disaster caused by the invasion, but Downing Street and President George Bush challenged its methodology.

New research published by The New England Journal of Medicine estimates that 151,000 people – less than a quarter of The Lancet estimate – have died since the invasion in 2003.

And where, oh where, have we heard this bit before (emphasis added)?

“The authors should have disclosed the [Soros] donation and for many people that would have been a disqualifying factor in terms of publishing the research,” said Michael Spagat, economics professor at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Controlling your own media means never having to explain yourself.

Iranian speedboats Mthreaten US Navy ships in the Gulf:

Video and audio recordings clearly show Iranian boats confronting U.S. Navy ships in the Persian Gulf, and a voice speaking in heavily-accented English can be heard threatening that the American vessels were going to explode, military officials said Tuesday.

The incident, which President Bush denounced Tuesday as a “provocative act,” was videotaped by a crew member on the bridge of the destroyer USS Hopper, one of the three ships that faced down five Iranian boats in a flare-up early Sunday.

In related news, Moveon.org, Harry Reid and Nanci Pelosi declared the naval war in the Gulf “unwinnable”.

American Airlines is testing anti-missile jamming devices on some of its passenger planes:

Tens of thousands of airline passengers will soon be flying on jets outfitted with anti-missile systems as part of a new government test aimed at thwarting terrorists armed with shoulder-fired projectiles.

Three American Airlines Boeing 767-200s that fly daily round-trip routes between New York and California will receive the anti-missile laser jammers this spring, according to the Department of Homeland Security, which is spending $29 million on the tests.

Jets will fly with the jammer device mounted on the belly of the plane, between the wheels. The device works with sensors, also mounted on the plane, that detect a heat-seeking missile and shoot a laser at it to send the missile veering harmlessly off course.

I’d heard that the airlines and DHS were going to start testing some kind of countermeasures on passenger planes.  I’d wondered if it would be the little flare launchers that you see on fighters – the ones that launch the magnesium flares when they’re going on bombing runs.  I had visions of spent flares plopping into backyards in Richfield and Eagan.

Fortunately, I was wrong.

Officials emphasize that no missiles will be test-fired at the planes,

Rumors that the “officials” had to emphasize this point to prevent Northwest Airlines from attempting a live-fire test are completely unconfirmed.

Next, they need to put machine guns in the wings, like on WWII fighters, so that the next pilot on the take-off or glide path can come in and strafe the terrorists after they launch.

(…because it went utterly unreported), Wretchard at The Belmont Club notes that our troops in Iraq just sustained the lowest rolling three-month death toll of the entire war in October through December:

US deaths in Iraq are at the lowest 3 month total ever…The three month total for October, November and December 2007 is 93. It’s also the first time a 3 month total has dropped below 3 digits.

A commenter notes that the combat death toll is even lower; seven of the 21 December deaths were non-combat related.  Not to trivialize them, but to note that combat casualties are even lower than the numbers would show on the surface.

Iraq: a war that the left hates.

Venezuela:  A country that the left loves to have around, like that “Che” t-shirt that so many of them keep in the back of their drawer.

Iraq:  A dangerous place.

Venezuela: even more dangerous!

Iraq’s and Venezuela’s populations are roughly comparable: 27.5 million versus 27.7 million. In the last three months, there have been 1498 civilian fatalities in Iraq. During this same time, roughly 3000 Venezuelans have been murdered.For the last three months of 2007, a Venezuelan was twice as likely to lose his life to violence as an Iraqi. It looks like its time for Hugo to put more attention on his abysmal security situation and less attention on Hollywood.

Look for Nancy Pelosi to demand a timetable for US withdrawal.

Israel is confronting the notion of the Iranian Bomb, as well as being surrounded by hostile neighbors with WMDs:

If a nuclear war between Israel and Iran were to break out 16-20 million Iranians would lose their lives – as opposed to 200,000-800,000 Israelis, according to a report recently published by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which is headed by Anthony H. Cordesman, formerly an analyst for the US Department of Defense. The document, which is largely theoretical due to the lack of verified knowledge in some areas – specifically in terms of Israel’s nuclear capability – paints various scenarios and attempts to predict the strategies of regional powers, as well as the US.

