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ix very long paragraphs into a seven-paragraph column in Slate, Christopher Hitchens finally gets around to the big question, as if it was an intellectual breakthrough of such import it needed a hefty introduction:

Which brings me to a question that I think deserves to be asked: Did the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime, and the subsequent holding of competitive elections in which many rival Iraqi Shiite parties took part, have any germinal influence on the astonishing events in Iran?

Oh, you mean like the Bush Doctrine?  Show them a little Democracy and stand back? Hitchens hedges his bets, saying “one swallow does not make the summer,” and subheading the article (possibly by editors, not Hitchens), “Given the connections between Iraq and Iran, it’s not as unlikely as it sounds).

Unlikely? One swallow? Iraq has a Shi’ite majority and Iran is a Shi’ite country.  Iranians know what the condition of Iraqi Shi’ites was before the war, and they know their condition now.  They see elections that are fair and open being held just across the border, and they know of candidates now holding office in Iraq that would never be approved by the Mullahs to even run in Iran.

The Bush Doctrine meme has been remarkably thin in all the coverage, blogging, punditry and tweeting over the Iran elections, but it stands in the middle of the story like an 800-pound gorilla no one wants to write about. Bush’s war in Iraq so obviously led to the deep yearning for freedom in Iran that the leftist readers of Salon are howling in defensive, unsustainable protest:

Trace192 lays out the familiar diatribe:

Hundreds of thousands of American injured.. millions of innocent Iraqi civilians displaced or killed.. billions of taxpayer’s money wasted..

And there’s Hitch, still desperately grasping at straws in an attempt to justify it.

The loss of life in Iraq, while exponentially smaller than leftists predicted prior to the war, remains tragic and the Left refuses to let a single one of those deaths stand for something.

Candoxx has a disbelief of biblical proportions:

Well well well, not since the crucifixion of Jesus Christ has the extrication of one man and his sons from the planet resulted in so much, eh?

On planet Hitchens.

Philadelphia Steve is so sure of his worldview that he doesn’t want to be bothered by being asked to think about any opposing view. He’ll just remain 100% sure of himself about everything, despite history, despite events:

Do the Neocons ever give up their attempts to justify Bush’s bungled, incompetent, wasteful invasoin and occupation of Iraq?

No.

And they never will.

The only question is why Slate, or anyone else, continues to waste space on people who have been 100% wrong on everything.

why?

Sir Real turns logic on its head, seeing a democracy (of sorts) ruled by Shi’ites as a threat to Iraq just like that big bad Sunni Saddam was:

On the one hand, it’s self-evident that people’s experiences (with, say, a brand spankin’ new neighboring government) color their perceptions.

On the other hand, are you effing kidding me?

You could, AT BEST, argue that the Iranian people are willing to demonstrate because they no longer have to fear Saddam on the border. (The Iran-Iraq war killed 188k+ Iranian men and boys- not the kind of thing you want to re-occur by, say, destabilizing your current government). But to imply that Iraq is some sort of democracy showroom, and that the events of June ’09 are the Iranians just itchin’ to buy is deeply self-serving, especially on the part of those who cheerleading led us there in the first place.

Geopolitics as dominoes- Stupid then (RIP McNamara), Stupid now.

And of course there’s always the leftist who can’t put together a thought without profanity, like the commenter blahblahblah, who’s so jaded, so cool to it all, so above it, so blithely unbothered that he/she actually comments as if thinking in poems; obscene poems to be sure, but poems nonetheless:

Every f****** Iranian you know
believed in the lie that was Moussavi’s lie
which he enunciated at a press conference before the g**d*** returns came in
when he declared that he was the winner of the election,
when in fact every lucid fact and number
before and after the election nationwide spoke otherwise.
So why the f*** should I care about your f***** friends,
when you’ve all become just a bunch of wishful thinking lying b******.

Give me change or a revolution based on the f****** truth
and not the hopeful lies with which you peddle so dearly hateful sir.
Good f****** grief.

I’ll leave out the obscenity, since it’s just not needed: Good grief.

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W

iser minds always said that  publishing a timetable for leaving Iraq would lead to an upsurge in violence.  But what do wiser minds know? We’re just a bunch of warmongers, right? Wrong.

Today, four U.S. soldiers were killed in combat related to the withdrawal, apparently in some sort of firefight, although news is still sketchy at this time; we only know they died of “combat-related injuries.”  Their deaths are part of a rising tide of violence leading up to the much planned-for and publicized turning over of control of several Iraqi cities to Iraqi control: 250 people killed in all during June.

The American media has been mum on the surging levels of violence that have accompanied the withdrawal timeline, even though it’s following exactly the course those critical of Obama’s position on Iraq predicted.  Where are the charges of “Blood on Obama’s Hands!”  Where are the follow-up heart-wrenching personal interest stories on the families torn apart by the violence?  Nowhere. Such stories would require fair and factual reporting.

