The Rant

_________________________ by George Will writing for Newsweek and the Washington Post CENTRAL COMMAND HEADQUARTERS, Tampa: By following the movements, updated every eight minutes, of blue icons on a screen here displaying a satellite photograph of Fallujah's streets, a four-star general could monitor, in real time, the movements of a squad through an intersection in that city. He could, but Gen. John Abizaid does not, having many more worries. As commander of Central Command, he is director of the military responsibilities -- especially the war on terror -- in 27 nations from the Horn of Africa to the Middle East, and through South and Central Asia, including Afghanistan and Pakistan. But operations in Fallujah, and perhaps in three or more other Iraqi cities, may determine whether elections scheduled for late January midwife the birth of a viable state. And as the operations began, there was an expectation here that of the eight Iraqi military units collaborating with U....

__________________ by Jeff Jacoby Boston Globe YASSER ARAFAT died at age 75, lying in bed surrounded by familiar faces. He left this world peacefully, unlike the thousands of victims he sent to early graves. In a better world, the PLO chief would have met his end on a gallows, hanged for mass murder much as the Nazi chiefs were hanged at Nuremberg. In a better world, the French president would not have paid a visit to the bedside of such a monster. In a better world, George Bush would not have said, on hearing the first reports that Arafat had died, "God bless his soul." God bless his soul? What a grotesque idea! Bless the soul of the man who brought modern terrorism to the world? Who sent his agents to slaughter athletes at the Olympics, blow airliners out of the sky, bomb schools and pizzerias, machine-gun passengers in airline terminals? Who lied, cheated, and stole without compunction? Who inculcated the vilest culture of Jew-hatred since the Third Reich? Hum...

_____________________ by Ralph Peters New York Post November 11, 2004 -- IN the Second Battle of Fallujah, military operations are ahead of schedule. Our casualties have been blessedly light. The terrorists who haven't fled are being killed by the hundreds. Our troops will soon achieve their goal of eliminating Iraq's key safe haven for terrorists. Our Marines and soldiers have carried the ball inside the 10-yard line. The media's response? Move the goalposts. The legions of pundits ("Will talk for food") now suggest that a win in Fallujah will be meaningless because we failed to kill or capture the terrorist leadership, because some of the thugs ran away and because Fallujah won't resemble Darien, Conn., by next Sunday. On Tuesday, as our troops handily pierced the defenses terrorists had spent months erecting, The New York Times carried two front-page stories implying that our forces were facing possible defeat. The Times' military analysis...

____________________________ by Christopher Hitchens in Slate The left apologizes for religious fanatics. The president fights them. By Christopher Hitchens Posted Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2004, at 7:34 AM PT Many are the cheap and easy laughs in which one could indulge at the extraordinary, pitiful hysteria of the defeated Democrats. "Kerry won," according to one e-mail I received from Greg Palast, to whom the Florida vote in 2000 is, and always will be, a combination of Gettysburg and Waterloo. According to Nikki Finke of the LA Weekly, the Fox News channel "called" Ohio for Bush for reasons too sinister to enumerate. Gregory Maniatis, whose last communication to me had predicted an annihilating Democratic landslide, kept quiet for only a day or so before forwarding the details on how to emigrate to Canada. Thus do the liberals build their bridge to the 20th century. Who can care about this pathos? Not I. But I do take strong exception to one strain in the ...

by John Hood Reason Online ______________________________ Few reporters or commentators appear to have gone back to examine the 2000 exit polls, which would seem to be necessary if one wishes to assert a trend. I did. I found that the percentage of voters sampled who said they attended church at least weekly was the same—42 percent—in both 2000 and 2004. The percentage never attending church was also the same, at 15 percent. The middle group, those attending occasionally, was, you guessed it, 42 percent each time. Interestingly, while Bush slightly improved his standing among frequent churchgoers, by about a point in 2004, his support grew by 3 to 4 points among those attending seldom or never. Yep, it was the atheist vote that really put Bush over the top in 2004. http://www.reason.com/hod/jh110804.shtml hee hee _________________________________

by Mark Steyn Daily Telegrah (UK) We weren't dumb enough to vote Kerry (Filed: 09/11/2004) Last week, you may recall, I quoted Bob Kerrey - not the Kerry who was running for president, but a fellow senator and Vietnam veteran and a big backer of his near-namesake. This Kerrey was on television a couple of days before the election and claimed to have the pulse of the man in the street. "I was in Gallia, Ohio, down in the southeastern part of Ohio," he said. "They don't give a damn about the war in Iraq. They're terrified about the loss of their job, health care, their pensions. That's what's bothering them." I begged to differ: "In fact," I wrote, "the people - in Gallia, Ohio and many other places - understand the relevance of Iraq and Afghanistan to their well-being rather more clearly than the Democratic leadership do." Just for the record, on Tuesday, in Gallia County, Ohio, George W Bush won 62 per cent of...

_________________________ by Bob Clasen The terrorists and anti-democratic forces in Fallujah are about to be crushed, together with the remaining opposition forces. Free elections remain on the near horizon in Iraq, just as they were successfully held a short time ago in Afghanistan. Terrorists in North Korea and Iran must look on the re-election of George Bush with a new kind of terror -- their own. As well they should. If North Korea refuses to take part in the six country negotiations, Bush is not going to follow the lead of Clinton and pay blackmail to North Korea to enable it to continue its illegal development of nuclear weapons in secret. Iran is not going to be permitted to develop the capacity to create nuclear weapons, as would undoubtedly be the case if the U.N. is allowed to decide the issue, as Kerry wanted. The continued necessary internal security created by the Patriot Act is not going to be sabotaged by people who worry more about the civil liber...