The report assesses that a nuclear war would last approximately three weeks and ultimately end with the annihilation of Iran, due to Israel’s alleged possession of weapons with a far larger yield. Israel, according to the assessment, would have a larger chance of survival. The report does not attempt to predict how many deaths would eventually be caused by possible nuclear fallout.

Israel – which has had to fight for its very survival four times in the past sixty years, and that was after the Holocaust – takes survival fairly seriously, at least officially. They’re launching an ad campaign…:

One of the commercials features Gadi Sukenik, until recently anchorman for Channel 2 News. The campaign’s slogan is “Being ready means being protected.”

“The campaign is one of the main lessons we learned from the Second Lebanon War,” a senior HFC officer said Sunday. “This is our way of helping the public get ready for the possibility that war will break out in the future.”

The brochure provides details about potential conventional and nonconventional threats. It recommends that civilians prepare basic supplies – water, flashlights, batteries and plastic sealing paper – now, ahead of a possible missile attack on Israel.

…and a website (Hebrew and English).

I’m trying to picture the response to such a campaign in the US, even in the face of an imminent, mortal threat like Israel may face:

LIBERAL: “If someone bombs us, we probably deserve it.”

NEW YORKER: “Pffft.  There’s nothing worth bombing west of the Hudson.”

TWIN CITIES DFLER/HIPSTER:  “Tape?  Tape?  Hah!  They said tape!  Hahahahaha”
RESIDENT OF NEW BRUNSWICK, NEW JERSEY:  “There’s nothing worth bombing west of the Hudson”

UTAHAN: “Self-sufficient for two weeks?  Jeez, I carry that in my golf cart!”

NORTH DAKOTAN: “Batteries…candles…food…OK, limpd**k, what do you think this is, a blizzard?  Where’s the guns?”

And so on.

When even Susan Lenfestey gets on board and declares the surge a success, you know you’re onto something.  Right?

Well, surely the Dems do know there’s something there; they’re phrasing that something as “we never doubted the US military’s ability to pull this off.

Except, as Jeff Kouba catalogues, they surely did:

Here’s the intrepid Susan Lenfestey on how she of course duh! never doubted The Surge would work:

Fair enough. We’re all exhausted from the divisiveness of this war, so in the holiday spirit — and with my fingers crossed — I’ll take a break from the rancor and say what he wants to hear: The Surge is Working.

But the doubt was never about the prowess and might of the American military, or that adding more troops would offer short-term security. …

The doubt was never about the prowess and might of the American military?

*bemused, a puzzled look tugs at his brow*

In the 12/3 issue of the The Weekly Standard, Noemie Emery did a tremendous job of logging the many statements made by Lefties concerned their solid belief in the inevitable success of The Surge.

Jeff pulls out a number of examples showing that, on the hard (and not-so-hard) left, there most definitely were doubts! 

Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t all those examples at least a vague, nebulous indication that perhaps our patriotic Democratic Left harbored at least a few, secretly held, never voiced in public niggling doubts about The Surge?

Read both pieces.

Via Michael Yon, General Barry McCaffrey reports on the situation in Iraq.

Conclusions:

The dysfunctional central government of Iraq, the warring Shia/Sunni/Kurdish factions, and the unworkable Iraqi constitution will only be put right by the Iraqis in their own time—and in their own way. It is entirely credible that a functioning Iraqi state will slowly emerge from the bottom up…with a small US military and diplomatic presence holding together in loose fashion the central government. The US must also hold at bay Iraq’s neighbors from the desperate mischief they might cause that could lead to all out Civil War with regional involvement.

A successful withdrawal from Iraq with the emergence of a responsible unified Iraqi nation is vitally important to the security of the American people and the Mid-East. We are clearly no longer on a downward spiral. However, the ultimate outcome is still quite seriously in doubt.

Read the whole, detailed, even-handed thing.