In AP’s report, linked above, there was one quote I loved reading.  It was a bit buried, so let me raise it up a bit:

President Jalal Talabani said the day could not have happened without the help of the United States, which invaded Iraq in 2003 and ousted Saddam — who was later convicted by an Iraqi court and executed in December 2006.

“While we celebrate this day, we express our thanks and gratitude to our friends in the coalition forces who faced risks and responsibilities and sustained casualties and damage while helping Iraq to get rid from the ugliest dictatorship and during the joint effort to impose security and stability,” Talabani said.

Quotes like that are, I hope, played loud and long throughout the repressed nations of the Muslim world, so they strike fear into the hearts of the likes of Ahmadinejad and al-Assad.

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I

t seems like only yesterday we were looking at nominee #3 for this year’s C-SM “Most Ridiculous” award (actually, it was Tuesday), and here we are again so soon with #4 – a second nominated article from the nearly always ridiculous Gary Kamiya of Salon.

Kamiya easily checks off all the requirements for consideration for this august (if ridiculous) honor:  He is a serious writer, writing about a serious subject in all seriousness, yet he goes far beyond the sublime, settling heavily into the imbecilic.

His piece, Night of the Living Neocons, The shameless fools whose Iraq folly empowered Iran’s hard-liners are back, smearing Obama as an appeaser, is typical Kamiya: Blind to all the Left’s faults, while accusing the right of exactly those faults … oh, and being utterly unable to forgive or forget George W. Bush, who he sees as the primordial presidential ooze from which all things evil evolved.

Let’s start with a rundown of the derrogatory words he uses for neocons:  Rasputin-like, unhinged, disgraced, braying, raving, unreconstructed, lunatic, Visigothic, idiotic, ludicrous, paper-pushing pundits ensconced in comfy right-wing think tanks, supposedly “idealistic,” and cavalier.  A little later on he belittles neocons for belittling Obama.  The pot is allowed to call the kettle black, but the kettle gets no such rights in Kamiyaland.

As the piece’s title hints, Kamiya believes it’s Bush who created Iran’s hard-line regime, and that Obama is right to appease use carefully considered words, because just three words – axis of evil – are behind all that’s wrong in Iran.

That these neoconservative pundits have the gall to talk about Iran at all, let alone pose as defenders of the Iranian people, would be stunning if it were not so familiar. For it was their own policies that were largely responsible for the rise of the hard-liners in Iran. … And of those U.S. actions, none was more consequential than the very “axis of evil” statement that the neocons are now tumbling over each other to glorify.

Kamiya quotes Islamic affairs scholar Malise Ruthvin:

“The build-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq provided them with strong public support. In the local council elections of February 2003 — one month before the invasion — conservatives regained nearly all the seats they had lost in 1999 at the peak of the reformist movement. This was not a rigged poll: for unlike the parliamentary and presidential races, candidates for municipal elections are not vetted for ‘Islamic suitability.’ The right-wing victory was sealed two years later with Ahmadinejad’s election as president.”

It’s simplistic to blame the results of elections in Iran on the actions of America. Economic issues at home and tribal alliances and conflicts also matter greatly, and whatever America does or does not do is grossly distorted by the state-controlled Iranian media – which didn’t cover Obama’s Cairo speech and reported his recent milquetoast comments as if they were incendiary. Be that as it may, haven’t events borne out the fact that Iran is indeed evil? It has ruthlessly repressed its people, called for the destruction of free, Democratic Israel, tried to strip Lebanon of democracy, killed our soldiers, and thumbed its nose at the world.

Oh, and we need not mention Jimmy Carter’s contribution to the mess in Iran, or Bill Clinton’s.  We need not mention that Democratic presidents have had their visions for progress in the Middle East destroyed by Islamists just as much as Republican ones have.  Kamiya just won’t talk about that – he just is interest in the failure of Republicans.

Kamiya than attacks the Iraq war, familiar ground for him indeed:

And, of course, the entire Iraq war greatly empowered Iran by removing its greatest enemy, Saddam Hussein, and shifting power to Iran’s coreligionist Shiites.

He ignores the fact that the war also created a functioning (for better or worse) Muslim democracy next door, something the Tehraniacs have fought tooth and nail since the neocons first started working towards bringing it about. We didn’t remove Hussein and leave a vacuum; we did it and left a form of government that threatens Tehran to its core. How many of the demonstrates on the Iranian streets are there because they saw fair elections happen next door, and they want them now, too? Most of them!

