'Redacted' or not, here comes Brian De Palma!

It is customary on Thanksgiving for Americans to talk about what we are thankful for. We certainly have much to appreciate, but it's doubtful we'd have all we have (or any of it) without people like my friend Danny.

Danny is a Captain in the United States Air Force. He is also engaged to one of my oldest, dearest friends, and has made her a deliriously happy bride-to-be. So for that alone, of course I am thankful.

But Danny comes from a military family; that is, a whole family of brave men and women who live their lives risking everything, every day, for us. Those families are not in short supply in the United States Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and every other branch or division of our Armed Forces. Those families are plenteous, as are the even-more common individuals who risk their lives for us and our allies while their families, if they have families, are many thousands of miles away.

As a journalist, I haven't done much reporting on the war in Iraq. But that which I have written on the war has been part of what many would call the "truth surge" -- an attempt to mirror (without, of course, comparing) -- the remarkably gripping and off-the-mat revitalization of our Armed Forces' rebuilding mission following their successful Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Regardless of the level of daily progress in Iraq, however, the point is that the men and women of our Armed Forces are heroes. For that, I am thankful.

Brian De Palma doesn't agree, however. And whatever the Hollywood director is thankful for today, it isn't the aforementioned sacrifices by our troops.

That's because De Palma doesn't think my friend Danny is a hero. He doesn't think Danny's family are heroes, and he doesn't think much of Danny's fiancee Linda's year spent alternating between clinging to hope that Danny was OK and fighting loneliness.

And that's not because I'm staging or parroting some right-wing interpretation of De Palma's new movie, Redacted, in which De Palma portrays American soldiers as crazed, rabid rapists. It's because De Palma, in a press conference about the movie, in his own words clearly described exactly how he feels about our soldiers.

"The problem is that the language and the way the soldiers are truly reacting are in their blogs and in the videos they make and in the documentaries you see that are made from those videos. When you see these guys on television, they're nothing but giving talking points from whatever they’re supposed to say in order that the one specific image of how the war is going is supposed to be projected. And it's very much understandable."

Take a look at that last line: And it's very much understandable. In other words, we can clearly understand why soldiers wouldn't act like themselves in front of the American public. We might have some respect for these animals as long as we didn't see their true colors, is what De Palma is trying to say.

Look, it isn't a secret that De Palma is just a hack looking to profit off the war. But we can see why he wouldn't act that way at a press conference. We can see why he would just read talking points for the public without saying explicitly that he despises every man and woman in uniform. It's understandable.

You see, what's real is scripted, and what's scripted is real, in De Palma's world.

"We're in a new era of reality television, so if you can believe two people on a beach... are discussing how to scheme against two other people, and they're whispering to each other on 'Survivor', I think you can practically believe anything," De Palma told the press conference attendees.

Reality is unbelievable, so just to be safe, believe Hollywood. You know you can trust them.

And don't worry, though he hates the troops, De Palma hates President George W. Bush more. And his deranged hatred of Bush is the reason he's making this movie.

As he told audience members at the NY Film Festival:

"You know when this administration's over, all the things they did are all going to come out; the books are going to start being written by everybody that was involved in hiding things and manipulating things. And I — we — basically, just want to sort of end this war, you know, and by trying to show what the reality of this war is — stop sugarcoating it."

There you have it. The two reasons, in Brian De Palma's own words, why he and I are thankful for very different things as we celebrate Thanksgiving and head into the Chanukah-Christmas season.

De Palma believes that: (A) It's reasonable to portray our soldiers as subhuman destruction machines if it's for a noble cause, like trying to subvert a twice-elected sitting president's freedom- and democracy-spreading agenda, and (B) He's showing people the "reality" of the situation which, as De Palma told the audience earlier, the mainstream American media just wasn't exposing -- that the soldiers risking their lives in one of the most daring yet noble undertakings in modern history are really just psychopathic thugs.

Today, I'm thankful for what Danny and his fellow soldiers have done for us, and that in March Danny will vow to make my friend Linda eternally happy. Danny and Linda's families are thankful for that, too. My family, and my friends, are thankful for those things as well.

And I think we're all pretty thankful that we're nothing like Brian De Palma.

Who are these unmasked men?

Question: Who are Martin Kramer, Daniel Pipes, Peter Berkowitz, Nile Gardiner, and Norman Podhoretz?

Answer: They are Norman Podhoretz, Martin Kramer, Daniel Pipes, Peter Berkowitz, and Nile Gardiner, respectively.

