Clash in Iraq kills 18 al-Qaida members

By SINAN SALAHEDDIN, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 31 minutes ago

BAGHDAD - Former insurgents who turned against al-Qaida in Iraq launched an attack against the terror group and killed 18 of its members, asking the U.S. military to stay away while the battle raged, an ex-insurgent leader and Iraqi police said Saturday.

Most members of the Islamic Army, a major Sunni Arab insurgent group that includes former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, joined U.S. forces battling al-Qaida in Iraq earlier this year, though some of the group's leaders deny any contact with American troops.

A top Islamic Army leader, known as Abu Ibrahim, told The Associated Press that his fighters ambushed al-Qaida members near Samarra on Friday, killing 18 people and seizing 16 prisoners.

An Iraqi police officer in the area corroborated Abu Ibrahim's account. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because of the situation's sensitivity.

The insurgent commander contacted Iraqi police in Samarra and told them his plans to attack al-Qaida, according to the officer and Abu Ibrahim himself.

"We found out that al-Qaida intended to attack us, so we ambushed them at 3 p.m. on Friday," Abu Ibrahim said.

He asked that Iraqi authorities inform the American military about his plans, and requested that no U.S. troops interfere, they said. He worried that U.S. helicopters might mistakenly fire on his fighters, since they had no uniforms and were indistinguishable from the al-Qaida militants, they said.

Friday's clashes raged for nearly four hours about nine miles southeast of Samarra, Abu Ibrahim said. Police said they knew about the battle, but were unable to reach the site because it was too violent. Abu Ibrahim would not say whether Islamic Army members were killed.

The U.S. military had no immediate comment.

The Iraqi officer said the hostages would not be transferred to Iraqi police. Instead, he said he believed the Islamic Army would offer a prisoner swap for some of its members held by al-Qaida.

Many Sunni tribesmen and former insurgents — some of whom once attacked U.S. and Iraqi forces themselves — have turned against al-Qaida, repelled by the terror group's sheer brutality and austere religious extremism. The uprising originated in Iraq's western Anbar province, and has spread to the capital and beyond.

So-called "Awakening councils" have sprouted up in communities across Iraq, where members swear allegiance to Iraq's U.S.-backed government and disavow militants. U.S. officials say the movement, along with a 30,000-strong American troop buildup, has been key in tamping violence in recent months.

At the Abu Hanifa mosque, Baghdad's most revered Sunni shrine, voices blasted from loudspeakers Saturday urging residents to turn against al-Qaida as well: "We are your sons, the sons of the awakening, and we want to end the operations of al-Qaida...We call upon you not to be frightened, and to cooperate with us."

Meanwhile, roadside bombs and shootings killed at least 12 Iraqis early Saturday, police said, and the American military issued a statement saying a U.S. soldier was killed in Diyala province.

The soldier, assigned to Multi-National Division-North, died from injuries suffered in an explosion on Friday, the statement said. Three more soldiers were wounded in the blast, and evacuated to a U.S. combat hospital, it said.

At least 3,861 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an AP count. The figure includes eight civilians working for the military.

Also Saturday, the U.S. military said its troops detained 10 suspects in raids across central and northern Iraq.

The Iraqi death toll included four civilians who died on minibuses hit by roadside bombs on their way to work, police said.

One of the explosions, which missed the passing police patrol that was apparently its target, struck a minibus, killing two people in a predominantly Shiite area of Baghdad, an officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

One of the victims, Qais Hassoun, was riding in a nearby pickup truck. He spoke to AP Television News at a hospital in the Sadr City area, where the victims lay on gurneys in a grimy corridor.

"We are just construction workers, trying to get to our jobs. We were riding in the minibus when the explosion went off," Hassoun said.

al-Qaida intended to attack them so we ambushed them at 3 p.m. on Friday Abu Ibrahim said.

Iraqi police & Army have learned a good lesson from the United States Troops about using a premptive strike to save their own lives, very good lesson.

US Deaths in Iraq Down Nearly 50 Percent Since Last Month

US Deaths in Iraq Down Nearly 50 Percent Since Last Month

By Fred Lucas and Kevin Mooney

CNSNews.com Staff Writers

October 31, 2007

(1st Add: Corrects statistics in the story's eighth paragraph.)

(CNSNews.com) - U.S. combat deaths in Iraq for the last month have dropped by more than two-thirds compared with October of last year, while the total death toll has been reduced almost 50 percent since September.

An analysis by Cybercast News Service, based on Pentagon casualty reports, reflects a steady decline in the casualties, which the U.S. military says represents progress in Iraq.

There were 31 casualties in October 2007 (as reported through Oct. 28), of which 25 were combat-related. Last month, through Sept. 28, there were 38 combat-related deaths.

The bulk of deaths are still occurring in Baghdad, which was also true last year, and improvised explosive devices are still the most frequently used weapon by the terrorists. But IED attacks have still declined steadily.

Nonetheless, Maj. Winfield Danielson, a spokesman for the Multi-National Force-Iraq, was cautious in assessing the situation.

"I don't want to be too optimistic and say we turned a corner," Danielson told Cybercast News Service. "But success breeds success. The more havens we are able to find, the more encouraged Iraqi citizens will be to come forward and help us find people."

October reportedly marks the fifth consecutive month of decline in deaths, and the lowest level of casualties since March 2006. As noted, there were 31 American military casualties in Iraq reported by the Department of Defense through Oct. 28 -- 25 of those deaths were combat- related.

In the first 28 days of October 2006, the Pentagon reported 90 U.S. military casualties, 86 of which were combat-related. That's compared to the first 28 days of October 2007, when the Pentagon reported 31 U.S. military casualties, 25 of which were combat-related. That''s a 71 percent drop in combat deaths from October 2006 compared with October 2007.

This October also showed a 48 percent reduction from last month's total deaths, as the first 28 days of September saw 60 casualties, 38 from combat. That''s a 34 percent reduction in combat deaths.

The military credits much of the progress to the surge of 30,000 new troops, led by Gen. David H. Petraeus. However many war critics are quick to note that, despite the military progress, Iraq has been slow to achieve political progress.

"The additional troops we've had here as part of the surge allowed us to go into places since June and basically deny the terrorist organizations safe haven from which to plan their attacks and launch attacks from," Danielson said. "Our soldiers are more present on the ground with the Iraqi people. We found that has given us increased intelligence. They share with us a lot more where caches might be located and where terrorists might be found, and that also has enabled us to find a lot of terrorists that have previously been hidden."

After years of fending off the insurgency, military success was almost inevitable, said James Jay Carafano, defense and national security scholar with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

"Leave the Army there long enough and they will figure out how to get the job done," Carafano told Cybercast News Service. "It's no different than Normandy or the trenches of World War I or any other place."

The change in the U.S. strategy made the difference, Carfano said.

"Three years ago, if you wanted to make money, you would just get yourself a video camera, plant an IED, blow something up, and take the video back to show that you did it and somebody would give you a couple of thousand dollars. Now you go out and plant an IED and what happens is you get your head blown off," Carafano said. "They've pretty much driven the amateurs off the battlefield. The only people left out there are the really bad people."

The tough part isn't over and political stability is still the key, Carafano said, adding this is primarily needed at the local level, such as the Al Anbar province, where Iraqis turned against al Qaeda terrorists.

"Obviously, you need Iraqi security forces that actually can provide security," he said. "You don't necessarily need political stability at the national level. It doesn't really matter that everyone in Baghdad agrees. Like you've seen at Anbar, you need local political leaders to get together to say we don't want these murderers in our area."

Update: Please read corresponding relevant news story.
The day nobody was killed in Iraq -- by Michelle Malkin


This is good news it points out definite progress in Iraq!