At this point, Kamiya must have stopped writing and fired up a big, fat doobie because what follows appears to be some kind of drug-induced hallucination:

One of the things the neocons would like the rest of us to forget is that they were the most ardent proponents of invading the very country whose people they now piously claim to support. Back in the heady “Mission Accomplished” days, the neocon slogan was “Wimps go to Baghdad — real men go to Tehran.” Leaving aside the fact that the neocons were a bunch of paper-pushing pundits ensconced in comfy right-wing think tanks who never “went” anywhere that didn’t have room service, the point is that they have been burning to attack Iran for years — an attack that would inevitably result in the slaughter of tens or hundreds of thousands of Iranians. Yes, some of them claimed that invading Iran would be a cakewalk, that the long-suffering Iranian people would welcome Americans as liberators, and so on. (Some of them even managed to keep a straight face while saying this.) And if you believe them, there’s a bridge in Fallujah I’d like to sell you.

Have any of you ever heard any of us call for any sort of ground attack on Iran that would slaughter hundreds of thousands of Iranians? I sure haven’t, although I’ve heard plenty of calls for limited attacks on Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Have any of you heard that “Real men go to Tehran” slogan? I sure haven’t. Have any of you heard anyone idiotic to say attacking Iran would be a cakewalk? To the contrary, I’ve heard neocons explain that Iraq was selected as a target because a war with Iran would be exponentially more difficult. Look at all the straw dogs barking at the neocons!

As if you haven’t guessed by now, the next target of Kamiya’s angst is Israel:

Beneath their talk of spreading freedom and democracy, the neocons have always hated and feared Iran. There are several reasons for this, including the state of enmity between Iran and America spurred by the Khomeini revolution and the 1979 hostage crisis, but the main one is that Iran is Israel’s most dangerous enemy. Removing Iran as a threat to Israel is the main strategic goal of the neoconservatives, and that goal is far more important to them than “liberating” the Iranian people.

That’s it. Really. There’s no mention of holocaust denial or pledges to wipe Israel off the map. There’s no mention that Israel is a democracy. And there is certainly no mention of the regional destabilization a nuclear Iran would present, or the threat to America posed by Iran providing terrorists with nuclear weapons or materials for dirty bombs. It’s just that we have this curious strategic goal to protect Israel.

The most tragic and pathetic statement by Kamiya follows.

For the truth is that the neocons’ supposed “idealism” was and is in fact a fig leaf covering utter, cavalier indifference to the massive death and destruction their reckless — but so “principled” — policies caused.

He apparently has avoided any contact with information about what happened in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos after his side won and we ended all that neocon silliness about domino theories in Southeast Asia. Millions died, were tortured or forced into state-sanctioned slavery, and that’s all just hunky dory with Kamiya – just don’t ask him to consider how hundreds of thousands were executed by Hussein, but that doesn’t happen any more … well, it happens in Iran, but not Iraq.

And what of Obama’s position in all this?  Why, it’s just brilliant, of course!

The situation in Iran is a tricky moving target, but so far, Obama has played it exactly right on. He has expressed deep concern about the election and the regime’s violent response to peaceful demonstrators, but added that “it is not productive, given the history of US-Iranian relations to be seen as meddling — the U.S. president, meddling in Iranian elections.”

Since when is calling for fair elections “meddling?”  Since when is sympathizing with freedom-loving people “meddling.”  I know meddling when I see it:  Owning 60 percent of GM or canning its CEO; that’s meddling. But Kamiya is convinced in a meddle-free foreign policy:

It should be amply clear by now that America’s ability to influence events in the Middle East is severely limited. Indeed, as the Bush years showed, U.S. actions in the region tend to result in the exact opposite of their intended consequences.

He then turns around and says:

The success of the March 14 Alliance in Lebanon, a major victory for the U.S., is widely attributed to the “Obama effect.”

Which is it? Is he saying the Cairo speech led to the riots in Iran as the exact opposite of its intended consequences?  Or is he saying that Obama should speak very strongly in favor of democracy in Iran because there’s an “Obama effect” that can really make things happen?  I am so confused.  But that’s something that happens frequently when I consider the ridiculous things said by Liberals.

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S

hould George Bush have invaded Iraq? It’s a question we’ll debate forever, but ask the families of 42 Iraqi flour merchants, and you’ll probably get a yes because they remember the old Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

The 42 were accused by Hussein’s government of profiteering, which you can freely translate as “not giving Hussein what he demands.” In a civilized country, they would have been fined and possibly jailed. In Hussein’s Iraq, they were summarily tried and executed. The Iraq High Tribunal has found Tariq Aziz, long the public face of Hussein’s reign of terror, guilty of his role in the murders, along with two of Hussein’s half-brothers, who were sentenced to death. Aziz escaped with a 15-year sentence, which means he’ll probably die in jail.

Also sentenced: Ali Hassan “Chemical Ali” al-Majid, who received a 15-year sentence, and two other former Hussein officials.

In addition to the slaughter of the 42 merchants, the men were also tried for involvement in other bruttal acts by the Hussein terror regime, including the suppression of the Shi’ia uprising, during which thousands were killed, and the chemical attaks on the Kurds.

The Iraq High Tribunal would not be functioning and these men would not be facing punishment for their crimes were it not for the U.S. invasion. No, instead Hussein would still be holding on to power, still threatening his neighbors, still shooting at U.S. planes sactioned by the U.N. to enforce the no-fly zone, still crushing his people in the name of kleptocracy.