Confused? So is Newsweek, the author of this pictograph-riddle.

Newsweek, the weekly personality tabloid, recently went after presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani with disastrous results. Not only was the article — which focused on his team of experienced and highly respected conservative advisers — embarrassingly inaccurate, the magazine offered a sidebar with the pictures, names, and descriptions of the six top advisers to help its reader(s) keep track.

Except five out of six headshots are mislabled; only Robert Kasten's photo matches his name and description.


Anyone who still reads Newsweek knows by now that the magazine's writers and editors have never heard of Republicans; they have, however, heard of "neoconservatives" and have been known to appoint "neocons" sans research or contact with said "neocons".

Which makes it even less acceptable to have made such a huge mistake — if you only know one group ("neoconservatives") you should at least know that group. Newsweek admittedly knows nothing of the one thing it claims to know anything about.

Of course, the magazine's hatred of these fine people has to do with the fact that most of them are clear-thinking experts on Middle Eastern affairs. What is striking, however, is that the MSM has championed defeat in Iraq for so long, they are actually getting bored; it's time for them to defeat any prospects for peace in Israel — which is why champions of logic and reasoning like Pipes, Kramer, and Podhoretz are in their crosshairs.

Giuliani recently questioned the wisdom of establishing an independent Palestinian state when it's clear that that state would sponsor terrorism against Israel and the United States. That is a logical approach to the situation, but one that earns you the label "neoconservative" by the MSM.

As president, Giuliani would be careful not to undermine the safety and security of the United States and its important strategic and moral allies. But the MSM isn't concerned with the United States or its allies, so why would Giuliani, who is steadfast in his loyalty to Americans and our Israeli friends, appeal to Newsweek?

Newsweek is a New York-based publication, and New Yorkers are famously protective of the man whose accomplishments as mayor of NYC are still not even fully appreciated by many in the tri-state area. (He helped NJ and NYC simultaneously by catching welfare double-dippers, and his use of the trigger/broken windows crime theory to clean up some of the uncomprehendingly dirty and dangerous parts of the city was more creative and intellectually impressive than most people give him credit for.)

Yet, all it took for the MSM to turn on him completely was his brainy-yet-tough approach to brokering the Arab-Israeli conflict only in such a way that would not sign the Jewish state's death warrant.

Time Warner, Inc., is also based in New York. Yet its current events magazine TIME decided to report on the upcoming Annapolis peace parley from... Cairo. The article, titled "Can Annapolis Forge a Mideast Peace?" unsurprisingly includes exactly zero quotes or comments from Israeli sources.

What it does include, however, are 14 separate references to "Arab sources". Only three are named, and they are the peaceniks Bashar al-Assad (Syria's dictator), Ahmed Abul-Gheit (Egypt's foreign minister), and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal — and those references are either attributed to other news sources or public statements.

The only reference to Israeli points of view is the following sentence, written by the piece's author: "Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert apparently prefers a looser conference agenda, one unlikely to commit to fresh negotiations."

Some form of the word "skepticism" was used three times in the article — never in a quote.

Arab "worry" or "concern" about lack of Israeli or American effort and concessions is referenced four times, and the author, Scott MacLeod, even uses the term "separation wall" to describe the Israeli security fence.

The term "photo-op" is thrown around, as are doubts about Israel's willingness to make peace and President George W. Bush's true intentions. The author refers to Hamas as Fatah's Islamic rival, failing to note that Hamas is actually Islamist, and that Fatah is at best Islamic (clearly not secular). And MacLeod doesn't feel it necessary to challenge either the Saudi prince's implication that Israel's settlements are illegal, or the Arab self-portrait as victims should the parley fail and the region descend into violence. (When was the last time Israelis launched an intifada?)

In other words, MacLeod wrote the article not by paying attention to the news, but by looking at his MSM handbook and relying on (only!) unnamed Arab sources.

So, memo to Giuliani: If you are skeptical about the creation of a Palestinian state, the media will come after you, (A) because you're not Arab or a terrorist apologist and (B) because you and your "neoconservative" advisers only want to go after enemies who have waged war against us.

Memo to everyone: If you want to become a mainstream media darling in the the United States, start by attacking our allies.

Otherwise, Newsweek doesn't even want to know your name.

Ahmadinejad or Gingrich? Free speech laws have spoken

You know something is wrong when our free speech laws are effectively a boon to President Ahmadinejad and a ban on President Gingrich.