As Fred Barnes notes, the biggest battle in the most important theatre of the Iraq war – inside the Beltway – has been an upset win for the President:

An astonishing turnaround occurred in the Senate on Tuesday: 70 senators voted to fund the Iraq war with a fresh $70 billion and no strings attached. Think about this a moment. Last winter, after Democrats captured the Senate and House, it seemed likely they’d succeed in limiting or ending the Iraq war, probably by setting a firm timetable for withdrawal of American troops. After all, both President Bush and the war itself were highly unpopular. The Democratic triumph in the election made that clear, even to those who doubted opinion polls. And Democrats made the anti-Iraq crusade their top priority in the new Congress. Now, the 70-vote approval of the war by the Senate represents the breathtaking dimension of their failure.

How close – and how big an upset – was it?  Barnes notes the number of anti-war measures the majority spawned off in its first few months – and the number of Republicans that jumped ship, and the narrowness of the defeats.

But what if one of the anti-war measures had passed? True, Bush would have vetoed it and chances are Senate Republicans would have mustered the 34 votes to sustain his veto. But congressional passage of a bill limiting the war would have been politically disastrous even if it didn’t go into effect. It would have undercut the president, galvanized the opposition, and most likely prompted a stampede of congressional Republicans away from support for the war.

Everything changed, of course, when General David Petraeus, the Iraq commander, testified before Congress in September. He said there had been measurable success in reducing violence in iraq, including a sharp drop in American casualties. Since January, Petraeus had been carrying out the new Iraq policy that Bush had announced in January to add troops – the so-called surge – and implement a new counterinsurgency strategy. By the time the Senate voted on Tuesday, the decline in violence in Iraq had become more dramatic.

Read the whole thing.

Another Democrat joins John Murtha in abandoning the…er, John Murtha anti-war slag.  It’s North Dakota’s Earl Pomeroy, and he agrees:

Pomeroy says the incidence of roadside bombings and other violence is down because Iraqis are taking a more vigorous part in attacking factions that are causing violence in the nation.

The congressman says his visit proved to him that General David Patraeus, who is in charge of American forces in Iraq, has done an extraordinary job…

(Rep. Earl Pomeroy, -D- ND) “I think he i incorporating four years of lessons learned from mistakes made in a dramatically improved US performance. We have had outstanding performance by our soldiers all along, but the plan has not always been one that has been very well equipped to meet the unfolding circumstance in Iraq. I think now we’re on the right track in Iraq thanks to the leadership of General Patraeus.”

Which is something conservatives – myself included – can agaree on wholeheartedly.

Further proof that North Dakota natives are smarter.

This almost looks like Bsomething Michael Palin and Eric Idle would write and work on:

The BBC funded a paintballing trip for men later accused of Islamic terrorism and failed to pass on information about the 21/7 bombers to police, a court was told yesterday.

Mohammed Hamid, who is charged with overseeing a two-year radicalisation programme to prepare London-based Muslim youths for jihad, was described as a “cockney comic” by a BBC producer.

The BBC paid for Mr Hamid and fellow defendants Muhammad al-Figari and Mousa Brown to go on a paintballing trip at the Delta Force centre in Tonbridge, Kent, in February 2005. The men, accused of terrorism training, were filmed for a BBC programme called Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic, screened in June 2005.

This is the latest in a long string of such media gaffes:

• In 1916, a New York Times reporter took a still-exiled Vladimir Lenin to a “Binge and Purge” club in Geneva, Switzerland.
• During a 1921 tour, a Village Voice editor paid a $360 bar tab at “Putch’s Bar and Grill” for a young Adolph Hitler and Joseph Goebbels.
• In 1997, an unnamed Star/Tribune reporter took a vacationing Mohammad Atta to the Minnesota State Fair, giving him $2000 (which was apparently spent entirely at the bumper cars).

I digress:

It was alleged that Mr Hamid told a BBC reporter that he would use the corporation’s money to pay a fine imposed by magistrates for a public order offence.

Thoughtful of them.

The other day, I sat in on a conference call with some people from the Norm Coleman campaign, as they rolled out their “Franken Flip-Flops On Iraq” video.

