The Rant

WASHINGTON — Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi addressed a joint meeting of Congress on Thursday. Following is a transcript of his remarks: ALLAWI: Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, distinguished guests, it's my distinct honor and great privilege to speak to you today on behalf of Iraq's interim government and its people. It's my honor to come to Congress and to thank this nation and its people for making our cause your cause, our struggle your struggle. Before I turn to my government's plan for Iraq, I have three important messages for you today. First, we are succeeding in Iraq. (APPLAUSE) It's a tough struggle with setbacks, but we are succeeding. I have seen some of the images that are being shown here on television. They are disturbing. They focus on the tragedies, such as the brutal and barbaric murder of two American hostages this week. My thoughts and prayers go out to their families and to all those who lo

by Glenn Reynolds ___________________ September 24, 2004 DAN Rather - the biggest of big-foot news anchors at CBS, a television network regarded by many, until recently, as the premier TV news operation in the US - has had a rough couple of weeks. But they're just a harbinger of things to come, not just for Rather and CBS but for traditional left-leaning news operations across the world. The immediate cause of Rather's travails is the almost laughably inept journalism that led to the broadcast of a story based on fraudulent documents regarding President George W. Bush's National Guard service. Nor was the fraud hard to spot: the documents look exactly as if they were produced using a laser printer and Microsoft Word in 2004, rather than a typewriter and Liquid Paper in 1972 and 1973. CBS can't quite say where the documents came from, it failed to interview the wife and son of the (conveniently deceased) purported author, who say that the documents are forge

BY RALPH PETER September 23, 2004 IMAGINE if, in the presidential election of 1944, the candidate opposing FDR had insisted that we were losing the Second World War and that, if elected, he would begin to withdraw American troops from Europe and the Pacific. We would have called it treason. And we would have been right. In WWII, broadcasts from Tokyo Rose in Japan and from Axis Sally in Germany warned our troops that their lives were being squandered in vain, that they were dying for big business and "the Jew" Roosevelt. Today, we have a presidential candidate, the conscienceless Sen. John Kerry, doing the work of the enemy propagandists of yesteryear. Is there nothing Kerry won't say to win the election? Is there no position he won't change? Doesn't he care anything for the sacrifices of our troops in Iraq? And if he does care about our soldiers and Marines, why is he broadcasting remarks that insist — against all hard evidence — that the ter

___________________________ As a Republican, with a very partisan point of view, this is the way it seems to me. ___________________________ Democrats are a party of pessimists. The Donkey is a good symbol for the Democrats and that Donkey is Eyore, the sad gloomy friend of Winnie the Pooh. The Democrat Theme Song should be: “always look on the dark side.” Kerry’s recent speech has virtually nothing positive to say about the Iraq war. In page after page of doom and gloom the current situation is relentlessly viewed in the most negative light possible. The fact that Hussein is gone, with his torture chambers and rape rooms, that democratic institutions have been established in many cities of Iraq, that free presses now operate, that an interim Iraqi government is preparing for elections; these details are not important enough to mention. Democrats seem to believe that if a corporation makes a profit, it is thereby guilty of a crime. Entrepreneurs who create wealth ar

CBS must be kicking itself. See the story that didn't run as reported by MSNBC http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6073449/site/newsweek/

Kerry Gives Major New Speech: Shows his Thinking on Iraq _________________________________________________________ I said at the time I would have preferred if we had given diplomacy a greater opportunity, but I think it was the right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein. And when the president made the decision, I supported him, and I support the fact that we did disarm him. John F. Kerry, May 3, 2003 We should increase funding [for the war in Iraq] by whatever number of billions of dollars it takes to win. John F. Kerry, August 31, 2003 Those who doubted whether Iraq or the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein, and those who believe that we are not safer with his capture, don't have the judgment to be president or the credibility to be elected president. December 16, 2003 ______________________ From Kerry’s Speech of September 20, 2004 . . . I know this dilemma firsthand. I saw firsthand what happens when pride or arrogance take

I predict Kerry gets clobbered. ____________________________ It will not be difficult for Bush to prepare for the debates. All he has to do is memorize a bunch of contradictory Kerry quotes on ten key issues. Or just give him some written notes with a collection of the most famous Kerry contradictions and have him familiarize himself with them. When Kerry says anything, he can read the contradicting quote to the debate audience. It will make Kerry look like an idiot. The audience has already been prepared with all the Flip-Flop commercials and media discussioin. Kerry may not be an idiot, but he does seem to have a problem explaining his core beliefs. Personally, I think he is a pacifist-Socialist and is therefore very reluctant to be too specific about his core beliefs. An alternate explanation is that he has no core but just enjoys being Senator and thinks it might be fun to be President. _____________________________

says Harvard Kennedy School of Government _____________________ FOUR REASONS BUSH IS AN UNDERDOG (1) A self-described "war president" needs to be winning the war at re- election time. U.S. troops are bogged down in Iraq, and the death toll is growing. (2) Bush and his party represent a declining demographic. The Republican Party is a white, male, Anglo-Saxon Protestant party, as photos from its convention show. (3) Re-election is not the presidential norm. Only 11 presidents have served eight consecutive years. President Reagan was the last Republican president to be re-elected. (4) Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000. The three presidents who failed the first time around to win the popular vote did not return to the White House. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/09/19/INGJ68OT8L1.DTL Martin F. Nolan, a veteran political reporter, is a fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's

_____________________ Here is an interesting article in the Washington Post that places the disputed documents next to legitimate documents and summarizes the nature of the problems. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/graphics/cbsdocs_091804.html _____________________