A Blog for All
One time ally and fellow Democrat, Hillary Clinton is running away from Spitzer as fast as she can. They’ve already scrubbed her website of any reference to Spitzer. It wont be that easy as Spitzer is one of her superdelegates.

Outside the Beltway
Aside from a general sense that chief executive officers ought to obey the laws they’re charged with enforcing and that married men ought to be faithful to their wives, I really don’t care much about this story. The interesting angle, really, is the hypocrisy bit.

The Swamp
Spitzer was in Washington over the weekend at the Gridiron Dinner. When he was introduced, a lot of the people in the hotel ballroom probably thought as I did, that he had really hurt what once looked like a promising political future with his aborted controversial move to give drivers’ licenses to illegal immigrants. Now that seems like the least of his problems.

Political Byline
Of course, The right is screaming, “HA HA!” and “Hypocrite!” and the Left is basically hunkered down and not saying much. I think it’s sad and it will hurt the democrats. I only imagine the feelings of the people in New York. I know, I would be highly annoyed, if I knew my Governor was involved with something such as this.

Hot Air
Nice to have a sex scandal for once that doesn’t involve a Republican, eh?

Michelle Malkin
Wow. This is an astounding turn of events for a ruthlessly ambitious, self-styled crusader against corruption.

The Jawa Report
Salacious pics added for dramatic effect. Who am I kidding? Pics added because the prostitutes Spitzer was involved with were not street corner crack whores, but hot upscale “models”.

Atlas Shrugs
Always cloaking themselves as agents of change, Mr. Clean, blah blah blah, Spitzer more than anyone played holier than thou. He decimated secotrs of Wall Street. Apparently, his royal cleanliness is client #9.

Don Surber
Methinks the guv is cooked. He’s had setback after setback. Now he has a sex scandal, where he paid for sex. That’s ugly. Voters might forgive a bimbo here or even a bimbeau there. But paying for it? In the Age of AIDS?

Kevin Drum @ Political Animal
As with David Vitter and Larry Craig, my official position is: who cares. This shouldn’t be illegal in the first place and I don’t care what these guys do in their private time. Needless to say, though, this is not a majority opinion, and the fact that Spitzer has busted prostitution rings in his previous career brings the usual hypocrisy charges into play too. I’d put his survival odds at less than 10%.

Politik Ditto
This horrible governor who bullied & smeared those who dared oppose him, wanted to grant illegal immigrants drivers licenses and campaigned as a reformer of ethics needs to step down.

TalkLeft
Jeffrey Toobin went to law school with Spitzer and is telling CNN now on the phone he was always such a straight arrow. As Attorney General, he was always a “moralist.” I have to agree. I used to debate Spitzer on tv before he was Attorney General and met him several times. He’s the least likely person I can imagine being involved in this. I never liked his position on crime, but I liked him and am sorry to see this.

I’ll be blogging throughout the evening. It looks like Huckabee and Hillary’s future running mate Obama are the candidates to beat. Their campaigns would benefit greatly from victories tonight but both men stand to lose more in defeat than either Clinton or Romney.

A surge from McCain would be really interesting and a real game changer since he’s polling so well nationally. The media is eager to talk up a McCain surge. If he finishes in first or second place, third even, they’ll have all the license they need.

Update: 8:29 PM CST: CNN is calling it for as Obama as well.

Update: 8:27 PM CST: CBS News is calling Obama the projected winner.

Update: 8:23 PM CST: They’ll be calling it for Obama soon. He’s leading Edwards and Clinton by increasing margins now.

Update: 8:16 PM CST: The media isn’t calling it for Obama yet. You know those trigger fingers have to be really itchy though…

Update: 8:10 PM CST: CBS and CNN show Obama starting to pull ahead of Edwards with Hillary at third. A possible finish behind Edwards (the prettiest girl in the race) has got to hurt.

Update: 8:04 PM CST: CNN is projecting a win for Mike Huckabee. Ugh. Well, at least Ron Paul didn’t get anywhere.

Update: 7:56 PM CST: Edwards is hanging within a point of Clinton and Obama or leading in most early results. Huckabee doing extremely well too. Folks in Iowa seem to have a thing for slime.

Update: 7:45 PM CST: CBS News Entrance Polls - According to early results of CBS News entrance polls of caucus-goers in Iowa, both the Democratic and Republican races are close between two candidates. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are battling for the lead in the Iowa Democratic caucuses and Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee are locked in a close battle in the Republican caucuses.