And, having interviewed the Senator on this very subject in the past, I jumped one step ahead of the local Sorosphere; playing the devil’s advocate, I asked the campaign staffer “How would the Senator answer charges that he, himself, has held contradictory positions on the war?”

The answer, of course…

…well, we’ll get back to that.  Because the counterspin has begun. 

Minnesota’s most reliable DFL mouthpieces (except Lori Sturdevant), MNPublius, bring exactly the spin I predicted:

Today Norm Coleman did what any guy afraid of his own record on an issue does: attack the other guy for his record. Coleman is trying his darndest to turn people’s attention away from his abysmal record on this war (he’s gone so far as to convert the whole frontpage of his campaign site to an ad for the webclip) that he’s, apparently, taken to editing together disparate clips from Franken’s past.

Let’s take a moment to make sure we’re clear, here; Coleman’s “abysmal record” has nothing to do with the complaints conservatives might have – about Coleman’s tepid stance on the surge, for example.  The conservative complaints are misguided, in my opinion; while I think Coleman was wrong on the surge (he’s a Senator trying to influence operational decisions, which I think is a poor idea, albeit his right to try as a citizen and legislator), he’s been strong on pretty much every other aspect of the war – including areas that much of the rest of  Congress is afraid to touch, like Iran, the UN, and the fallout of the Oil for Food program.

The closest Coleman’s come to a “flip flop” is his principled – and wrong – votes on the surge.  Mistakes happen.  I give him a “90”, and tell him to go forth and sin no more.

So given that MNPublius is a reliable barometer of the “very-left-but-not-crazy” wing of the DFL, let’s check out their defense of Franken:

Alright, so, the first claim is that Franken has both supported and opposed a timeline for withdrawal but if you take a look at the record you’ll find out (and I might point out that Franken hasn’t attempted to hide this) that his position in favor of a timeline wasn’t formed until late 2006. He has said repeatedly that he became convinced of the need for a timetable during the tumultuous year of 2006, with its waves of sectarian violence and the lack of political progress. He has since made a timeline part of his campaign platform on Iraq.

Now, I don’t necessarily look at “flip-flopping” – sometimes also known as “changing ones’ mind after a rational reappraisal” of something – as a bad thing.  It’d be against interest, for starters.  I “flip-flopped” on being a liberal, 20-odd years ago, after all.  If humans didn’t reappraise things based on evolving knowledge and experience, our hands would all be covered with third-degree burns from the hot stoves we continue testing with our fingers, lest we “flip flop” on trusting our eyes.

No, changing ones’ mind isn’t a bad thing.  Changing ones’ mind from a smart stance to a dumb one – like “giving the terrorists and militias a hard date when it’ll be safe to come out of the cellar and resume their depredations without fear of a US soldier putting a laser-guided missile up your rectum” – however, is.

The second claim here is that Franken has held multiple positions on cutting off funding for the war. This one’s pretty easy to debunk because the guy’s always held the exact same position: that Congress should force the President to establish an exit strategy as a condition of further funding. If the President refused to do so, he would be “cutting off the funding for the troops.” Since that’s not a move the President would make, it would force him to accept the terms of the funding – namely, withdrawal. Moreover, I think this is a plan that most Americans can and would support.

Leave aside that the latest polling shows otherwise (when in the echo chamber, it can take a while for the actual sound to change), that’d be another example of “changing ones’ mind to a stupid position”.

Franken has acknowledged that he never spoke out against the war before it began, and he has acknowledged becoming a vocal critic of the war since. He’s not afraid of his record but stands by it. Which is maybe why he doesn’t feel the need to counterpoint the Coleman spin machine and is maybe why Coleman feels the need to throw these distractions out into the web. I mean, if you had Coleman’s record would you do anything else?

The difference:

• Coleman has made erroneous tangents from a basic core of support for the war – a platform on which he was elected.
• Franken’s positions have evolved from “I don’t know yet” to “I’m going to cater to the nutroots’ most fevered delusions”.

That kinda sums it up, to me.

That noted O’Reillyesque tool Rasmussen notes that public approval of the Iraq war is over the break-even point:

Confidence in the War on Terror increased for the fourth straight month in November and is now near the highest level of President Bush’s second term in office.