Ahmadinejad’s American adventure needs no more mention here, but suffice it to say that the whole affair happened in defense of “freedom of speech”, yet that same freedom’s restrictions, which don’t apply to someone like Ahmadinejad, will keep former House Speaker Newt Gingrich from running for president.

It’s not ironic, it’s just sad — and it needs to encourage a concerted call to the American legislature that something is indeed wrong with the chokehold the McCain-Feingold law has put on political free speech.

Gingrich was mulling a run for the White House after watching the Republican Party stray from its cost-conscious, value-centric roots. He was about to launch a Web site to try to raise the $30 million he felt was needed for a presidential campaign when he was informed that his candidacy would endanger the nonprofit status of his American Solutions for Winning the Future organization.

American Solutions is Gingrich’s idea engine; its very purpose is to get everyday Americans involved in finding solutions to some of the country’s most vexing issues. Dialogue and public brainstorming are staples of Gingrich’s theory that the private sector, run by citizens, are nonstop producers of solutions the government simply can’t (or won’t) figure out.

Gingrich’s point is that private citizens and their endeavors are part of the “world that works”; the government is clearly not. An example he likes to use is that anyone using FedEx or UPS can track a shipment from its point of origin to its recipient, yet the government simply cannot locate some 12 million people inside its own borders.

Gingrich’s exclusion from the field of presidential candidates because of American Solutions means that he cannot run precisely because he is helping solve the country’s problems without turning a profit.

“He had to make a choice between being a citizen-activist, raising the challenges America faces and finding solutions to America’s problems, or exploring a potential candidacy,” Rick Tyler, Gingrich’s spokesman, told Politico.

This should raise so many red flags you’ll think you’re in the middle of a Chinese national pride parade.

For one, it tells us that the most important prerequisites for the highest office in the land are cash, money, and cash money.

What matters is cents, not sense.

Well, sense is what Gingrich has aplenty, and it’s what we need in a president. But McCain-Feingold would open Gingrich up to all sorts of penalties for his efforts on behalf of American Solutions while running for president. What McCain-Feingold does, in this case, is legislate the supposed unfairness of Gingrich speaking for American Solutions, because it would also give his candidacy exposure.

Conveniently, Republican John McCain and his Senate friends in the Democratic Party, such as Mrs. H. Clinton and B. Hussein Obama, didn’t have a problem with being a representative of the people in the United States Senate — voting on any law they want and putting their own names on mountains of gratuitous resolutions — and running for president at the same time.

McCain would likely make an excellent president for a number of reasons, but his lack of foresight in “reaching across the isle” for this bill hurts his own party and his standing within that party. What’s more, it hurts the American voters, and Gingrich’s candidacy is quite a pricey bit of legislative collateral damage.

But long before the bill’s effect on the 2008 elections became clear, Reason magazine pleaded for the bill to be “fixed” in time for the 2004 elections.

The magazine article, written by Jonathan Rauch and published on Oct. 7, 2004, starts out:

“Now it is official: The United States of America has a federal bureaucracy in charge of deciding who can say what about politicians during campaign season. We can argue, and people do, about whether this state of affairs is good or bad, better or worse than some alternative. What is inarguable is that America now has what amounts to a federal speech code, enforced with jail terms of up to five years.”

The article went on to recite some of the more peculiar examples of the bill’s frustrating code.

It mentions conservative activist David Hardy, who was told by the FEC he could not advertise for his gun rights documentary during the pre-election season. Yet, it allowed a Republican group to promote the anti-terrorism efforts of congressional Republicans because no candidate was referred to in the ads.

The article’s most frustrating example was a case in July 2004 when an anti-abortion group in Wisconsin tried to encourage citizens to contact the offices of Senators Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl and tell them to “oppose the filibuster” of conservative judicial nominations.

Feingold was up for re-election, so the ads did not tell people who to vote for, they did not mention political parties (both senators are Democrats), and did not mention the senators’ positions on the issue addressed in the ad. Nevertheless, the ads were forced off air in August of that year until after Election Day.

The group’s then-executive director said this:

“They’ve taken away our speech rights in just giving information on candidates, and now they’re taking away our lobbying rights. Congress is in session, there are legitimate issues before the Congress, and the public has a right to know about them.”

While the bill targets “soft money” contributions effectively, most Americans’ opinions on the role of the almighty dollar in our elections haven’t changed. What has changed, however, is what can be said in public by or about an elected official who is running for re-election; too, the law runs red-tape circles around incumbents’ challengers and their supporters.