Update 7:24 PM CST: CSPAN has cool live video of both the Democrats and Republicans in Iowa. The Democrats have the more confusing, and interesting, process. It’s the channel to watch.

Blackwater Facts
A group of trial lawyers that includes a representative of an al Qaeda front group and a longtime advocate of terrorists has filed suit against Blackwater in US district court. The suit claims to be on behalf of victims of the September 16 shooting incident at Nisoor Square. But why the lawyers’ terrorist connections? And why didn’t AP and other news organizations report those connections, which are on the public record? The Associated Press and other news organizations don’t report it that way, of course, citing only the lead attorney who is not known to be tied to terrorists. But as this blog has reported several times, the cooperating attorneys are well known for their terrorist connections.

Defense Tech
Moderate temperatures, nearly perpetual sunshine, flat landing areas and subterranean resources make the rim of the Shackleton Crater — situated within the solar system’s largest impact crater — an ideal location for a lunar homestead, down near the moon’s south pole. NASA hopes to send the first pioneers there by 2020.

FrontPage Magazine
Moral inversion was well manifested in the Israeli-Palestinian “joint statement”—pursued like a sacred elixir for months by Secretary of State Rice and finally read out by Bush at the start of the conference—in which the sides “express our determination to . . . confront terrorism and incitement, whether committed by Palestinians or Israelis.” With those words Israel—a democracy struggling against sixty years of violent aggression that does not engage in terrorism or incitement any more than Finland or Iceland—trashed its achievements, its identity, its Jewish heritage, and equated itself with one of the most terroristic and incitement-ridden societies of all time.

The Associated Press
A former security guard at Andrews Air Force Base who failed to put his Muslim name on a job application was trying to conceal his ties to a controversial Washington imam, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

Michelle Malkin
I told you earlier today about the NAACP’s war on the high school students who wanted to perform Agatha Christie’s “Ten Little Indians” at their school. One of the high school students, Lakota East High School senior Alicia Frost, e-mailed me an update. The students are trying to put the show on outside of school and they could use the public’s help.

NewsBusters
Mark Twain, famously warning against getting into a spat with newspapers, said “never pick a fight with someone who buys their ink by the barrel.” To his chagrin, Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton’s chief campaign strategist, is learning a modern corollary: never pick a fight with someone with three hours of national airtime. And for gosh sakes, don’t use arguments in picking the fight so false as to be child’s play to disprove.

Noah Shachtman
For the first three years of the Iraq insurgency, American troops largely retreated to their fortified bases, pushed out woefully undertrained local units to do the fighting, and watched the results on feeds from spy drones flying overhead. Retired major general Robert Scales summed up the problem to Congress by way of a complaint from one division commander: “If I know where the enemy is, I can kill it. My problem is I can’t connect with the local population.” How could he? For far too many units, the war had been turned into a telecommute. Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon were the first conflicts planned, launched, and executed with networked technologies and a networked ideology. They were supposed to be the wars of the future. And the future lost.

Newsweek
Thousands of Iraqis are finally returning, lured by news of lessening bloodshed in Baghdad and increasingly unwelcome in the neighboring lands where they tried to escape the war. Although they’re scarcely a fraction of the roughly 2.2 million who have fled into exile since 2003, they represent a big shift: for the first time since the war began, more Iraqis seem to be re-entering the country than leaving. At the desert outpost of Al Waleed, the main crossing on the Syrian frontier, border police reported 43,799 Iraqis coming home in October—more than five times the number heading out, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Other statistics remain patchy at best, but the signs point toward home. “I can tell you this,” says Abdul Samid Rahman Sultan, Iraq’s minister of Displacement and Migration (the job title alone tells how bad the problem has been). “Flights from Syria are always full. Flights out are not.”

EdDriscoll.com
Longtime readers will know that I’m not a huge fan of Pat Buchanan for reasons that we explored in this post, amongst others, but in his new book, Buchanan really goes beyond the pale with this particular recommendation: A purge of neoconservative ideology and the “Cakewalk” crowd” from national power.

The Washington Times
Fort Huachuca, the nation’s largest intelligence-training center, changed security measures in May after being warned that Islamist terrorists, with the aid of Mexican drug cartels, were planning an attack on the facility.