The latest Rasmussen Reports tracking poll finds that 47% of Americans now say the U.S. and its allies are winning the War on Terror (see crosstabs). That’s up from 43% a month ago and reflects is the highest level of confidence measured since December 2005. Over the past 35 months, confidence in the War on Terror has been higher than today only twice, in November and December 2005.

And the bigger news?

In what may be just as significant a finding, only 24% of voters now believe the terrorists are winning. That’s down from 30% a month ago and represents the lowest level of pessimism recorded since 2004…Partisan assessments of U.S. foreign policy success remain sharply divided. Sixty-seven percent (67%) of Republicans are optimistic about the short-term in Iraq, versus just 12% of Democrats.

Conventional wisdom says this is bad for Democrats. I’m not so sure.

I think this poll serves as a key item on the party and media’s (pardon the redunancy) to-do lists.  More progress must be covered up.  More crises must be manufactured (what DID all those armored humvees cost?)

I’m loath to use the “V” word in Iraq.  I’m even more so domestically.

Don Surber notes that Dit all depends on what the meaning of the word is “victory” is:

Chris Matthews’s new definition of Victory in Iraq means we lost World War II. But, hey, we finally won Vietnam.

Read the whole thing.

Of course, by Matthews’ definition, if you read it,  you won’t have read it, while if you ignore it you’ll have read it.

The old saying among lawyers goes “if the facts are against you, argue the law.  If the law is against you, argue the facts.  If the facts and the law are against you, argue like hell”. 

As Krauthammer notes in his piece on the  the Dems’ political dodge, the corollary is “if the media will abet and enable you to, just change the terms of the discussion:

And what is the reaction of the war critics? Nancy Pelosi stoutly maintains her state of denial, saying this about the war just two weeks ago: “This is not working. . . . We must reverse it.” A euphemism for “abandon the field,” which is what every Democratic presidential candidate is promising, with variations only in how precipitous to make the retreat.How do they avoid acknowledging the realities on the ground? By asserting that we have not achieved political benchmarks — mostly legislative actions by the Baghdad government — that were set months ago. And that these benchmarks are paramount. And that all the current progress is ultimately vitiated by the absence of centrally legislated national reconciliation.

Remember two years ago, when the left was carping about the US’ lack of understanding of tribal culture?  How focusing on a central government was illusory in a tribal society?

And now – as the US finally sees some success after years of ignoring the historical lessons on how counterinsurgency war is waged – it’s the left that wants to pretend that Iraq is really just a dusty Toledo with a nasty political dysfunction?

I can understand Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the No. 2 commander in Iraq, saying that the central government needs to seize the window provided by the surge to achieve political reconciliation. We would all love to have the leaders of the various factions — Kurd, Shiite and Sunni — sign nice pieces of paper tying up all the knotty questions of federalism, de-Baathification and oil revenue.

What commander would not want such a silver bullet that would obviate the need for any further ground action? But it is not going to happen for the same reason it has not already happened: The Maliki government is too sectarian and paralyzed to be able to end the war in a stroke of reconciliation.

But does the absence of this deus ex machina invalidate our hard-won gains? Why does this mean that we cannot achieve success by other means?

Never forget (or if your entire knowledge of this subject comes from the media, learn it for the first time); civil wars like this are won in the street first; only when the average Iraqi (like the average Salvadoran or Paraguayan or Dhofari before him) can go out on the street in the morning with reasonable assurance that he’ll come home at night is political change a priority.

Someone tell Nancy Pelosi.

The Sunday Herald – Scotland’s award-winning independent newspaper

 A NUCLEAR attack by terrorists causing widespread panic, chaos and death is inevitable and will happen soon, a senior Scottish police officer has warned.

Ian Dickinson, who leads the police response to chemical, biological and nuclear threats in Scotland, has painted the bleakest picture yet of the dangers the world now faces.

Efforts to prevent terrorist groups from obtaining materials that could be made into radioactive dirty bombs – or even crude nuclear explosives – are bound to fail, he said. And the result will be horror on an unprecedented scale.