In recent elections, Senator McCain has registered some impressive victories over his GOP rivals; this year, his defeat of Gingrich almost assuredly means that neither of them will serve as our next president.

Because of his class status and values, Gingrich most represents the average American. Because of the McCain-Feingold law, the average American will be underrepresented in office yet again in 2008. Because of Gingrich’s preternatural ability to lead and unite, it is all too likely that McCain-Feingold means the American voter will also be underserved in 2008 and beyond.

So, no President Gingrich. But we may have President McCain. Americans would gain a lot if that is the outcome, but would gain even more if President McCain introduced the nation to Secretary of State Gingrich.

Now that would be an American solution.

Dennis the menace goes to Syria

So, Mr. Mamman al-Aki, a good Syrian citizen, goes to polls to partake in his civic duty to vote for Syria's president.

He sees two names on the ballot; he knows one of them, Bashar al-Assad, the current president whose family has been in power since 1970. The other one is new, so he decides to give this fellow his support. He votes for "the other guy."

Feeling proud of himself, he goes home to his wife and tells her how he voted for the underdog so the poor man would feel good about himself.

"What?!? Are you crazy?" his wife responds. "They'll throw you in a dungeon cell and let you rot, then they'll come and take our home and everything we have, and kick me and the kids out into the street, if they even let us live! Go back, tell them you made a mistake, apologize, and change your vote to President al-Assad immediately!"

"My goodness, I didn't think of it that way," Mamman says. "I'll go back right away."

So Mamman goes back to town hall, and tells the guards at the voting booth what happened.

"I don't know what I was thinking," he pleads with them. "I guess I just wasn't paying attention. Please, let me change my vote to President al-Assad. That's who I want to lead our great country. Please."

"Relax," the guard tells him. "Go back home to your wife and children, eat some supper, and get some sleep."

"Yes, there is no need to worry," the other guard assures Mamman as he pats him on the back. "We have already fixed your mistake."

Ever wonder how Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad manages to win elections with 99 percent of the vote, just as his father did before him?
Well, it certainly doesn't seem to keep Democratic Congressman and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich awake at night.

Kucinich recently visited Syria, and met with the despotic al-Assad. The two commiserated on their dislike of President George W. Bush and his nation building efforts in Iraq. They aren't very fond of Bush's attempts to spread democracy to the Middle East, either.

It's not too difficult to imagine just how Kucinich could possibly find the gall to explore some moral equivalence between President Bush and the Syrian dictator and terrorist extraordinaire Bashar al-Assad, especially since he had already made his merry way across the bridge over the River Delusion, with Assad waiting with flowers and bated breath on the other side.

You see, once Kucinich found solidarity with Saddam Hussein's regime, it only makes sense that his next stop would be Syria.

Forget for a moment that Saddam's WMD have been in Syria for years now. There are a list of similarities that make's one wonder whether Kucinich even knows that Assad isn't Hussein.

Consider: Assad's father, Hafez al-Assad, turned Syria's supposed non-Monarch led, people-powered state into a socialized, one-man led institution of fear and suppression.
Sound familiar? That's because it's exactly what Saddam Hussein did in Iraq.

The opposition in Iraq, main the Kurds, were slaughtered by the thousands by Saddam's armed forces. But a few years before Saddam carried out the Kurdish massacres, Assad had already massacred the opposition Syrians (like our intrepid voter Mammar al-Aki) by the thousands.

In 1990, Saddam's army invaded neighbor Kuwait and proceeded to impose colonial rule on the nation and imprison anyone they found that they didn't kill first.
Two months later, Assad's military completed its occupation of neighbor Lebanon, imposing colonial rule and killing or imprisoning anyone, even (or especially) government officials, that dared not toe the line.

Then there was the support for terrorists. While everyone knows that Saddam was connected to Abu Nidal, most of us remember former President Bill Clinton explaining to the American people exactly how Saddam was circumventing sanctions by producing chemical weapons in Sudan, where al-Qaeda was doing Saddam's dirty work and being paid with the kind of WMD that, at the time, only Iraq was building.

When Usama bin Laden visited Baghdad, he and Saddam's senior security staff helped coordinate al-Qaeda's foray into the Northern Iraq camps, where they would be given safe haven and weapons in return for doing some more of Saddam's dirty work, namely killing Kurds.

Soon after that, al-Qaeda and Saddam's Iraqi regime would cement their reputation as the two largest threats to global security and the United States.