Military.com
“Diyala is a very different province now then when we assumed control in November of last year,” he said at a news conference, pointing to the rampant violence, lack of essential services and corruption issues that were dominant. “Today there is hope in Diyala.”

The Captain’s Journal
The insurgency and foreign fighters (Chechens, Africans, Western Chinese and others) had congregated in Fallujah in the spring of 2007. They were not only in complete control of Fallujah, but were using it to launch terrorist operations into Baghdad. The previous command had declared Fallujah “unwinnable.” Into this debacle came 2nd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, initiating heavy kinetic operations from the outset to find and capture or kill the insurgents. Later, gated communities, biometrics, and concerned citizens neighborhood watch programs were implemented to restrict the access of the insurgents to the population. Governance was accomplished via a return to a concept implemented during the Saddam era: the Muktars, or area leaders/representatives. Tribal sheikhs were all but irrelevant in the most recent Fallujah operations. The Anbar narrative is complex and varied, and includes much more than a tribal leader “flipping.”

The Associated Press
Recently, even as the evidence of Iranian involvement has firmed, the number of EFP attacks has sharply declined. U.S. Maj. Gen. James Simmons said on Nov. 15 that Iran’s promises to Iraq’s government that it would stem the flow of weapons “appear to be holding up.” Why would Iran suddenly stop funding attacks? There are many theories and no certainty: Perhaps Iran felt it had made the point it could be dangerous. Maybe it wanted to stay on the Iraqi government’s good side. Perhaps it felt rival Sunni Muslims were so beaten down, it no longer needed to help fellow Shiites. Or perhaps Iran worried the U.S. might retaliate unless it eased off.

Say Anything
The outcome of the Annapolis Conference, which begins Tuesday and will last for three days, is pre-ordained: it will accomplish nothing, and will prove to be a complete waste of everyone’s time. The Conference is intended to bring the Arabs, Palestinians, the UN Security Council member states and Israel together to resolve issues on the way to the creation of a Palestinian state. The Palestinians do not want peace, however, their Arab allies do not want peace, and the Palestinians are in the midst of a civil war such that any nascent achievements from Annapolis will quickly be undone.

Michelle Malkin
If things don’t go their way in Annapolis tomorrow at the Mideast Capitulation Summit, a Palestinian shopkeeper recommends that customers smash his souvenir mugs to bits - Demand “peace.” Threaten property destruction. If only mugs were the sole targets of their rage…

Need to Know is a short roundup of key stories that shouldn’t be missed on your cruise through the blogosphere. The number of links in the roundup may vary but if you find it here you can trust that it’s must-read material.

Israpundit
Homeland Security: Forget everything you’ve been told about “moderate” Muslim groups in America. New evidence that U.S. prosecutors have revealed at a major terror trial exposes the facade. Exhibit No. 003-0085 is the most chilling. Translated from Arabic by federal investigators in the case against the Holy Land Foundation, an alleged Hamas front, the secret document outlines a full-blown conspiracy by the major Muslim groups in America - all of which are considered “mainstream” by the media.

Leaning Straight Up
In short, when newspapers or other media avoid or censor anything that might be offensive to Muslims, where it is fairly obvious that such avoidance action would not happen if it was say Catholics or Jews. My interest in this is equality. I refuse to accept that the media or others have an obligation to handle all matter Islam with kid gloves where people of my particular faith are open targets for scorn, mockery and derision.

NewsBusters
Has Bill Moyers become PBS’s Jack Cafferty, Bill Maher, Rosie O’Donnell, and Keith Olbermann all rolled into one crusading, Bush-hating, anti-war propagandist funded by American tax dollars?

Pajamas Media
High tech big boys Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have been subject to much criticism, in and out of the blogosphere, for cooperating with online censorship in the People’s Republic of China. Some say this cooperation has even led to the incarceration of journalists and dissidents. Now Yahoo and Microsoft are at it again, signing a “self discipline” pact with the Internet Society of China. Pajamas Media CEO Roger L. Simon has a suggestion for what bloggers and their readers can do about it.

OPFOR
In Iraq, Al-Qa’ida has sought to change the will of the enemy, not the people, a failure which is most evident in Anbar. They choose spectacular and violent attacks on Iraqis, aimed at affecting the will of the American people, instead harnessing the power of Islam to revolutionize the Iraqi countryside. And it is a failure that is working in our favor.

