The Rant

I think surrender would be a big mistake. ______________________________________ Richard Holbrooke, one of Kerry's top foreign policy advisers, said on Fox News Sunday last week that in Iraq we've created "a mess worse than Vietnam." "Wait a minute, Mr. Ambassador. You're telling me that you think that Iraq is worse than Vietnam?" an incredulous Chris Wallace asked. "Yes. It is strategically worse than Vietnam," Holbrooke responded. Well, if Iraq is worse than Vietnam, the only thing to do is get out. We are back in 1971, and, as Kerry memorably said then, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" You don't. So at midweek, Kerry's allies at MoveOn.org released a 30-second ad, "Quagmire." The ad accuses President Bush of having "no real plan to end the war." "It will take a new president," the narrator concludes, "to get us out." Get us out. That is in f...

_______________________________________ Here is a letter from a major in the Marine Corp, who is stationed in Baghdad, with a much more optimistic view of recent events, taken from the blogspot http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/002544.php _________________________________________ September 17, 2004 A thought from Iraq – “Doom & Gloom about Iraq’s future….I don’t see it from where I’m sitting.” [For those of you who haven’t gotten my “Thoughts” before, I’m a Major in the USMC on the Multi-National Corps staff in Baghdad. The analysts and pundits who don’t see what I see on a daily basis, in my opinion, have very little credibility to talk about the situation – especially if they have yet to set foot in Iraq. Everything Americans believe about Iraq is simply perception filtered through one’s latent prejudices until you are face-to-face with reality. If you haven’t seen, or don’t remember, the John Wayne movie, The Green Berets, you should watch it this wee...

Recent National Security assessment says the war isn't going well or not as well as hoped. Simaltaneously, Bush and Cheney defend their efforts. Bob: Did they miscalcualte? Did they have a plan? Did they get more bad intelligence? Did they care? Do you care?

CBS (Dan Rather) has been losing the ratings war for a long time. Here is a recent set of ratings: Network News Ratings: August 11, 2004 NBC: 5.9 / 13 share / 6,349,000 HH / 8,271,000 viewers ABC: 5.5 / 12 share / 6,014,000 HH / 8,071,000 viewers CBS: 4.8 / 10 share / 5,207,000 HH / 6,687,000 I wonder how the Rathergate scandal is going to effect these ratings? From a random sampling of Republican sites and Blogs, it appears to me that Dan Rather's slender credibility has evaporated. Apparently, Rather no longer cares if any Republicans watch his show. Dan is standing by his story. He says that althought the Memoranda that formed the evidence for his attack piece on President Bush may have been forged, that doesn't matter. What matters is that he knows that the story is true, based upon the fact that he is Dan Rather and we're not. Dan is using an old trial lawyer trick: since CBS can find two experts who vouch for the credibility of th...

Jonathan Goldberg has an interesting point at http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200409140649.asp _____________________________ "Dan Rather considers it outrageous and offensive that anyone would question the judgment that led to this situation. He defends what appear to be very shoddy methods (reading letters over the phone to sources, asking sources not to talk to the press, etc.), as if only a "partisan" or a fool would question them. "Well, if you agree with Rather, maybe you should give just a smidgen more slack to George W. Bush about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Bush's sources were more solid by several orders of magnitude than Rather's, and yet it is "obvious" to so many that Bush lied while Rather deserves the benefit of the doubt. George W. Bush had the head of the CIA, the intelligence agencies of all our allies, the Clinton administration, the United Nations, and most of the establishment m...

You would think newsman would realize by now that you can get in more trouble trying to cover up a mistake than being honest and simply admitting you were duped. The question that Rather is dodging is this: who is the source of these fraudulent documents? Does CBS have the duty to protect a source, when the source supplied a fraudulent document??? ______________________________________________________ washingtonpost.com Highlights Expert cited by CBS didn't verify papers Says he only examined officer's signature By Michael Dobbs and Howard Kurtz Updated: 11:22 p.m. ET Sept. 13, 2004 The lead expert retained by CBS News to examine disputed memos from President Bush's former squadron commander in the National Guard said yesterday that he examined only the late officer's signature and made no attempt to authenticate the documents themselves. "There's no way that I, as a document expert, can authenticate them," Marcel Matley said in a telepho...

___________________________________ It is hard to tell from his conflicting statements, but I have my suspicions. . . __________________________________ Kerry says Bush "went it alone, we are bearing the burden and paying almost any price alone. Almost all the casualties are the sons and daughters of America. And 90 percent of the costs are being met by Americans - the total so far, $200 billion and rising every day ... "That's $200 billion we're not investing in homeland security to keep cops on the street, to protect our airports, our subways. ... Wrong choices, wrong direction, wrong leadership for America." Sometimes, he says the money could be spent on health care or after-school programs. ____________________________________________________ So how much would Kerry suggest that we spend in Iraq? What would his administration do to correct the mess the Bush administration has left? ___________________________________________________ In ...