Syria, under both Assads, would sponsor PLO and Hezbollah attacks on Israeli citizens. They helped trigger last year's Second Lebanon War, and actively participated by transporting rockets and other weapons in ambulances from Syria to Hezbollah launching pads in civilian Lebanese territory.

Currently, Syria is partnering with Iran to sponsor terror attacks against Americans and Iraqis in Iraq, Israelis in Israel, and Assad continues to arm terrorist cells that have been planning attacks in an attempt to derail the upcoming peace summit between Arab, Israeli, and American leaders.

And oh, by the way, Saddam had a habit of winning those nail-biting, 99-percent re-election victories.

Regardless, Kucinich said in an interview after his meeting with Assad:

"President Assad showed a real desire to play a role in helping to create a peaceful settlement of the conditions in Iraq, as well as a grander approach towards creating peace. So it was a very important meeting, and I felt honored to have the chance to speak with him."

Kucinich then said that Assad's willingness to take in Iraqi refugees (I guess Kucinich never asked him about Palestinian refugees or the Jews that were forcibly removed from their homes in Syria in 1948 and became Israeli refugees):

"[S]hows that here is a man, President Assad, who should be respected and appreciated for the role that he has played. And so it is important for the United States to take that gesture as a sign, a very powerful demonstration, of the willingness to try to achieve peace. And I think we need to move forward with that understanding."

But I'm sure Kucinich would agree that since the war in Iraq removed a dictator that used WMD on his own people, tortured thousands, and murdered thousands more, at least we accomplished something that benefited the world... right?

Here's another Kucinich gem from that interview:

"In the Christian Bible, there is a phrase that says: 'That which is crooked cannot be made straight.' The effort against Iraq was dishonest, or crooked, from the beginning, and nothing good can come of it, except: The international community is needed to become involved to put together a peace-keeping and security force that can move in as the U.S. determines that it must end the occupation..."

So, the U.S., with the help of Syrian peace-keepers, must end the occupation of Iraq which, according to Kucinich, accomplished nothing constructive, despite deposing one of the most murderous dictators in history.

There are people this bonkers in the world. Most of them, however, are not running for president.

Let me help you, Shimon

From CNN's God's Jewish Warriors:

President Shimon Peres: The legal advisor of the Foreign Ministry (MFA) doesn't tell us how to defend our lives.

CNN's Christiane Amanpour: Are you saying Theodore Meron was wrong [in saying that the settlements post-1967 violated the Fourth Geneva Convention]?

SP: I don't know if he was right or wrong from a legal point of view; but he was wrong from a pragmatic point of view. Israel was under a steady attack all the time.

CA: So, just to help me understand this, for the Israeli leadership at the time, pragmatism triumphed over international law.

SP: What you call pragmatism was, in our eyes, —

CA: (Interrupting and pointing disrespectfully) You just said pragmatism.

SP: (Cool as a cucumber) Pragmatism in the sense of security, of defending our lives, yes.

Thankfully, Amanpour's embarrassing bias, lack of even the most basic knowledge of Middle Eastern history, and the overall worthlessness of the settler-bashing project called "God's Jewish Warriors" have been exposed by any number of watchdogs, media critics, and even fellow members of the media. The series on the whole, "God's Warriors", has been panned for the same reasons.

But this particular conversation was problematic for me, because Peres, who handled himself so well it was unclear as to whether he even knew who Amanpour was (lucky him), intimated that Meron's opinion, later proven to be incorrect, might indeed be true.

The truth is that, once upon a time, Peres — an intelligent, eminently likable, and experienced public servant — would never have answered the question this way, but he has taken the role of peacemaker and doesn't seem to want to offend the purveyors of popular opinion, whose latest fad is to blame the settlers and religious Zionists for, well, everything. (I'm anticipating the next JFK docudrama to lay out how Ariel Sharon ordered the Gaza disengagement after discovering the settlers' role in the assassination. Nevermind that Gaza wouldn't fall to Israel for another four years after the murder, facts and numbers don't bother these people.)

Here's how the conversation should have gone:

Christiane Amanpour: Are you saying Theodore Meron was wrong?

Shimon Peres: Yes, he was. And here's why: You see, strange lady, the British Mandate states that the government "shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land." The Mandate, as your CNN anti-Zionist programmers should have loaded onto the hard drive of your android brain computer, referred to the entirety of what is now Israel, Gaza, Judea, and Samaria.

Furthermore, you anti-religious interloper, the Mandate made clear that unless the nations that inherited Mandated property directly from the British Crown renounced their rights under the Mandate, the Mandated rights would continue under the new governments. Israel has not renounced its settlement rights, and, according to the Mandate, CNN "reporters" aren't permitted to do so for them.