Awww Did I forget the poor libtards Boooohooo Don't worry babies maybe next time
bwahaaha

US military prepares to transfer Karbala to Iraqis

AFP/File Photo:

File picture shows US
soldiers on patrol in Karbala. The US
military said it will...

US military prepares to transfer Karbala to Iraqis

Mon Oct 29, 3:44 AM ET

KARBALA, Iraq (AFP) -

The US military prepared on Monday to transfer the security of the central Shiite province of Karbala to Iraqi forces at a ceremony attended by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

The handover was being held amid tight security in a sports stadium in Karbala, which now becomes the eighth of Iraq's 18 provinces to be transferred to Iraqi control.

Maliki went to Karbala on Sunday evening for the ceremony.

The province, some 80 kilometres (50 miles) south of Baghdad, is relatively peaceful compared to some other central and western regions of Iraq, but is emerging as a flashpoint of Shiite rivalry.

Karbala, home to the shrines of two of Shiite Islam's most revered imams -- Imam Hussein and Imam Abbas -- was the site of a bloody firefight in August during a major religious festival.

At least 52 people were killed in the clashes between Shiite fighters and police as tens of thousands of pilgrims marked the anniversary of a 12th century imam.

On Saturday, Karbala governor Akhil al-Khazali told AFP that his forces were prepared to take over the control of the province from the US military.

The other Iraqi provinces handed over by US-led forces to date are Maysan, Muthanna, Dhi Qar and Najaf in the central and southern regions and the three northern Kurdish provinces of Arbil, Dohuk and Sulaimaniyah.

This is being handled the way that it should be.
This is going well, the U.S. Military given the proper time to see to it that the Iraqi Forces are able to handle a little bit more each time.
Just goes to show that the lunatic left don't know diddly squat never has never will, huhhh the left or otherwise known as the DUMB party.

Moonbat protester at Walter Reed: “My union made me come here;” Plus: Revolt against Code Pinkos in the Bay Area…and SF mayor Gavin Newsom goes on the attack

By Michelle Malkin • October 7, 2007 08:20 AM

Update: Cinnamon Stillwell reflects on Fleet Week and panicked SF peaceniks:

Getting to watch the Blue Angels practice throughout the week is another perk for patriots living in the vicinity. There’s nothing quite like the beauty of jets flying silently in formation, that sonic boom as they pass overhead, or the thrill of a jet zooming past one’s very window.But for local liberals unaccustomed to such icky displays of militarism and residents annoyed that their daily lives of leisure are interrupted by those who, in reality, make those daily lives of leisure possible, Fleet Week is a time of terror.

I know of one such fellow who was in a virtual panic last weekend to, as he put it, “get out of town before the Blue Angels arrived!” Others remained in the war zone, but their grumbling can be overheard at the corner store, the gym, and anywhere else that San Franciscans choose to emote about their political inclinations.

The truth is San Francisco is a city that likes to pretend its favored existence has nothing to do with the generations of fighting forces that have shed blood, sweat, and tears on America’s behalf. When Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval foolishly stated on “Hannity and Colmes” in 2006 that “the United States should not have a military,” that pretty much said it all…

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of joining folks from the Gathering of Eagles and Free Republic for the weekly pro-troops rally at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Who’s on the other side of the street with the tiny contingent of Code Pinkos protesting the war? Look for the union label!

According to FR’s Albion Wilde, at least one of them is a union worker who was told to show up. The Code Pink protest outside Walter Reed is led by one Bruce Wolf, chair of the “Social Justice Committee” of the AFL-CIO-affiliated union O.P.E.I.U. Local 2, who has referred to soldiers as “scabs:”

Mr. Wolf has written numerous wistful letters to lefty sites over the last several years, claiming his demonstration is not political, trying to increase participation — alas, without credibility, nor success. As the DC Chapter’s extensive documentation shows, their numbers have fallen off and stayed lower than the number of Free Republic troop supporters for years now, while DC Chapter’s numbers continue to grow. It’s a really hard sell, even for lefties, to protest the war in the faces of volunteer soldiers who are wounded, and Mr. Wolf is not doing well at it.

This week, in fact, the Reuters news organization ran an article headlined, “U.S. Protests Shrink While Antiwar Sentiment Grows.” Anti-war organizers feud among themselves, reporter Andy Sullivan said, “and participants question the effectiveness of the street protests.” Astonishingly, this mainstream media article at last pointed up the so-called “peace” movement leadership’s ties to the communist Worker’s World Party and its splinter, Party for Socialism and Liberation. What it doesn’t mention is the dedicated counterprotest presence of FReepers, Gathering of Eagles, Protest Warriors, Vets for Victory, MoveAmericaForward and hundreds of other grassroots groups determined not to allow another war to be won on the ground but lost by the media and Congress, as had happened in the Vietnam era.

On a related note, counterprotesters in the San Francisco Bay area are incensed by Code Pink’s vandalism and harassment at the military recruiting station in Berkeley. My friend Melanie Morgan of KSFO and MoveAmericaForward e-mails me about efforts to counterprotest the Pinko thugs:

I am posting your Lead Story on my website(s), with a call to action for the Bay Area supporters of our military men and women who are sacrificing every single day for our country.

I’m going to alert the KSFO audience on Monday when I return to the airwaves and read the deeply moving letter of response from Captain Richard Lund who is a fine example of the caliber of troops we have guarding our backs in this country and in Iraq.

After this disgusting attack at the Marine office in Shattuck Square, Captain Lund issued an open letter to the Berkeley City Council. This quote from your website touched me deeply:

"Recruiters are Traitors.” Please explain this one. How exactly am I a traitor? Was I a traitor when I joined the Marine Corps all those years ago? Is every Marine, therefore, a traitor? Was I a traitor during my two stints in Iraq? Was I a traitor when I was delivering humanitarian aid to the victims of the tsunami in Sumatra? Or do you only consider me a traitor while I am on this job?

Um, Captain Lund, the anti-war lunatics DO consider you a traitor. The rest of the world does not.

I am going to petition the City Council to enforce rules and regulation regarding criminal trespass and vandalism.

I am going to go there myself, personally, to draw attention to this hateful action by a fringe group who has absolutely NO moral authority –whose members include Susan (Medea) Benjamin, who engaged in anarchy at the WTO in Seattle, in between organizing her Code Pink Pepto-Bismol crowd who like to get naked for peace.

I do not hold out much hope from the Berkeley City Council. It is comprised of left-over Hippies from the Sixties who still think it’s the Summer of Love.

However, Mayor Tom Bates, has a distinctly different view of free speech that our military has fought valiantly for –he was convicted of stealing one thousand copies of the a conservative student-run newspaper.

According to the Stanford Daily newspaper…

“Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates has decided to plead guilty for the theft and subsequent disposal of 1,000 copies of the Nov. 4 issue of the Daily Californian, which contained an endorsement of his opponent, Shirley Dean. A month after the incident, Bates is developing legislation to prevent this type of theft from reoccurring.

Regardless of the power structure in Berkeley, we will NOT let this insult to our troops remain unanswered. Not now. Not ever.

Poor Leftists it just seems to be getting worse and worse for you all the time. Bwaahahahahahaha

See Source Here at Michelle Malkin

Inside a Mosque

View The Video From Point Of Origin

Obama stops wearing flag pin

By MIKE GLOVER, Associated Press Writer

Fri Oct 5, 11:38 AM ET

WATERLOO, Iowa - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says he no longer wears an American flag lapel pin because it has become a substitute for "true patriotism" since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

He commented on the pin in a television interview Wednesday and then again on Thursday at a campaign appearance in Independence, Iowa.

Noting the TV interview, he told the campaign crowd, "I said, you know what, I probably haven't worn a flag pin in a very long time. After a while I noticed people wearing a lapel pin and not acting very patriotic."