Was it worth it? It all depends on how it turns out – something that’s very much on David Kilkullen’s mind. Kilcullen – that’s him on the left – is an Australian army officer who influenced Gen. David Petraeus’ thinking on counterinsurgency and the surge, and  he’s worried it might not turn out well at all:

Kilcullen’s ideas, as implemented by Petraeus, helped make the surge more successful than earlier American initiatives in the war, and they are likely to shape U.S. policy in Iraq and Afghanistan for the immediate future. Kilcullen, who was profiled in the New Yorker in 2006 and currently works for a think tank called the Center for New American Security (CNAS), has laid out his views in a new book, “The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One.” Filled with lists, diagrams and bullet points (never underestimate the effect of PowerPoint on contemporary official prose style), the book lays out what Kilcullen thinks America must do to redeem itself in Iraq and Afghanistan (not to mention the wider Muslim world). Like many of his colleagues, however, he seems skeptical that we’ll summon the will to pull it off.

Although Kilcullen has worked for the Bush administration (most notably as an advisor to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice) he has never disguised his belief that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was “an extremely serious strategic error” — “f***ing stupid” is how he reportedly characterized it in a less formal context. Furthermore, he regards the early conduct of the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan as ineffective and often self-defeating. Nevertheless, he insists that America owes it to both nations not to abandon them to the sectarian bloodshed that would probably follow a hasty withdrawal: “Regardless of anyone’s position on the decision to invade, those obligations still stand and cannot be wished away merely because they have proven inconvenient.” (Salon)

Agreed; the obligations cannot be washed away, but it is still possible, likely even, that Obama will nonetheless walk away from it, leaving too soon an Iraq that is emerging from chaos and establishing a functional, Democratic government.

And if he does, and if Iraq fails as a result, we’ll know the answer to the question “Was it worth it?”  And we won’t like the answer much.

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Budget Office Has No Faith In Stimulus

T

he Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan provider of economic analysis to Congress, isn’t the least bit optimistic about the effect of Porkasaurus on the economy. In fact, they see it as bad news:

President Obama’s economic recovery package will actually hurt the economy more in the long run than if he were to do nothing, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.

CBO, the official scorekeepers for legislation, said the House and Senate bills will help in the short term but result in so much government debt that within a few years they would crowd out private investment, actually leading to a lower Gross Domestic Product over the next 10 years than if the government had done nothing.

CBO estimates that by 2019 the Senate legislation would reduce GDP by 0.1 percent to 0.3 percent on net. [The House bill] would have similar long-run effects, CBO said in a letter to Sen. Judd Gregg, New Hampshire Republican, who was tapped by Mr. Obama on Tuesday to be Commerce Secretary. (WashTimes)

And what of all the jobs Obama says (models) his bill will create?  CBO dismisses the impact of Porkasaurus jobs on the economy as “minimal.” And that makes this comment from “Suggestions4Obama” particularly pathetic:

I do not understand why people are having diffculty understanding. The number of unemployed people (11.6 million) and the unemployment rate (7.6 percent) rose in January. Over the past 12 months, the number of unemployed persons has increased by 4.1 million. The Department of Labor reported today that nonfarm payroll employment fell sharply in January (-598,000) and the unemployment rate rose from 7.2 to 7.6 percent. Payroll employment has declined by 3.6 million since the start of the recession in December 2007, …. most of this mess happening only in past three months! And some wonder Obama is pushing so hard for a stimulus package. Is the Herbert Hoover approach, do nothing, all we need, leading us to a twelve year depression ??

Here’s the deal, S4O:  Simply stating the problem doesn’t make the stimulus a solution. Ask the guys in the photo – after all, the Depression got worse after FDR tried to spend his way out of it. Continue Reading »

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“T

hese are the people we need now: people who represent everyone in Iraq and have no sectarian bias.” – Zaid Abdul-Karim, 44, an Iraqi government employee voting in today’s provincial elections.

“I just voted and I’m very happy. We could not do the same thing the last time because of the insurgency.” – Mukhalad Waleed, 35, Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province.

“We were not able to vote during the 2005 elections because of the deteriorating security situation. But now we feel safe enough to go out and vote.” – Ahmed Jassim, 19, from Baqouba, in violence-prone Diyala Province.

“[This vote is] “very important.  I want to ensure my future and the future of my children.” – Yaqdhan al-Hassani, 36, Baghdad, a married father-of-three.

“I feel great.  I feel like I am doing this for Iraq.” – Ali al-Fayath, 18, who has just turned old enough to vote.

“I am so happy. I chose the person that will represent me.” – Raad al-Shimari, 30, Baghdad

Of course all these news reports included some quotes from people frustrated by the voting process and there were scattered anti-American quotes to be found as well (NYT, anyone?), but all balanced the negative with positive.  Well, my bet is that “balanced” is a gross overstatement, that reporters had to work hard to find negative quotes and cull through reams of positive quotes to select one or two.