Additionally, Professor Stephen Schwebel, former judge on the Hague’s International Court of Justice, wrote that since "The last legal sovereignty over the territories was that of the League of Nations Palestine Mandate which encouraged Jewish settlement of the land", calling the settlements "illegal" has no basis in international law.

CA: (Pointing angrily at Peres, in a huff) But what about UN Resolution 242? Doesn't it state that the evil Zionist occupiers should withdraw from all of the territories captured?

SP: (Pinching himself to make sure he is awake and this woman is for real) Um, no, it doesn't. former US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Eugene Rostow helped craft the resolution, and pointed out in an essay you should have read that the resolution was written the way it was for a reason.
The resolution doesn't state that Israel should withdraw from "all" territories, "the" territories, or "all the" territories. It states Israel should withdraw "from territories". It also makes clear that which territories Israel withdraws from is up to the Israeli and Palestinian governments to mutually agree upon.

CA: (Alternately jumping up and down and stomping on the floor) But doesn't the resolution explicitly state that, as occupiers, the Zionists are forbidden from wearing any head covering that conceals their horns?

SP: (Yawing — he was actually asleep this time, but was woken by all the jumping and stomping) No, it doesn't say that either.

CA: (Now eating her chair, foaming at the mouth, and screaming) But Israel is occupying the territories!

SP: (Looking around the room for Ashton Kutcher, who he is now certain is "Punking" him) Actually, no, and please keep your voice down, this is a civilized society. As former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Meir Shamgar wrote, the Geneva Convention "is based on the assumption that there had been a sovereign who was ousted and that he had been a legitimate sovereign."
Obviously, since there had been no "legitimate sovereign" in between British rule and Israeli rule, there could not possibly be an "occupation" — no one is being occupied.

Back to our friend Schwebel, who wrote in the American Journal of International Law:

"Where the prior holder of territory had seized that territory unlawfully, the state which subsequently takes that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense has, against that prior holder, better title."

So, since Egypt and Jordan had illegally occupied Gaza and the West Bank, respectively, prior to the 1967 war, Israel's claim over those areas is stronger than either of those countries'. Though, as we all know, Egypt and Jordan want nothing to do with those territories. One thing is for sure, according to international law, the territories are least of all Palestinian — no one involved has less of a claim to that land.

CA: (Now about two inches from Peres's nose and screaming in his face ceaselessly)...

SP: (Exiting with his bodyguards, leaving Amanpour screaming at the empty chair where Peres was sitting) This was fun.

The truth will set you free

Free, that is, if you're feeling suffocated and suppressed by those who oppose our freeing of the Iraqi people and our nation building there, or those suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome.

This is a large and vocal part of the MSM and left-wing blogosphere, such as those who are attempting to strong-arm advertisers to pull their ads from FOX News simply because FOX has, through some of the most well-respected meteorologists in the world, questioned the wisdom of global warming alarmism, similar to the NY Times's and TIME Magazine's 20th century global cooling alarmism.

Or those who are advocating the return of the "Fairness Doctrine" to silence conservative talk radio.

And the list goes on. So if you are feeling suppressed by such attacks on freedom, the truth — thanks to Tony Snow — will set you free.

I recently had the privilege of attending a talk by Snow, and I can only hope such events occur with increasing frequency. The speech was long, so I will only deal with some of the statistics Snow gave us to offer readers some insight into what is actually going on in Iraq. (Disclaimer: if you are the type that cringes at any and every nugget of good news out of Iraq, you should probably stop reading.)

Digesting Snow's report was at times troubling, because it appears that some politicians are living so far from reality that they don't even bother with a timeshare on the beautiful shores of truth — they'll never visit.

Take, for example, Hillary Clinton's response to President George W. Bush's optimistic address about Iraq.

Duane Patterson, writing on Townhall.com, gave us Clinton's pithy quote:

"The surge was designed to give the Iraqi government time to take steps to ensure a political solution to the situation. It has failed to do so."

That's interesting, because none of it's true. It's also frightening, because Clinton is running for president and she clearly has no handle on such a pivotal issue.

Democrats' lapdogs over at the Daily Kos offered a piece that claimed that Bush and co. were actually attempting to fail in Iraq, and so the war has been a rousing success, because it is a failure. Were it to be a success, it would be a failure, because only failure can ensure success; failure to fail, therefore, is the only failure that could be considered failure, because we would have not succeeded... in failing.
Such is the logic over at Kos.