"My attitude is that I'm less concerned about what you're wearing on your lapel than what's in your heart. You show your patriotism by how you treat your fellow Americans, especially those who serve. You show your patriotism by being true to our values and ideals. That's what we have to lead with is our values and our ideals."

Barak Obama is getting things all mixed up feeling versus being patriot is not the same thing. Either your with us or your against us plain and simple.

(Please see the Source Here)

Code Pink defaces Berkeley military recruitment office; Update: Attacks will continue, support needed
(Source at Michelle Malkins please read)

Well it looks as if the Stalinists Marxist group are back at it again. Just goes to show that the Leftists don't belong here in the United States ship them to Russia or China where they can live in a happy dictatorship that they love so much.

By Michelle Malkin • October 5, 2007 10:03 AM

Update: I noted below that it would be nice if folks could show up and show some support for the targeted recruitment office. Reader Sandy e-mails:

I called the USMC Officer Recruiting Office at Berkeley and expressed my support to one of the recruiters. He asked how I knew about the situation, and I told him your blog was my source. He said the Pinkos vowed they would be back on the weekends and during the week, every week, until the office is shut down. They went to the landlord of the building and have been harassing him, and he may complain to the city/mayor about it, as other building tenants do not appreciate their antics since it interferes with their businesses. The recruiter hoped that more support would come in and that the word would be spread. He said earlier this week, some Gold Star and Blue Star family members came to the office to show support. One of the family members was a father whose Marine son had died in Fallujah. A man with the Pinkos said to him, “How does it feel to have your son die for oil?” Tensions, of course, were very high and there was almost a fight. I know that I could not hold my temper (and tongue) as these Marines are doing. I despise what these harridans are doing. Question their patriotism? There’s no question about their patriotism.

This is just gone too far and if the Left ever thinks about ever getting into office they better control these leftist lunatics of their party.

Please read the rest at Michelle Malkin

Getting Rid of American Holidays in Public Schools

By Warner Todd Huston

At the end of September the school district in Oak Lawn, Illinois announced it was considering eliminating holiday celebrations like Christmas in its schools. Oak Lawn has seen increasing numbers of residents that identify with the Muslim faith who are naturally sending their children to the public schools there and school board members are afraid that Christian holidays are “offensive” to Muslim students.

This move follows a recent decision to eliminate pork products from the school menu.

Unsurprisingly, these cultural clashing decisions by the school board have caused acrimony among parents of the district. Stating the painfully obvious, Columbus Manor Principal Sandy Robertson said of the controversy, “It’s difficult when you change the school’s culture.”

Elizabeth Zahdan, a parent of Muslim faith who took her case to the school board wanting the school to be “more inclusive” during holiday activities, however, adamantly denied she wanted to eliminate any American styled holiday observances. “I only wanted them modified to represent everyone,” she told the Chicago Sun-Times. Zahdan disclaimed to reporters, “Now the kids are not being educated about other people.”

Unfortunately for Mrs. Zahdan, a “modified” holiday is no longer the same holiday. It becomes something else once altered. So, whatever her motives, she was effectively advocating for their elimination.

Superintendent Tom Smyth said that the reason they were eliminating or trying to “tone down” holiday celebrations was one of wasting allotted teaching time. There isn’t time enough in the day to “celebrate every holiday,” Smyth claimed. “We have to think about our purpose. Are we about teaching reading, writing and math or for parties or fund-raising during the day?”

Conservatives will, of course, be offended by the elimination of standard, Christian American holidays and having them “modified” to be “more inclusive.” Many are upset that these purported outsiders are forcing the local schools to make such changes for Muslims and rightfully so, to be sure.

But, this anger from conservatives is hard to square with their ideas of local control of the school systems. The usual conservative policy prescription for what ails public education in America is local — as opposed to Federal — control. In general, this is absolutely correct as who better to control what sort of school a community wants than the community itself, one not encumbered by meddling control from the Federal government or state officers?

This local control ideal, though, invites the very sort of situation that the Oak Lawn schools are dealing with currently. Half the kids in some schools there are of the Muslim faith at this time. So, if local control is de rigeur, then the schools will naturally begin to react to such factors as changing demographics.

This fact makes the claim of complete local control a tad embarrassing for conservatives who would be upset at a school district that might change policies to reflect the desires of the local population. After all, isn’t that the effects of the market place, the base model for most conservative thinking? With complete local control, the schools will take on the interests and desires of the local population. That is the very essence of “local control.”

But, is it good to allow these sorts of forces to affect schools without careful consideration? Should we eliminate all things Christian in an American school district if the parents in that district are majority Muslim? In this climate of a wishy-washiness on American first principles infesting our country today, here is one instance where all control should not be at the smallest, local level.

School curricula must stay a state controlled issue. Though the Federal government should be entirely out of the picture, from funding to designing the curriculum, returning all schooling decisions to the smallest, local entity will result in exactly the sort of problematic de-Americanizing of our schools that we are witnessing in Oak Lawn. Whether it be overly Mexicanized, Muslim-centric, or what have you, we will assure that American influences will be replaced by the culture du jour if the locals have as much control as some conservatives by rote advocate for.

The solution to a loss of American ideals in local schools is to continue to have the school curriculum controlled by the state governments. This control, and a homogeneous statewide curriculum will offset the effect of pressures by small communities that fill with immigrant populations who might be apt to instill on our American schools the cultures and ideas from whence they, the parents, came.

What to do with the ire of parents who want their Muslim faith (or Mexican heritage in other instances) regarded in policy decisions is definitely something we will see more need to contend with in the days to come. It is a sticky question, of course. Since we have become a culture that won’t back a homogeneous observance of being an American, how do we address this issue? How do we serve local communities that are made up mostly of immigrants?

As the Sun-Times reported, Oak Lawn parent Elizabeth Zahdan moaned that eliminating all holidays would stop children from “being educated about other people?”

This issue is emotionally charged, of course, but for all the wrong decisions Supt. Tom Smyth has made here, he is correct on one issue. When he said that the schools didn’t have the time to celebrate every holiday on Earth to be “inclusive” of them all, he was correct. His answer to the problem is not so smart, however. Getting rid of all holidays is both the coward’s way out and completely unamerican, to boot.

But, here’s the thing. Our schools shouldn’t be about educating our children about “other people.” That they can learn in college or in life. Our schools should be teaching about OUR people. And our schools are failing miserably to do this effectively.

It is agreed that we shouldn’t be celebrating every holiday under the sun in our schools. The Supt. is completely correct that we haven’t the time in our busy school days to do so. In fact, we shouldn’t be celebrating ANY other holidays but American holidays. American holidays reflect our national culture. Christmas and Halloween as we celebrate them are American holidays. The Holidays and traditions of other cultures deserve to remain at home, not in the halls of our schools.

By NOT indulging their desires to obviate American influences replacing them with ideas antithetical to our American first principles, we would be doing a far better service to our children than to re-draw every district to a different standard to placate foreign influences. We became a great country in the first place because of our culture, not by bending and warping every ideal to suit immigrant’s wishes in every small community across this great land.

So, conservatives should realize that “local control” is not the panacea they imagine it to be in every last instance. Certainly we should look to have some aspects of our schools controlled by the local school boards, but too much local control could backfire on erstwhile conservatives. We will surely begin to find schools becoming less and less American if the locals are allowed too much direct influence.

Do we want our schools taught in Spanish as a first language? Do we want the Koran to replace textbooks in others? Do we want our children taught that America is an evil empire?

I would hope not.

To avoid that, however, we need to teach Americanism. We should be allowing kids to celebrate holidays. There is no harm in that. But they MUST be America’s holidays.