All of the stories reported on a lack of violence during the voting – just one incident of a couple injuries when police fired to stop people from carrying cell phones into the polling booth, since cell phones can be used to trigger bombs. As could be expected, all of the MSM stories skirted the obvious, never coming right out and stating the obvious:  In the last elections, al-Qaeda orchestrated an unsuccessful campaign of terror in an attempt to keep people from voting.  In this post-surge election, al-Qaeda was gone, vanished, irrelevant.

Here’s what they’re all avoiding saying: We won. We planted a functioning and popular Democracy in Iraq.

Sources: AP, NYT, Times of London, Int. Herald Trib, WaPo.

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A

s I mentioned yesterday, liberal blogger Dan Chmielewski and I have been in a “wall war” on facebook over Gitmo and, with his last post, the whole raison d’etra of the Iran war.  Chmielewski posed a two-parter:

You didn’t answer the question Laer; what did we win? Seton Hall researchers put out an announcement that the ARMY got the numbers wrong with the 61/now 63 former detainees having rejoined the fray.

Al Qaeda was never in Iraq during Saddam’s reign and where there only on a token level after we invaded. Disagreements between the Sunni and the Sh’ia will more likely turn Iraq into a theocracy than a Democracy.

Let’s start with the numbers, then turn to what we’ve won in Iraq.

UPDATE: I’ve now added the discussion on what we won in Iraq.

Why would Chmielewski expect the number of detainees returning to battle to be low? Why would released detainees not go back to fighting us?  Did they learn the beauty of the American system in Guantanamo?  Did they renounce jihad as war against the infidel and accept it as war against inner demons?  Some, maybe, but more likely the detainees would respond the same way our servicemen and women would respond if the shoe were on the other foot.

If the Islamists were enlightened enough to even have prisoners instead of considering our captured soldiers to be nothing more than beheading and mutilation targets, and if they bent to the shrieks of the libs and released them, the released soldiers and Marines would be aching to get back into the fight.  Chmielewski is either not thinking this through, or he’s ascribing to the Islamists character traits I see no evidence of them having: pacifism, doubts about Islam, flexibility, complacency, love of America.  Is he giving the detainees some sort of hero status like Sacco, Vanzetti and the Rosenbergs, and thereby misreading what they’ll do upon release? Quite possibly.

So there’s clearly a basis justifying the acceptance of the numbers – but are they accurate?  Here’s the base report, as reported on Voice of America:

The United States Department of Defense says the number of former Guantanamo Bay detainees returning to terrorist activities is on the rise.

Pentagon Spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters on Tuesday that 61 former detainees from the U.S. military facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba have returned to the fight against the United States and its allies.

Morrell said that a Defense Department report compiled in December found a substantial increase in the number of detainees returning to terrorism.

“Prior to this report, the rate had been about seven percent of those who had been held at Guantanamo and released and those that had been confirmed or suspected of returning to the fight. At that point, we suspected that 37 former detainees had returned to the fight,” said Morrell. “We now believe that that number has increased and that the overall known terrorist re-engagement rate has increased to 11 percent.”

Morrell said that of the former detainees who returned to terrorism, 18 are confirmed and 43 are suspected of participating in terrorist activities. He says fingerprints, photographs and intelligence materials were used to tie some of the former detainees to terrorist activities.

Chmielewski may be going with the confirmed number and I – and most other non-libs – are going with the confirmed and suspected total.  Before he chimes in that one can hardly trust a Voice of America report (as if VOA hasn’t been swallowed up whole by libs), let me add this from the VOA story:

But Mark Denbeaux of Seton Hall University Law School has represented some of the detainees and says the Pentagon has failed to produce evidence of early claims that former detainees have returned to the battlefield.

“The numbers are wrong about who has returned to the fight; their numbers and names are wrong about who has been in Guantanamo. And, of course, the characterization of ‘returned to the fight’ is far broader than they would like to admit,” said Denbeaux. “What they would like is to be understood to mean as ‘return to the battlefield,’ but, of course, that hasn’t happened. So what they mean by ‘return to the fight’ is engaging in propaganda battles and criticisms of the United States at home and abroad.”

Weasels. If someone comes out of Gitmo and becomes, instead of a footsoldier, a general, a recruiter, a fundraiser, or a weapons procurer, then Prof. Denbeaux of Seton Hall won’t count them as “returned to the fight.”  That’s like saying David Petraeus is no longer a military asset to the U.S. because he’s now in Tampa, not Baghdad.  Denbeaux is proving my point by this argument.  If the detainees released from Guantanamo aren’t returning to the battlefield, then those that still are engaged in jihad against us are fighting at a higher level in the command structure – increasing the likelihood that they were significant enough assets to begin with to require continued detention.