In any event, the figures from Central Command in Baghdad have come in, and Snow let us in on information that would make any sane American proud — essentially, how effective the surge has been.

• High profile attacks have dropped nearly 50 percent since May, to 70 a month
  
• The number of tips from Iraqi citizens has quadrupled from 6,000 a month to 24,000
• The tips have led our forces to valuable targets including weapons caches: so far this year we’ve captured more than 3,700 weapons caches. In all of last year we only captured 2,700
• We’ve also taken down dozens of senior al-Qaeda leaders, along with Sunni insurrectionists and Shi'a militia members
• We’ve increased the pace of battalion-level operations 50 percent from last year
• Sectarian murders have declined dramatically, from 1,713 in December to 626 in June
• Coalition forces are killing or capturing an average of 1,500 al-Qaeda terrorists and other enemies per month since January.

“You call that losing? You call that failure? Is this outcome bad for the [Democratic] party? Facts are curious things, aren’t they?” Snow said.

But wait, there's more! That nation building thing we mentioned? It's happening, and it's downright inspiring.

• Since the war began, the average income of Iraqis has tripled, even accounting for inflation
  
• 15 of the nation’s provinces are largely at peace
• More than 200,000 engineers are employed at more than 240 factories around the country
• The Iraqi government is working to spend $10 billion this year — one-quarter of its budget — on capital investment
• Since the surge began, in Anbar province alone we’ve spent $5.5 million on a program that has provided jobs for 18,000 people
  

Of course, the town of Ramadi is probably the most dramatic example of what our brave men and women are accomplishing in Iraq.

Ramadi has seen such improvement over the last year that officials in Iraq are rendered almost speechless at the transformation. Ramadi's strides have really picked up since the surge began. Don't forget that this town was considered by some to be the most dangerous place in Iraq.

Consider:

• A year ago, Ramadi averaged 40 attacks a day. The average today is less than one
• A year ago, Ramadi had two police stations, with 200 officers. Today, it has 30 police stations with 7,400 officers
• In three days, more than 1,200 army recruits signed up in the town
• Our ambassador, Ryan Crocker, recently went into the Ramadi marketplace without body armor. He was greeted with flowers and candy and cheers of gratitude
• Another general reported the surge led to the killing and capture of dozens of al-Qaeda leaders, the capture of dozens of weapons caches, and the destruction of terror cells throughout the country.

“So I ask you again: Is this what it means to lose? Is this a failure? How can this possibly be bad for any political party?” Snow asked again.

He was referring, among (too many) others, to House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, who told the Washington Post that he'd seen evidence of progress in Iraq, and feared that if it continues, blue dog Democrats may support the surge.
If Republicans stay more or less united on the war — the opposition to which the Democrats believe is key to their retaining a congressional majority and possibly taking back the White House — Clyburn said it would be “a real big problem for us.”

Read those words again. According to top Democrats, it is more important to the party that our forces and the Iraqi people fail; otherwise, people like Clyburn might not be famous anymore.

I'll leave you with an excerpt from a story by Der Spiegel's Ullrich Fichtner, reporting from Iraq for the German magazine.

"Ramadi is an irritating contradiction of almost everything the world thinks it knows about Iraq — it is proof that the US military is more successful than the world wants to believe. Ramadi demonstrates that large parts of Iraq — not just Anbar Province, but also many other rural areas along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers — are essentially pacified today. This is news the world doesn't hear: Ramadi, long a hotbed of unrest, a city that once formed the southwestern tip of the notorious "Sunni Triangle," is now telling a different story, a story of Americans who came here as liberators, became hated occupiers and are now the protectors of Iraqi reconstruction."

"Protectors of Iraqi reconstruction" — that's the truth, and it will set you free. Just ask the Iraqi people.

UPDATE: On this subject, you absolutely must read the Protein Wisdom's blog from Karl. It may be the single most important blog post this year. Just fantastic stuff.

Silly Season, Israeli style

When I was covering local politics for a group of Central New Jersey newspapers, the publicity circus surrounding each election was playfully called "silly season." It soon became apparent, however, that Silly Season lasted for about 11 months a year.

Almost as soon as one election was over, the next began, as re-election seemed to trump actual governing way too often. After all, it was always more fun to think up clever TV ads and newspaper op-eds than it was to, say, lower taxes.