Anything else and we are no longer America and are teaching our children that there is nothing out there especially American to teach them.

The Clinton Sunday Show Blitz

By Patrick Healy
September 23, 2007, 2:20 pm

Hillary Rodham Clinton on “Meet the Press” (Photo: Alex Wong/”Meet the Press”)

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton rarely does the Sunday morning talk show circuit, but she barnstormed all five of the major programs today to try to capitalize on the mostly positive reviews of her new health care plan – and to address some of the controversies in her campaign, such as her recently exposed fugitive fund-raiser.

The timing of her appearances was no accident: Mrs. Clinton and her advisers believe that she has entered the fall campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in a position of unusual strength. Today, therefore, seemed like a good moment to run the gantlet of the Sunday shows – a gauntlet that can be withering, and where Mrs. Clinton knew she would face strict scrutiny of her sharply changed positions on Iraq.

Mrs. Clinton generally did fine – there were no major gaffes, no flashes of a chilly or combative side. When Republican attacks were mentioned, she stuck to her trademark belly-laugh – though she overdid it a tad on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

There was no major news committed, but she did offer some illuminating details on a range of issues –- health care for illegal immigrants, Iraq and the Moveon.org controversy, public financing for political campaigns, Bill Clinton’s role in her administration, and the ugliness and dirty tricks she will not tolerate in her political camp.

Senator Clinton appeared on “This Week,” “Fox News Sunday”, “Face the Nation and “Meet the Press” this morning. She was also on CNN’s “Late Edition.” (Photos: ABCNews.com, Fox, via AFP/Getty Images, CBS.com, Alex Wong/”Meet the Press”)
Conservatives are going to have to do the same go gung ho on getting on just as many programs as she did.

Her comments about one of her top campaign fund-raising bundlers, Norman Hsu, a ’90s-era fugitive who now faces new fraud charges, only repeated the talking points that her advisers have offered: She did not know he was a con man, he fooled dozens of campaigns, she has instituted criminal background checks for major donors, etc.

She did say, on ABC News’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” that she might co-sponsor a bill introduced by a rival for the Democratic nomination, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, to provide public financing for campaigns.

“I’m going to co-sponsor anything that looks like it can move us in that direction, because my view on this is we’re not going to get anything done at this point with the president, with, unfortunately, a Republican minority that engages in filibustering, but we’re going to try to build a commitment to doing it,” she said.

She also said that, if she were president of Columbia University, she would not have extended an invitation to the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to speak there on Monday as part of a World Leaders Forum on campus.

“Well, if I were a president of the university, I would not have invited him. He’s a Holocaust denier. He’s a supporter of terrorism. But I also respect the right in our country to make different decisions,” she said on CNN’s “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer.”

And she also disavowed the political shot at her Republican rival, Rudolph W. Giuliani, that one of her supporters, former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, took when he said recently that Americans beyond New York would soon learn about his three marriages and his wobbly relationships with his two children.

“Governor Vilsack has said that he was wrong in saying that and I agree, he was — we are not running a campaign that goes down that road,” Mrs. Clinton said on ABC. “We’re trying to stay focused on the issues, stay focused on the differences between me and the Republicans.”

Now, as for the aforementioned illuminating details, here are the highlights for those of you who were not planted on your couch and DVR-ing madly this morning:

On Iraq, Mrs. Clinton refused to pledge to withdraw all troops from Iraq within her first term. Appearing on “This Week” – the first of the five that she taped, shortly after 8 a.m. – Mrs. Clinton said of a withdrawal pledge:

“You know, I’m not going to get into hypotheticals and make pledges, because I don’t know what I’m going to inherit, George. I don’t know and neither do any of us know what will be the situation in the region. How much more aggressive will Iran have become? What will be happening in the Middle East? How much more of an influence will the chaos in Iraq have in terms of what’s going on in the greater region? Will we have pushed Al Qaeda in Iraq out of their stronghold with our new partnership with some of the tribal sheikhs or will they have regrouped and retrenched? I don’t know and I think it’s not appropriate to be speculating.”

She also said flatly on “Fox News Sunday” that she would not vote for any future Iraq war spending bill that does not include plans to withdraw troops.

As for her own plans to keep at least some troops in Iraq for narrowly tailored missions, she continued to be vague about the number of troops who would remain in country, but did say on CBS that her missions would require fewer than 100,000 troops.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Tim Russert confronted Mrs. Clinton over her full-throated support for a military threat to Iraq in 2002; her comments in support of the war during its first two years; and her old view, two years ago, that setting a hard deadline for withdrawing troops would be irresponsible and be a boon to terrorists.

Mrs. Clinton defended her support for a hard deadline now, saying that one was needed to force a policy change in the Bush administration and to protect the troops. Mr. Russert’s rundown of contradictory Clinton statements made Mrs. Clinton look like a changeling on Iraq, as has been widely documented before. But she mostly kept the focus on the future, and refused to give in and tell Tim that her ’02 vote authorizing military action in Iraq was a mistake.

“You know, we can talk about 2002 or we can look forward to what is a continuing involvement in a sectarian civil war with no end in sight, and I believe its imperative that we try to create a political consensus to move the president and the Republicans in Congress to extricating us from this civil war,” she told Mr. Russert.

Her views about the top American commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, came up on two fronts.

She said on CNN that she agreed with General Petraeus that Iran was supplying weapons to allies in Iraq that end up killing American soldiers – a point that she then turned against the Bush administration.

“I believe that Iran is playing a very dangerous game in Iraq in supporting all kinds of groups, to attack our forces, to destabilize the Iraqi government, to further their goals in Iraq,” she said. “So this is one of the results of the policies that have been pursued by the Bush administration, that Iran is in a much stronger position today than it was, and we’ve got to have a united international front against Iran, and most especially against Iran acquiring the capacity for nuclear weapons.”

She was also asked, on several shows, if she condoned or condemned the recent advertisement by Moveon.org in the New York Times that called General Petraeus “General Betray Us.”

She was pointedly asked on Fox if she repudiated the Moveon.org ad; she refused to use that language, but she criticized the ad on multiple shows and noted on CNN that she voted to condemn it – a vote she took on a Democratic resolution that criticized the Moveon.org ad and other attacks on uniformed soldiers, officers, and veterans. A Republican alternative resolution, which she voted against, passed overwhelmingly.

“I don’t condone it; I voted to condemn it,” she said on CNN.

On health care, Mrs. Clinton said that illegal immigrants would not be covered under the universal health insurance proposal that she unveiled last week. Her advisers had said last week that they were not sure illegal immigrants would be covered, but Mrs. Clinton has said in the past that her plan would not provide full benefits to illegal immigrants.

“No, they would not be covered,” Mrs. Clinton said on “This Week.” “I will continue to have a safety net, which I think is in the best traditions of our country and, also, for public health reasons, absolutely necessary.”

She also said, more plainly than usual, that former President Bill Clinton would not have the sort of policy-making role in her White House that she had in his during their health care reform effort in 1993-94.

“No, no,” she said when asked, on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” whether her husband would have any policy-making role in her White House. “And among the many lessons that I have learned, we want to be sure that the president, my husband, does whatever he can, just as I tried to do whatever I could, and I think he has a very special and important role in reaching out to the rest of the world.”

Back over on Fox – where, about a year ago, See Video President Clinton tussled notably with his interviewer, Chris Wallace – Mr. Wallace recalled that interview and asked Mrs. Clinton, “why do you and the president have such a hyperpartisan view of politics?”

Mrs. Clinton gave that chuckle of hers again and said, “Oh, Chris, if you had walked even a day in our shoes over the last 15 years, I’m sure you’d understand. But, you know, the real goal for our country right now is to get beyond partisanship.”