It’s not the least bit surprising that Denbeaux would question the numbers, or that libs would flock to him as a more believable source than the Pentagon.  He doesn’t hide his contempt for Guantanamo and the U.S. military. Here’s the lead of his bio:

Professor Mark Denbeaux, one of Seton Hall’s most senior faculty members, is also the Director of the Seton Hall Law School Center for Policy and Research, which is best known for its disseminatino of the internationally recognized series of reports on the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp. Denbeaux’s interest in the conditions of detainment arose from his representation of two detainees there.

Following his visits to GITMO, and his participation in amicus briefs arising from the rules governing the hearings for “enemy combatants,” Denbeaux realized the need for an analysis of the government’s assumptions and the principles governing the detention process. The Guantánamo report series are primarily produced by Seton Hall Law students of all levels. Several graduates have remained research fellows, as well.

So Denbeaux is on the side of the detainees, not the military (note the all-telling quotes around “enemy combatants”). It’s not the least bit surprising hat since he’s dedicating his life to freeing these scum, he does not want to admit that they are, in fact, scum.  He’s espoused his theories on Rachel Maddow’s show and at teach-ins, so he’s got to be more believable than the U.S. government.  No word on who, exactly, his observers in the field are and why they’re more accurate than the U.S. military.

So you have the U.S. military, which obviously has an agenda but is also an open society with internal checks and balances, and which also has extensive resources in the field, up against a guy who’s sided with (“alleged”) terrorists, is prejudiced against Guantanamo and the war, and has no resources to draw information from than the detainees themselves.

Yet Chmielewski sides with Denbeaux and supports his position on the war in part by believing what Denbeaux believes – that the detainees aren’t such a bad bunch of fellows, really.  And with that in mind, we turn next to Chmielewski’s next question: What did we win in Iraq?

[The following is being added over my lunch break]

Perhaps the best place to start seeking what we have won in Iraq is to consider what we lost in Vietnam, when we followed the Lib’s lead and left the country when victory was in hand.

Obviously, the most important point is not about what we lost, but what the people of Southeast Asia lost.  They lost millions of lives in South Vietnam and Cambodia as the Communists imposed first their brutal and illegal retaliation against those who fought them (a war crime the Left did not protest), and then, in Cambodia particularly, their bizarre visions of utopia.  For those who survived, most lost wealth, health and opportunity.  Their lives would have been better under a capitalistic society.

For us, we lost the opportunity to have another strong partner in Southeast Asia, creating a vacuum filled first by the Chinese communists, and subsequently by totalitarians (Burma) and, more recently, Islamists (Indonesia). If Vietnam had become a free capitalist democracy on the southern flank of China, would the development of repressed-market capitalism there had grown so quickly?  Might not all of Southeast Asia, including Hell-holes like Burma, flourished because there was a local model to emulate?

I won’t speculate on the regional changes that could have occurred with our victory because we’ll never know, but if you want a model, look at how the quality of life in Eastern Europe has improved since we defeated communism there. It’s s easy to see that there was a lot of lost potential in Southeast Asia.

The obvious next step is to consider what we won in World War II.  The answer of course is that winning sometimes isn’t all it’s cut out to be, but it’s still pretty good.  On the up side, we eliminated the threat  Germany, Japan and Italy posed to our democracy, and freed their people from regimes that were condemning them to starvation at best and death at worst.  We saw Democracy spread, and with it trade opportunities for us and a better quality of life for them.  We kicked off a period of fantastic growth in our economy and global influence.

On the downside, Russia got its cut and with it decades of grief for Eastern Europe and Cuba; China wasn’t dealt with at all, leading to decades of poverty for the Chinese under communism and the Korean war; and in the Middle East, the whole multifaceted, bloody conundrum got established anew.  Like I said, winning isn’t always what it’s cut out to be.

There certainly could be similar downsides to a victory in Iraq, but Chmielewski’s Sunni/Shia bloodshed isn’t as likely a one of them as it was a few years back.  With each passing day, there is more reason for Iraqis to stick together and fewer reasons for it to descend into violence, and there’s more power and capability in the central government to hold the country together.

Iran, Syria and the states on the Saudi peninsula could respond in all sorts of bizarre and negative ways to having a free Iraq – but how is that different from how they act today?  The chances are more likely there would be profound cross-Gulf business alliances that could lead to more pressure for the repressive Iranian and Syrian regimes to change.

That’s all speculation about the future and any lefty can speculate right back at me with all sorts of black and depressing scenarios, so let’s look instead at what’s already in the “won” column.

The first big win is for the Iraqis, who no longer must live under Saddam Hussein, who fomented Sunni attacks on Shi’a and Kurd populations, starved his people so he could build palaces, let millions die in his madcap wars, and conducted a reign of terror in which no one felt safe.  Now they have a democracy and their economy is picking up.  Violence is way down.  Women can run for office. And just about everybody can hate al Qaeda and their senseless violence.