“These materials are undoubtedly out there, and undoubtedly will end up in terrorists’ hands, and undoubtedly will be used by terrorists some time soon,” he declared. “We must plan for failure and prepare for absolute terror.”

Dickinson is assistant chief constable with Lothian and Borders Police, and has responsibility through the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland for protecting Scotland from chemical and nuclear attacks. He has been closely involved in co-ordinating the country’s counter-terrorism response.

He said: “An incident will continue for days and all the public will see is people dying without reason. What will we do when our children come home from school with blisters on their skin and their parents don’t know what to do?

“What happens if 10 deaths, 50 deaths, 100 deaths start occurring in an unconnected and random way all over the country? The public will be rightly and understandably terrified.”

Oh, there’s more.

Jeff Dobbs at the Thinker on how Iraq could smack the Democrats in ’08:

It was just this past spring that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was proclaiming:

“We’re going to pick up Senate seats as a result of this war,” Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) told reporters yesterday. “Senator Schumer has shown me numbers that are compelling and astounding.”

The Democrats clearly understood that the worse the situation in Iraq became, the better their electoral prospects.

It was just this past summer that House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn worried that a positive report on the surge in September by General David Petraeus would be “a big problem for us”.

The Democrats clearly understood that the better the situation in Iraq became, the worse their electoral prospects.

Hence the wall-to-wall proclamations that “Iraq is a worse disaster than ever” on MPR? Just curious.

Dobbs continues:

Iraqis are voting with their feet by returning home after exile

The figures are hard to estimate precisely but the process could involve hundreds of thousands of people. The numbers are certainly large enough, as we report today, for a mass convoy to be planned next week as Iraqis who had opted for exile in Syria return to their homeland. It is one of the most striking signs that not only has violence in Baghdad and adjacent provinces decreased dramatically in recent months, but confidence in the economic and political future of Iraq has risen sharply.

Violence is down. Iraqis are returning. The American people are beginning to see this progress, despite the efforts of Democrats and many in the media to hide it from them.

For now, the number of Iraqis returning may seem small compared to an estimated 2 million that have fled. But the number is growing faster than anyone has anticipated. And those returning are not returning as targets of opportunity for terrorists, but as participants in the opportunity for freedom.

To the extent that the war in Iraq will play a significant role in the 2008 elections, the numbers should be compelling and astounding to Democrats, in a direction they never could have imagined just a few months ago

But…But…John Stewart still says it’s a quagmire!

Go read it.

Michael Yon writes a fascinating account of the British side of the Iraq war.

You oughtta read the whole thing, as with everything Yon writes. But I was struck by this bit here:

On both trips with the British, I made a point of asking British soldiers how they were treated back in the United Kingdom. They said they are mostly ignored; occasionally expressing a muted desire to get the treatment they imagine American soldiers get. British soldiers seem to imagine our soldiers get big parades and so forth, and hugs from strangers at the airport. And to be sure, many do, especially in Texas, they say.

American soldiers get care packages from people they do not even know, and those packages are morale boosters. American soldiers get cards from kindergartens from sea to sea, and the soldiers paste the cards all over the walls of their headquarters and hospitals. I don’t know what it is about those homemade cards, with their squiggly letters, stick figures and smiley-faced suns, but whenever I am in hospitals in Iraq, those cards from the kids greatly lift my spirits. I’ve seen the British get cards and packages like this, but nothing like the quantity, variety and frequency of what American soldiers get.

So here’s my question.

The Brits have covered our backs in war after war – both Gulf Wars, Bosnia, and so on. They are on the front line of the war on terror – London and Glasgow have both suffered attacks (albeit Glasga and the second London attempt were both “fails”).

I wonder – would groups like Soldiers’ Angels think about expanding their efforts to cover troops from some of our allies? I’d imagine some Brit or Canadian or German or Polish or Danish or Norwegian soldier would go home with a whole lot better view of America than they might already have with the help of a little American generosity.

Maybe that’s stretching the available resources too thin – all I know is what I hear from the local SA people.

Just wondering.