Asked on NBC if she was too polarizing to win the presidency, Mrs. Clinton gave a rote response – recalling the Republicans and independents who supported her in her 2006 Senate re-election race – and then added:

“Anyone who gets the Democratic nomination is going to be subjected to the withering attacks that come from the other side. I think I’ve proven that I not only can survive them but surpass them,” she said.

Please read related Links:
Don Surber: Hillary Let taxpayers be my Hsus
NewsBusters: Russert Lets Hillary Off Hook Concerning MoveOn's 'Betray Us' Ad (updated w/video)

Hitting All the Sunday Talk Shows, Clinton Says a Lot but Reveals Little

By Anne E. Kornblut
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 24, 2007; Page A04

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared on all five talk shows yesterday morning and demonstrated a particularly senatorial skill: the art of the filibuster.

Asked by ABC's George Stephanopoulos whether she would withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq during a first term as president, Clinton (D-N.Y.) gave a simple answer: She did not know.

But she used more than 225 words to say so. "You know, I'm not going to get into hypotheticals and make pledges, because I don't know what I'm going to inherit, George. I don't know and neither do any of us know what will be the situation in the region. How much more aggressive will Iran have become?" Clinton said. "What will be happening in the Middle East? How much more of an influence will the chaos in Iraq have in terms of what's going on in the greater region? Will we have pushed al-Qaeda in Iraq out of their strongholds with our new partnership with some of the tribal sheiks or will they have regrouped and retrenched?"

She continued: "I don't know, and I think it's not appropriate to be speculating. I can tell you my general principles and my goal. I want to end the war in Iraq. I want to do so carefully, responsibly, with the withdrawal of our troops, also, with the withdrawal of a lot of our civilian employees, the contractors who are there, and the Iraqis who have sided with us.

"We have a huge humanitarian refugee crisis on our hands. We have millions of Iraqis who have been displaced, some internally, some into other countries. The problems we're going to face because of the failed policies and the poor decision-making of this administration are rather extraordinary and difficult, and I don't want to speculate about how we're going to be approaching it until I actually have the facts in my hand and the authority to be able to make some decisions."

Clinton did two hours of interviews by remote from a furnished barn in her back yard in Chappaqua, N.Y., part of an aggressive media blitz in the week after she offered up her plan for universal health-care coverage. Her campaign expressed pride that she had driven the news agenda, forcing even President Bush to talk about health insurance.

Her trip through the Sunday gantlet was designed to solidify the impression that Clinton is strong, indomitable and all but inevitable as the Democratic nominee and next president.

Clinton showed her lighter side, laughing uproariously when asked by Fox News's Chris Wallace why she and her husband have such a "hyperpartisan view of politics."

"Well, Chris, if you had walked even a day in our shoes over the last 15 years, I'm sure you'd understand," Clinton said. Her answer drew swift condemnation from the Republican National Committee, which issued a statement saying that "apparently Hillary Clinton believes the serious issues facing our nation are a laughing matter."

Clinton drew other questions -- about her former donor Norman Hsu, and about remarks her surrogate, former governor Tom Vilsack of Iowa, made about Republican front-runner Rudolph W. Giuliani's three marriages. Clinton distanced herself from Vilsack's comments.

"We are not running a campaign that goes down that road," she said.

Above all, though, in a morning of appearances that yielded virtually no news, Clinton illustrated her ability to talk. And talk. And talk.

"Well, Tim, I'm proud that we tried in '93 and '94," Clinton said, asked by NBC's Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" about her earlier attempts on health care. "We were trying to do the right thing. Obviously, we made a lot of mistakes. But I am proud that we set a goal of trying to provide health care to every American. And I didn't quit. . . . I was very involved in passing the [State] Children's Health Insurance Program and getting vaccines for kids to be immunized and making sure that the drugs that they took were appropriately tested for children. . . . So this has remained a passion of mine. But I've also learned a lot of lessons."

She continued, as if delivering her health-care speech for a second time: "This is not government-run health care; it does not create any new bureaucracy. In fact, it is very clear in saying that if you are satisfied with the health care you have, then you keep it. . . . But if you're one of the 47 million Americans without health insurance, or one of the many millions that have health insurance except when it comes time to get the care that your doctor says you need, and the insurance company refuses payment, then you are going to have access to the same health choices menu that members of Congress do. I proposed that back in '93, '94, and ran into a firestorm of opposition from the Congress. But I think a lot has changed in the last 14 years. A consensus has developed about what we need to do to try to reach quality, affordable health care."

She went on, uninterrupted: "So among the many choices that will now be available to Americans, similar to what are available to members of Congress, we will have a public plan option for people who wish to choose that. If it is outside the reach of people -- because remember, Medicaid will still take care of the very poor, we will still have the Children's Health Insurance Program for children. But if it is out of the reach of affordability, we're going to have health-care tax credits for individuals, and we're going to try to provide some health-care tax credits as well to small businesses."

She continued for several more minutes, saying, among other things, that a consensus had developed, that the automobile industry is now in favor of a health-care overhaul and that her plan "builds on what works in America, but takes aim at what doesn't and comes up with some very common-sense ways of trying to fix our problems."

Please read related Links:
BeldarBlog
Bluestem Prairie
Oliver Willis

Now lets see what the Leftist Lunatics have to say.

Clinton: Cut Iraq Funding To Force Change

Hillary Clinton Says U.S. Troops Can't "Referee" A Civil War In Iraq
Sept. 23, 2007
Clinton on Face The Nation

Clinton On Iraq
Sen. Hillary Clinton tells Bob Schieffer that there is no military solution
in Iraq and that American troops cannot referee the country's sectarian violence.

(CBS) Congress should stop funding the Iraq war to force President Bush and the Iraqi government to "change course," Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., said Sunday on Face The Nation.

"No matter how heroically and dedicated the performance of our young men and women and their officers are in Iraq - which it has been - they cannot referee successfully a sectarian civil war," Clinton told Bob Schieffer. "So I voted against funding last spring. I will vote against funding again in the absence of any change in policy."

President Bush has said that, by setting deadlines for withdrawal and cutting funding, Congress will embolden America's enemies. Clinton, however, said, "The idea that our having a policy that reflects the reality on the ground will embolden enemies, I think is off base. They have been emboldened by the policies pursued by this administration."

The junior Senator from New York pointed to continued nuclear development by Iran and North Korea - and reported cooperation between Syria and North Korea - as evidence of U.S. enemies growing stronger.

Clinton said, if elected president, she would set deadlines for withdrawing the majority of U.S. combat troops from Iraq, but said there would be a continuing American military presence in Iraq.

"I am committed to bringing the vast majority of our troops home, and I will begin to do that as soon as I am president," Clinton, the early front-runner for the Democratic nomination, said.

Clinton said she recognized "there will be remaining missions" for American forces in Iraq, but she said they would not require the roughly 100,000 troops expected to be in Iraq when the next president takes office. She listed counterterrorism, protecting U.S. personnel and training Iraqi forces as the other missions.

"That's the right way to go because that is a much clearer definition of what we're trying to accomplish than what we face today," Clinton said.

Mr. Bush has compared America's future in Iraq to the peacekeeping role U.S. troops play in South Korea, where they have been stationed for some five decades, but Clinton said that she would review the basis for Mr. Bush's plans.

"I'm going to call my secretary of defense, my joint chiefs of staff, my security advisers to give me a full briefing on what is the planning that has gone on in the Pentagon," she said. "You know, planning hasn't exactly been a strong suit of the Bush administration."

John Harris, the Editor in Chief of politico.com, noted that, while Clinton was presenting a strong platform for her presidential campaign, she was leaving herself plenty of wiggle room.

"You can see her preserving her options," Harris told Schieffer. She's not promising figures or saying that we're going to have a complete exit in January of 2009. That's something a future president wants to do: preserve flexibility."