There’s another win in there for dozens of other countries and the U.N.  By stabilizing the Gulf (and we did – there’s only been one, contained war there, unlike how things were while Hussein was in power), we ensured continuous oil deliveries to the benefit of the world’s economies.  And we stood up for the UN’s resolutions.  And (with a wink here) we taught the intelligence services of Russia, France, Britain and a host of other countries that they had to sharpen their skills, since they, like we, missed it when Hussein shipped off his WMDs to Syria, buried them in the sand … or just made the whole thing up, fooling us all.

For us, for a start, other countries have seen this.  That has its downsides, but they’re overrated.  Liberals around the world don’t like Bush or us much, but the world is made up of more than mere liberals.  Even though a neocon-dream of rapidly spreading democracy hasn’t happened, when we leave Iraq and people see it continuing to function as a democracy, they will notice, they will scratch their heads and wonder why if we’re imperialists we’re leaving, and most will appreciate what the Iraqis have … what we gave them.

We also have a stable source of oil.  We didn’t take it; we’re buying it (as are others) and the iraqis are producing it.

Iraq will restore oil exports to 2.0 million barrels per day in 2009 and increase its refining capacity to become self sufficient in oil products by the end of the year, Oil Minister Hussain al-Sahristani said on Monday.

“We have pledged in the 2009 budget to raise daily crude production and export an average of 2 million barrels per day, which means a 150,000 bpd increase compared to 2008,” Shahristani told a small group of reporters. (Reuters)

After the first Gulf war, Iraq’s production was 500,000 million barrels per day; it grew to a very sporadic 2.5 MBD just before the start of the current war – but with considerable deferred maintenance that has been slowing Iraq’s recovery in the area of oil.  With a free democracy, Iraq is now investing in its major source of revenue instead of presidential palaces, and production will continue to increase, especially when demand starts to grow again.

We have tested and proven new alliances.  The war on terror – both in Afghanistan and Iraq – has tested our relations with Muslim countries from Turkey to Turkmenistan.  There has been some fall-out for sure, especially in Turkey early in the war, but we have seen that when we need to form an alliance with an Islamic country to fight another Islamic country, we can.  The war has also helped us build alliances in Eastern Europe, which will prove very helpful as Putin stirs.

As for Putin, he may not stir so quickly because of the war.  Our success in overthrowing the Taliban regime in about two minutes was a huge embarassment to the Russians, and our ability to work with Uzbekistan has got to be a nightmare for the Kremlin.  And as we fight to free a large Muslm population, he must look at his Muslim population (10 to 15 percent of Russians are classified as active Muslims by the CIA) and grit his teeth.

But the biggest benefits of the war for us all have to do with the global war against the jihadists who declared war on us on 9/11.

The war has allowed us an opportunity to force our enemy into a two-front war, and we have vanquished them in the Western front, Iraq, and if Obama’s worth his salt, will vanquish them in Afghanistan as well.  This may not have been our intent, as Chmielewski points out – “Al Qaeda was never in Iraq during Saddam’s reign [Never say never, Dan] and where there only on a token level after we invaded.” – but the first intent and the final intent of wars are rarely the same. Al Qaeda flocked to Iraq after the war began, intent on a glorious, Afghanistan-like victory over another great Satan, but it was they who were defeated – thoroughly, embarassingly, and at great cost.  We broke their infrastructure, killed them by the thousands, hurt their recruiting capabilities and gained knowledge in how to gather intelligence about them.

Most importantly, the western front in the war on terror kept them busy over there so they weren’t as busy over here, and one of the great unmeasurable benefits of the war is the attacks on America that didn’t happen because al Qaeda’s resources were tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Finally, and the Left will contest this until they’re blue in the face, the war in Iraq brought back our military and our respect for our military.  Sure, the loons protest and try to kick ROTC off campus and recruiting stations out of Berkely, but the rest of America swells with pride over our young warriors and the great work they’ve done in Iraq and Afghanistan.  They know a selfless commitment to bettering others and protecting us when they see it, and as a result, our military has gotten stronger, with better recruits and broader support.

And with that, I end with a salute to the biggest losses of all in the War on Terror – those who died on 9/11 and the young American and allied men and women who have lost their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq since then – and with a prayer that President Obama will not let these deaths to have been in vain.

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addam Hussein’s most notorious cousin, cousin, “Chemical Ali” Hassan al-Majid, gained infamy by using modern, efficient ways to kill Hussein’s enemies, real and imagined. In the end, though, it will be the age-old rope around the neck, not some missile-born gas, that kills him.

Al-Majid was sentenced to death for the second time yesterday, along with former Baath party official Abdul-Ghani Abdul-Ghafur, this time for conspiring with Abdul-Ghafur to kill thousands while suppressing a Shi’ite uprising following the first Iraq war. His other conviction was in 2007, for the crimes against humanity he carried out in 1991 against the Kurds. He’s also on trial for orchestrating another Shi’ite massacre in 1999.