After covering local politics, most reporters are unimpressed by just about any and every story, which, hopefully, allows them to offer an impartial, emotionless account of the continuing insanity that is the project known as democratic politics.

That's certainly how I felt, until I followed the Aug. 14 primary election for the chairmanship of the Likud Party. I remarked to a friend that the whole thing couldn't have been more humorously surreal if Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, and Dana Carvey had been running in an SNL sketch on Israeli politics. {"Live from Tel-Aviv, it's Motzai Shabbat!"}

If life is a journey, not a destination, then this election was all about how "Bibi" Netanyahu got his 73 percent of the vote.

And that journey has quite a highlight reel.

The Election Day madness began with Moshe Feiglin praying on the Temple Mount and Jews for Jesus and their Messianic (read: Episcopalian) Jewish brethren throwing their support behind Bibi, essentially pitting some Likudniks' "messiah" against the messi-aniacs.

But then, thankfully, the election became less holy war, more circus. Literally.

Feiglin voted at the Jerusalem International Convention Center, where a man dressed as a clown (the Likud Leitzan?) was offering to draw caricatures of voters who promised to vote for Feiglin.

Immediately after voting there, Feiglin said: "This will be remembered as an emotional day in which Israel will return to the people and will no longer be controlled by a leftist minority and politicians on the Right who do their bidding." Okay, Moshe. You, the clown, and the 8,670 citizens who voted for you have finally returned Israel to the people.

Of course, not everybody's vote counted. All the ballots cast in Nazareth Elite were declared invalid because someone left the polling station and took the ballot box with them, unsupervised.

But the election wasn't just between Feiglin and Bibi. World Likud chairman Danny Danon was also running — unless you were voting in the North, where Danon's name wasn't even on many of the ballots.

The folks over at RonMossad.com told me they were big fans of the "dueling anthems" — Netanyahu's camp blasting the traditional Likud anthem next to Feiglin's tent, where they were blasting Ariel Zilber's Likud anthem parody, written specially for the election.

Netanyahu is a fine public speaker, and this was a proud occasion to utilize that ability to launch his general election campaign with a rousing victory speech. Too bad none of the media covered it, so we don't know what he said. Apparently, he changed rooms, and the press wasn't happy with the new location, because it wasn't the old location, and they boycotted the speech. G-d only knows what really happened there, but it's almost as if this election were a dry run for a second primary.

Which, incidentally, is exactly what Sylvan Shalom, the Likudnik who was considered Bibi's only real threat in the election, wants. Shalom, you see, decided not to run because the primary was so early. He didn't even vote in the election, probably because he managed to convince himself that this whole thing wasn't really happening.

Not that Israelis, and especially Likudniks, didn't get a preview of the feel-good comedy of the summer. Last month, it became public that a Feiglin supporter "squatted" www.netanyahu.com, and turned it into a parody site, poking sarcastic fun at Bibi's outsized persona and sometimes supersized ego. The site, run by someone named Nathan Horowitz, is good for quite a few laughs, and by far its funniest page is a list of "Bibi's" campaign slogans. "Feiglin Shmeiglin", "Because it's my turn now", "Principles so strong only I can break them", and "Because I speak good English" are a few of the fake "Bibi" slogans Horowitz offers.

Danon would do well to drop his request for a new election. He has nothing new to offer, and this election did a service to the Likud by reminding the country that it is still the party of tough negotiators, fierce competitors, support for the Orthodox (Feiglin) and support for the settlers (Netanyahu), while still showing consistency in the voters' overall support for one candidate: Binyamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu is still the Likud's best chance for returning the premiership to their party. Labor's Ehud Barak, not being much of a politician, has decided his best campaign strategy would be to keep his mouth shut, so Bibi has gained ground on several foreign and domestic fronts while Barak has barely acknowledged that the public exists.

I am reminded of Bibi's March 1996 meeting with Bill Clinton, prior to elections, when Bibi was the opposition leader. At the King David Hotel, Clinton met briefly with Bibi, from whom he always wanted to keep his distance; Bibi, after all, was friendly with Conservatives like Newt Gingrich, and rose through the ranks so quickly he was almost an island of self-assurance, rarely willing to take orders from an American president.

As the two parted, Bibi said to Clinton: "We'll meet again when I am prime minister of Israel."

Clinton smiled, politely and condescendingly. Bibi smiled, too. Clinton never thought Netanyahu would win; Netanyahu was convinced it was his destiny.
It would behoove the Likudniks to put this election behind them, keep their eyes on the prize, and remember that they share both power and destiny.