David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times, said that Clinton's plans for Iraq sounded very similar to President Bush's.

"It's a very small difference, and when you tick off the tasks she said the troops would do while she was president - if that happened - counterterrorism, protection of the Kurds, training of the Iraqi army and then protecting us against Iran, that's a big set of tasks," Sanger said. "And it's very hard when you talk to Pentagon people to have them figure out how you do that with fewer than 100,000 troops."

Please read related Lunatic Leftist Links:
Firedoglake
LiberalOasis
DownWithTyranny!
Take Our Country Back

DownWithTyranny Now that is an Oxymoron if ever I heard of, it is more like they are for Tyranny than against it.

Giuliani adviser criticized for remark

AP Photo: Republican presidential hopeful,
former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani,
speaks during during a press availability,...


By DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press Writer
Thu Sep 20, 7:44 PM ET

WASHINGTON - A homeland security adviser to Rudy Giuliani came under fire Thursday for claiming there were "too many mosques" in the United States and defended himself by saying his point was that not enough Muslim leaders cooperate with law enforcement.

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., the former chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee and the top GOP member on the panel, said his comments to the Politico Web site were taken out of context. Democrats said Giuliani should drop him as a campaign adviser.

"I stand by everything I said other than the fact that the Politico totally took it out of context," King said Thursday.

In the Politico interview, King said: "Unfortunately we have too many mosques in this country, there's too many people who are sympathetic to radical Islam. We should be looking at them more carefully, we should be finding out how we can infiltrate, we should be much more aggressive in law enforcement."

After King complained, Politico posted video of the entire interview.

Giuliani, speaking to reporters Thursday in Northern Virginia, chuckled at the suggestion he dump King as an adviser.

"I've known Pete for 41 years, so I'm not about to do that," Giuliani said. "I know exactly what Pete meant. I knew before I even heard the clarification. What he means was that there are mosques in which violence is preached. I know that from my own investigations of Islamic terrorism. I also know that there are many mosques in which it isn't."

As for any political fallout, King told The Associated Press: "Rudy can take care of himself. He's a tough guy, but I would think that campaigns would respect someone like myself who says things that might be politically incorrect but are accurate in that too many Muslim leaders in this country do not denounce extremism."

The congressman was denounced by the DC-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group that has long accused King of lobbing unfair attacks against American Muslims.
C.A.I.R. Can take and shove it where the sun don't shine as far as I'm concerned.
Ahhhh Boohoo he's being unfair to us Nazi's.

"We call on Republican leaders and other people of conscience to repudiate Representative King's bigoted remarks and to support the civil and religious rights of all Americans," said CAIR official Corey Saylor.
Corey Saylor, You wouldn't care if it was Jews and Christians being criticized so your remarks are null and void.

Both the Muslim group and the Democratic party called on Giuliani to drop King from the campaign. Giuliani spokeswomen did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Of course the Nazi Liberals would say that, they too don't care about the Christians and Jews but are the apologists of the Islamofascist because the Democrats are just like the Islamofascist they are both Nazis.

Democratic party spokeswoman Stacie Paxton called on King to apologize and urged Giuliani to drop King as his homeland security adviser, saying "this type of bigoted language has no place in public discourse."
Just shut your trap Stacie Paxton you Nazi.

King said his point was not that there were too many mosques in the United States, but that too many of those mosques do not cooperate with law enforcement _ a claim he made in 2003 and 2004 which also prompted criticism.

"I know of any number of mosques in New York that are under surveillance by law enforcement because they have suspicious links, at the very least radical links, that are inappropriate," he said.

They should hang C.A.I.R. and the Liberals by their necks from the street light poles up and down main street of Washington DC. They're both Neo-Nazis.

Elder Bush backs McCain's pro-war stance

By JIM DAVENPORT, Associated Press Writer
Tue Sep 18, 8:44 PM ET

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Former President George H.W. Bush backs John McCain's efforts to increase support for the Iraq war in a new video, a telecast that aides to both men say shouldn't be construed as an
endorsement of McCain's White House bid.

On Monday night, the former president appeared in the video shown at South Carolina's military college, The Citadel, during the final stop of the Arizona senator's "No Surrender" tour.

"The bottom line is we must persevere; we must not surrender; we must not quit and run away. God bless our troops and everyone involved in the 'No Surrender' rally there in Charleston," Bush said, according to a transcript of the video provided by the McCain campaign.

Bush also praised McCain and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who will work in the Senate on turning back Democratic efforts to limit U.S. troops' time in Iraq.

"I salute Senators McCain and Graham for their sponsorship and for standing tall," Bush said.

McCain traveled to the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina on "No Surrender" tour in which he stressed his strong support for the war and President Bush's increase of some 30,000 troops earlier this year.

Jean Becker, chief of staff for the former president, said the video was "intended to support the troops and not intended as an endorsement for Senator McCain." McCain's campaign hasn't misrepresented the video, she said.

Bush remains neutral in the 2008 race and, while he likes McCain, he's just as close to Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson, Becker said.

B.J. Boling, McCain's South Carolina spokesman, also said the video should not be seen as an endorsement.

"What you have is a former president who is incredibly patriotic and understands the enemy America faces and is saluting Senator McCain's efforts to convey to the American people that surrender is not an option," Boling said. "We're thrilled to have former President Bush supporting Senator McCain's efforts against radical Islam."

McCain has criticized President George W. Bush's handling of the war. On Saturday, he blamed the Bush administration for presenting rosy scenarios in Iraq that have frustrated Americans and said Bush failed to curb them.

"It's all the president's responsibility," he said.

Russia, China worried by Iran attack talk

By Chris Baldwin
2 hours, 9 minutes ago

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia and China expressed alarm on Tuesday over comments by France's foreign minister raising the specter of war with Iran, and Washington said diplomacy was key to ending a standoff with Tehran over its nuclear program.

Minister Bernard Kouchner, his comments clearly testing the resilience of a coalition of major powers seeking to curb Iran's ambitions, sought to play down his weekend remarks, saying they had been meant as a warning against war.

"I do not want it to be said that I am a warmonger!" he told Le Monde newspaper, days before the five U.N. Security Council permanent members, including Russia and China, and Germany were due to meet to discuss possible new sanctions against Tehran.

"My message was a message of peace, of seriousness and of determination," the paper quoted Kouchner as saying on his plane as he headed to Moscow for talks with his Russian counterpart.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made it clear at a joint news briefing with Kouchner that his remarks had disturbed a Kremlin, like China, less inclined to sanctions than the West.

"We are worried by reports that there is serious consideration being given to military action in Iran," Lavrov said. "That is a threat to a region where there are already grave problems in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Washington, which itself has kept open the possibility of armed force if diplomacy fails, made clear it had no interest in military embroilment at this stage. At the same time, it seemed at pains to dismiss suggestions of disunity among the powers.

"We believe that there is a diplomatic solution," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. "We are working with the French and the rest of the EU (European Union) community in order to pressure Iran to comply with their obligations under the U.N. Security Council regulations."

Western powers led by the United States accuse Iran of using a purported nuclear power program as a screen for development of nuclear arms -- something they fear could add enormously to instability in the already volatile Middle East. They point to Iran's past secrecy over nuclear research as cause for concern.

IRAN UNMOVED

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an outspoken critic of the West, said Kouchner's comments were meant only for the media. "We do not consider these threats to be serious."

Iran says it seeks nuclear energy only for electricity and condemns U.N. sanctions promoted by the five permanent members -- China, Russia, the United States, France and Britain -- and Germany over its uranium enrichment program.