Here’s a description of the first Shi’ite massacre he commanded:

The prosecutor described the incident as one of the “ugliest crimes ever committed against humanity in modern history”. According to human rights groups, government tanks, artillery and helicopters fired indiscriminately on civilian areas and government troops rounded up and executed fighting-aged men. Estimates of the death toll vary widely, however. Conservative estimates put the number of victims in the tens of thousands, while Iraqi court officials have said that up to 180,000 died and some Shi’ite groups claim the figure exceeds 300,000.

So let’s see here. Al-Majid used WMDs in the 1980s against the Kurds, and twce in the 1990s was involved in the killings of tens of thousands of Shiites with great force, by means unspecified. Does anyone reasonably think that a regime like Hussein’s – crazed, cruel, aggressive and still, today, unrepentant – a regime that thwarted every effort for international inspections of its weapons and weapons research, a regime that elevates a man like al-Majid, would not actively pursue WMDs?

Reasonable minds would conclude that WMDs were not found because they were shuttled off to Syria, not because they were never produced.

Update:  WMDs were in the news today, and the news isn’t good:

The odds that terrorists will soon strike a major city with weapons of mass destruction are now better than even, a bipartisan congressionally mandated task force concludes in a draft study that warns of growing threats from rogue states, nuclear smuggling networks and the spread of atomic know-how in the developing world.

The sobering assessment of such threats, due for release as early as today, singled out Pakistan as a grave concern because of its terrorist networks, history of instability and arsenal of several dozen nuclear warheads. The report urged the incoming Obama administration to take “decisive action” to reduce the likelihood of a devastating attack. (WaPo)

There is no doubt in my mind that if we had not toppled Hussein, Iraq would be right up there with Pakistan as a grave concern.

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e must be winning in Iraq – after all, American journalists there are closing down shop. You know that if we were losing (and there was a Republican in the White House) every major news outlet in America would be putting its employees at risk to report on the debacle. But WaPo assures us that’s not the case:

BAGHDAD — The number of foreign journalists in Baghdad is declining sharply, a media withdrawal that reflects Iraq’s growing stability and the financial strains faced by some news organizations.

In a stark indication of the changing media focus here, the number of journalists traveling with American forces in Iraq has plummeted in the past year. U.S. military officials say they “embedded” journalists 219 times in September 2007. Last month, the number shrank to 39. Of the dozen U.S. newspapers and newspaper chains that maintained full-time bureaus in Baghdad in the early years of the war, only four are still permanently staffed by foreign correspondents. CBS and NBC no longer keep a correspondent in Baghdad year-round.

CBS and NBC? Really? Knock me over with a feather. The last thing they’d want to do is report good news from Iraq.

Not only have the American people largely lost interest in Iraq because they’ve become convinced that the war is winding down to an end, the story out of Iraq is becoming more complicated and more difficult to report. That pretty much leaves out the networks. Here’s the new story:

Gen. David G. Perkins, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said stories about violence get top billing. Less-sensational events, such as a recent voter-registration drive for the highly anticipated provincial elections expected early next year, go largely uncovered in the Western news media, he said.

“There are a lot of things going on, a lot of very complicated things going on. And to cover that, you really have to understand the details and the sophistication of it,” Perkins said. “When you have a big explosion where 20 people die, it doesn’t take much understanding of the intricacies of what’s going on in the country to run out there with a camera and report that 20 people have been killed.”

When it bleeds, it leads, and wherever frequent leads are coming from demands an ongoing press presence. But now that the story has turn to the mundane news of victory, of Iraq building a democracy brick by brick – something most of the media never thought would happen – the bureaus get shut down and the reporters get called back home.

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ets for Freedom, chaired by former Marine and former Gov. Pete Wilson, is launching a $2.2 million ad blitz in Obama-crazed California, calling the liberal, anti-war Senator out on the surge:

The ad takes three good swipes at BHO – his vote against troop funding, his near-complete failure to visit the war zone, his subcommittee’s lack of hearings – and concludes by urging members of Congress to pass the Lieberman/Graham Senate resolution 636, which recognizes the surge’s success. 636 warns against any action “that jeopardizes those gains or dishonors the service and sacrifice of the men and women of the United States Armed Forces who made those gains possible.”

In a SacBee interview, Wilson said:

Wilson said the media effort is well worth the money in blue state California, where “we’ve got this huge congressional delegation and half of them are opposed to the surge.”

Pointing out that California has the nation’s largest population of military veterans, Wilson said: “They need to hear from constitutents, particularly veterans who have been in combat, that the turnaround in Iraq has been nothing short of remarkable.”

Wisely, Vets for Freedom is not wasting any money buying air time in San Francisco. One of the important lessons you learn early in public affairs is to understand where you can have influence, and where you can’t.

For more on Vets for Freedom, including info on how to volunteer and contribute, click here.

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