Lavrov, signaling Russian policy at a powers' meeting scheduled for Friday to consider new steps, said Iran should be left to work with the International Atomic Energy Agency before the world considers further sanctions or military action.

"The United States and the European Union are taking tougher anti-Iranian sanctions ... if we agree to work collectively... then what purpose is served by unilateral actions?"

China also condemned Kouchner's weekend remarks.

"We believe the best option is to peacefully resolve the Iranian nuclear issue through diplomatic negotiations, which is in the common interests of the international community," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a briefing.

"We do not approve of easily resorting to threatening use of force in international affairs," Jiang said.

Kouchner said France had asked French firms not to bid for work in Iran.

"We must prepare for the worst," he said in the weekend interview with RTL radio and LCI television. "The worst, sir, is war." He said, however, that war was not an imminent prospect.

Related Link: Bush: Iran Report 'Wild Speculation' President Dismisses Talk Of Attack, Saying Diplomacy Is Priority

Conservative Activist Blames Poverty on Liberalism

By Monisha Bansal
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
September 17, 2007

(CNSNews.com) - Blaming poverty on liberalism and the federal government, a conservative activist on Friday said: "It is very sad what the liberals have done with their war on the poor in this country."

"After 40 years of failure, they still insist that they want to expand this war, that they think they should pour more money into this war," said Star Parker, president of the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education. "Already, over $3 trillion has been spent on the war on poverty, and so far, we've not seen results."

Parker said the war on poverty has really been a war waged by liberals on four fronts -- "war on the family, the war on thought, the war on tradition and a war on religion."

"The poverty that we see today is directly related to people having children outside of marriage and then not working to support those children," she said.

"They started with the war on the Black family, and they totally destroyed this family," said Parker at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., on Friday. "They spread this message of moral relativism and welfare dependency.

"Lots of liberals got hold of the Black community and started convincing them that there is nothing wrong with dependence on government -- we started seeing the Black family destroyed," Parker said. "We saw welfare policy enter in with rules that say don't work, don't save, don't get married, and we'll fix all of your life problems for you."

She added that the result of the war on poverty for the Black community has been that two out of three pregnancies are ended through abortion, and seven in 10 children are born outside of marriage.


"What are the implications on society?" she asked. "Seventy percent of our incarcerated are coming from these broken homes. Family breakdown leads to government dependency.

"The message of rights and entitlements equals control for liberals," said Parker. "The best thing we can do is to gradually start dismantling these massive entitlement programs of the 20th century."

But Sheldon Danziger, co-director of the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan, told Cybercast News Service: "These statements are not consistent with 30 years of research."

"Poverty remains high, not because of a shortage of effective anti-poverty policy options, but because the public and policymakers have not made reducing poverty a high priority," he said.

"The primary reason that poverty persists is not because the research of the war on poverty planners was flawed, but because the economy failed to deliver the benefits of prosperity widely," Danziger added.

"For the past three decades, economic forces have increased financial hardships for many workers and prevented existing anti-poverty policies from further reducing poverty," he noted.

"The evidence on the changing relationship between economic growth and poverty, particularly the stagnation of male earnings, refutes the view that poverty remains high because the government provided too much aid for the poor and thus encouraged dysfunctional behaviors," Danziger said.

Danziger said income inequality has meant that economic growth has had a limited impact on poverty. "Given current economic conditions, income poverty will not be substantially reduced unless government does more to help low-income workers and those who are willing to work but cannot find jobs," he said.

Danziger added that government intervention, through Social Security and Medicare, has proved to be effective in reducing poverty among the elderly, which is at an all-time low.

Left Attack on Petraeus Poses Problem for Democrats

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

By Susan Estrich

Susan Estrich

LOS ANGELES —

The Democrats, especially the Democrats running for president, have a problem, and his name is Petraeus.

In two days of hearings on Capitol Hill, he probably didn’t change any of the views held by members of Congress about the war in Iraq. But he almost certainly impressed a lot of people sitting at home by displaying all the traits Americans hope for in a military leader.

He was, to put it simply, good, a man who came across as brave, honorable, and true, and that’s the problem.

On Monday, the day Petraeus was to begin his testimony, in the great tradition of Washington politics, MoveOn.org blasted him before hearing a word of it. In a full page ad in the New York Times, that became the talk of Congress, the talk shows, and cable news (as it was supposed to), the liberal group accused Petraeus of "cooking the books," and charged that he was betraying the American peoples' trust by spinning the facts to support the White House.

That is, by the way, how MoveOn itself summarized the ad, in an email to its supporters sent the next day, giving notice that it wasn’t backing down.

The ad made some Democrats uncomfortable because of its harsh tone, and gave Republicans a juicy distraction to attack. With polls showing that most Americans trust the military to deal with the war in Iraq far more than they do either the president or Congress, MoveOn’s choice of targets put those Democrats who need the support of both the hard left and the mushy middle squarely between a rock and a hard place.

It’s one thing to attack the president as a fool and a bumbler, as misguided in his policy and incompetent in its execution. That’s easy: almost everyone outside Bush’s family will agree with you, even the Republican candidates, who are generally the ones forced into an elaborate two-step as they try to defend the war and distance themselves from the Commander-in-Chief who has been in charge of it.

But attacking the General who oozes courage, fortitude and decency?

That’s a bit trickier, to say the least. Barack Obama, commenting/questioning the general about the options in Iraq, noted that there aren’t any good ones, only bad and worse ones. He might also have been describing his own situation, not to mention his friend Hillary’s.

There’s no question what the Left wants. Why don’t these guys (and girls) have any courage, a very left leaning friend demanded of me recently. Why aren’t they angry? Why don’t they start screaming bloody murder? Why don’t they demand that the troops start coming home NOW?

That is, figuratively speaking, not only what MoveOn is doing, but what it is demanding. In his new book, “The Argument,” Matt Bai, after carefully researching MoveOn and other new generation Democratic activists and bloggers, concludes that what they are offering is not so much a new vision as a new strategy; that they are seeking to match the “right wing conspiracy,” which spews out faxes and statements every day, blogs on Drudge and speaks through Rush and Hannity, with a left-wing version, which spews just as much ink, blogs on Huffington, and speaks through Olberman.

You control fires by building new ones, or at least you meet fire with fire, and if we all end up in the rubble, you certainly can’t blame the people who fought back second rather the ones who started it first. The Left has, in a word, adopted the tactics of the right. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

Primaries are won on the Left and Right. General elections are won in the middle. That’s the problem Petraeus poses for Democrats. If he could convince MoveOn, this would be easy. But he can’t and won’t. The danger is that he convinces folks in the middle that it would be irresponsible to simply pull out troops now, rather than trying to stabilize the situation further, that there is enough improvement both politically and militarily at the grass roots level to follow his schedule, rather than a Democratic one, that he knows what is happening on the ground in Iraq better than people who aren’t there.

The risk for Democrats is that those who take him on will be seen as naïve or weak or beholden to the Cindy Sheehans, which is not a direct route to the Oval Office. The other risk is that those who don’t will be attacked and belittled for failing to do so, and will never make it to the finals in this contest. It was a whole lot easier when this was just Bush’s war.

Susan Estrich makes some good points

Even though Susan Estrich about makes me cringe when I listen to her on TV.

I'm sorry folks for putting an older article here but when I read what Susan Estrich wrote I thought how appropriate this fits with my previous posts.

Iraqis vow to fight al Qaeda after sheikh's death

Iraqis vow to fight al Qaeda after sheikh's death

Fri Sep 14, 2007 11:40am BST

RAMADI, Iraq (Reuters) - Sunni Arab Iraqis and U.S. forces in Anbar province vowed on Friday to keep fighting al Qaeda after the assassination of a tribal leader who worked with Americans to create one of Iraq's few security success stories.

Abdul Sattar Abu Risha was killed in a bombing attack on Thursday near his home in Ramadi, provincial capital of what was once one of Iraq's most dangerous areas.

"All the tribes agreed to fight al Qaeda until the last child in Anbar," his brother, Ahmed Abu Risha, told Reuters.

Abu Risha, who met U.S. President George W. Bush less than two weeks ago, led the Anbar Salvation Council, an alliance of Sunni Arab tribes that worked with U.S. troops to push Sunni Islamist al Qaeda out of much of the vast desert area.

Ahmed Abu Risha was named as the council's new head hours after the death of his charismatic, chain-smoking brother, who wore flowing white and gold robes as he shook hands with Bush.

"The killing of Sheikh Abu Risha will give us more energy ... to continue confronting al Qaeda members and to dispose of them," said Sheikh Rashid Majid, a leader of the al-Bufahad tribe in Ramadi.

"But his murder will make us more cautious, because the reason for the killing of Abu Risha was careless security. We are 90 percent sure that al Qaeda is behind the assassination."

Many ordinary Iraqis agreed. "All of Anbar owes this man, he offered security and stability," said 45-year-old Mohammed Hussain Ali from Ramadi.

Iraq's national security adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani, Defence Minister General Abdel Qader Jassim and Lieutenant-General Raymond Odierno, second in command of U.S. forces in Iraq, joined hundreds of mourners at Abu Risha's funeral amid tight security.

Read 2 more pages here. Continued...

Or read by choosing from here. Page 2 Page 3

Vets for Freedom Responds to MoveOn.org New York Times Ad

Vets for Freedom Responds to MoveOn.org New York Times Ad ( Click Here ) for source of article.

Sunday, September 09, 2007

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Adriel Domenech
501-412-1224

Veterans call on MoveOn.org allies in Congress to denounce anti-Petraeus ad

---

Washington, D.C. (September 9th 2007) - Pete Hegseth, executive director of Vets for Freedom and Iraq War veteran, issued the following statement.

"Tomorrow - as General David Petraeus provides his Iraq assessment to Congress - the anti-war group, MoveOn.org, is running a full - page advertisement in the New York Times with the headline: General Petraeus or General Betray us? Cooking the books for the White House.

"Let's be clear: MoveOn.org is suggesting that General Petraeus has 'betrayed' his country. This is disgusting. To attack as a traitor an American general commanding forces in war, because his ‘on the ground' experience does not align with MoveOn.org's political objectives, is utterly shameful. It shows contempt for America's military leadership, as well as for the troops who have confidence in him, as our fellow soldiers in Iraq certainly do.

"General Petraeus has served this country for over 35 years with honor, distinction, and integrity. And this is not just about General Petraeus. After all, if General Petraeus is "cooking the books," then the entire military chain of command in Baghdad, and all the staff, military and civilian, who have been working with General Petraeus are complicit, since Petraeus did not write his report in isolation. They are all, apparently, 'betray[ing] us.'

"MoveOn.org has been working closely with the Democratic congressional leadership - as an article in today's Sunday New York Times Magazine makes clear. And consider this comment by a Democratic senator from Friday's Politico: "'No one wants to call [Petraeus] a liar on national TV,' noted one Democratic senator, who spoke on the condition on anonymity. ‘The expectation is that the outside groups will do this for us.'

"So, veterans who served in Iraq ask the Democratic leaders in Congress: Does MoveOn.org speak for you? Do you agree with MoveOn.org? Or do you repudiate this despicable charge?

"MoveOn.org has helped frame the core choice: Whom do we trust to run this war - MoveOn.org and its allies in Congress, or Gen. David Petraeus and his colleagues?"

Vets for Freedom is a nonpartisan organization established by combat veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its mission is to educate the American public about the importance of achieving success in these conflicts by applying our first-hand knowledge to issues of American strategy and tactics - namely "the surge" in Iraq. For more information, please visit www.vetsforfreedom.org.

For more information or to schedule interviews with Pete Hegseth or our other veterans please contact Adriel Domenech at 501-412-1224 or adriel@vetsforfreedom.org.

The Bizarro View Of Iraq By Chuck Schumer by Duane Patterson

The Bizarro View Of Iraq By Chuck Schumer

Posted by: Duane Patterson at 4:02 PM
Duane Patterson also known as General Issimo On the Hugh Hewitt's radio show who is Hugh Hewitt's Program Director.
Source



And so the fall Senate session shifts into gear as the senior Senator from New York, Charles Schumer, takes to the floor after the August recess and gives his assessment of the surge in Iraq. Here's the nub of what Schumer said in his 10 minute address to his anti-war fringe and, for that matter, the remnants of al Qaeda that have been getting wiped out in Iraq over the last four months.

And let me be clear, the violence in Anbar has gone down despite the surge, not because of the surge. The inability of American soldiers to protect these tribes from al Qaeda said to these tribes we have to fight al Qaeda ourselves. It wasn't that the surge brought peace here. It was that the warlords took peace here, created a temporary peace here. And that is because there was no one else there protecting.

Get it? Schumer is saying that the Bush-Petraeus plan is such a failure that the tribal sheiks had to take matters into their own hands because our military was so inept. Our military had nothing to do with clearing out al Qaeda out of Ramadi and Baquba, news that will I'm sure come as quite a surprise to the brave men and women who distinctly remember things a little differently, having flushed out al Qaeda and all.

But what Schumer says is important, because it telegraphs the tack that the Democrats are going to take in days and weeks ahead. The Democrats have the same view of the military that they do of all Americans. The average American, according to the liberal view, cannot make it on their own without government programs, regulation or control. The same holds true for the military. They cannot possibly get it right if they are led by a conservative commander-in-chief.

Not only is Schumer calling the American military incompetent, he's calling them liars, as well. Here's what General Petraeus had to say about Anbar on Hugh's show in July

But the detention, or the capture or killing of the number of leaders that we have taken out in recent months, and weeks, actually, and the progress in terms of just clearing areas of them_as you know, Anbar Province has really become quite relatively clear of al Qaeda. Eastern Anbar still has some, and we are working in that area. We have recently cleared Western Baquba, which was almost al Qaeda central, the capitol of the new caliphate that they have tried to establish here in Iraq. So there has been considerable progress against them...

About a month later, Major General James Simmons, deputy commanding general for Multi-National Forces in Iraq, had the following to say about al-Anbar Province:

Well, the operation that you're talking about that I mentioned the other day was Operation Lightning Hammer which was conducted by MND-North [Multi-National Division-North], which is headquartered out of Hawaii, the 25th Infantry Division commanded by Major General Randy Mixon. They conducted a 12-day, large scale operation in Diyala to disrupt al Qaeda and other terrorist elements that are operating in the Diyala River Valley. And the operation went into the process of clearing about fifty villages and palm groves. It was a very successful operation, resulted in 26 al Qaeda members being killed, and 37 of them detained, 10 very large weapons caches were taken down in the process of this operation that went on there north and east of Baqubah.

So this didn't happen, according to Chuck Schumer. Generals Petraeus and Simmons are liars. Sunni and Shia warlords got tired of our troops spinning their wheels while building up the surge size and chased out al Qaeda themselves.

Ed Gillespie, Counselor to the President and present in al-Anbar over the weekend, told Hugh in an interview today that these same tribal sheiks that Schumer is calling warlords told President Bush that yes, they once fought against multi-national forces, but now have fought side by side with our forces to root out al Qaeda.

Schumer's attitude towards the military, and the contempt in which he holds them, needs to be remembered as we approach November, '08. There is one party that respects the military and appreciates the service they provide to all of us, and there is one party that uses them as a political tool, and are willing to completely rewrite history to deny any good the military does in order to make political gains. Which one are you going to vote for?