Wizbang
Miss Teen USA South Carolina Lauren Caitlin Upton is a YouTube hit. The video of her bumbling answer to why one-fifth of Americans can’t locate our country on a world map has been viewed over 1.5 million times since Friday. Let this be an example to our young people; trying to B.S. your way through an question you don’t understand or know the answer on a live primetime TV broadcast is a bad idea…

Cheat Seeking Missiles
The Dems have convinced themselves that Iraqis are incapable of self-government, in their typical “I’m not a racist” racist style. They must convince themselves of this because should Iraqis actually govern themselves democratically, George Bush was right. It is no consolation to them if the Hussein violence, the sectarian violence, the infringement of liberties all stop, if George Bush being right is part of the deal.

The Captain’s Journal
In A-10s Aid in Counterinsurgency, we discussed the new role being contemplated for A-10s. The storied tank-killer has a new mission, i.e., that of aiding and assisting in counterinsurgency, or so it was being planned (debates on this can be seen in Air Power and Small Wars, and Warfare and Lawfare: An Unstable Alchemy). Perhaps as a test for this mission, the A-10 (438th Air Expeditionary Group) went back into action to provide close air support for Marines in the Anbar Province. Not long after this deployment, it was announced that the The USAF was considering a new A-10 COIN Squadron.

Power Line
On Friday, Charles Krauthammer argued that the U.S. should work with elements in the Iraqi Parliament to bring down the Maliki government. Krauthammer’s criticism of Maliki seems well-founded. But because Maliki is a symptom of the problems in Iraq and not their cause, it’s difficult to see what would be gained by ousting him.

Neptunus Lex
It’s fascinating: On the left, the term “Swift-boating” has come to mean a baseless attack on an opponent, mere propaganda. Everyone knows that the Swift boat people were liars, albeit liars who had maintained a remarkably coherent story ever since some of them had squared off with Kerry on his “Genghis Khan” narrative right from the start.

Axis of Right
At the Midwest Republican Leadership Conference this weekend, prominent Republicans seemed to be foaming at the mouth in delight at the prospect of a She Who Must Not Be Named general election campaign. Some Republicans had an “anybody but her” attitude, others weren’t too clear on who they wanted competing against her, and some worried about turnout next year.

Redstate
So if unemployment was at 10% that would be bad news, if it’s at 3% that’s bad news. Maybe it has more to do with the party of the President than actual economic news. To be clear, the Mountain West is booming and it creates increases in wages for working families. That is the private sector doing its thing, making people richer for their hard work. Perhaps reporters in NYC and DC no longer understand basic economics, but we should all be happy that the Mountain West is doing so well and we should be thankful that we are in a major economic boom with historically low unemployment.

The Corner
A new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region. It may have been impossibly idealistic and even naïve to entertain such hopes (though I don’t think so), but an ambitious freedom agenda was always a part of the justification for the Iraq War - and that’s something that everyone who argues the Bush “lied us into war” is purposely ignoring.

Need to Know is a short roundup of key stories that shouldn’t be missed on your cruise through the blogosphere. The number of links in the roundup may vary but if you find it here you can trust that it’s must-read material.

Axis of Right
I’ve complained for months that liberals and certain Republicans tend to exaggerate when portraying Mitt Romney as a serial flip-flopper because the former Massachusetts Governor is not as guilty as his opponents would have us believe. Unfortunately, these exaggerations usually carry a badge of credibility. For that, Romney has no one to blame but himself.

Dean’s World
I’d like to see a debate on whether converting to a single-payer system alone i.e. without further healthcare reforms will correct the fiscal problems posed by aging Baby Boomers participating in the Medicare system.

Blackfive
I can’t name the sources for this SWAG (ref?) but I am stating with near metaphysical certitude that Fidel Castro has assumed room temperature and over the past week he and his brother Raoul have determined that Chavez should rule. So in a huge ceremony currently being planned Raoul will announce Fidel’s demise and show a video Fidel recorded asking that the country accept Raoul’s resignation as leader and that they greet Hugo Chavez as the New Commandante.

Counterterrorism Blog
This report is intended to offer readers a short history of the Muslim Brotherhood’s activities in the United States-as well as its goals and structure-as revealed by evidence recently presented during the ongoing criminal trial in the Northern District of Texas (Dallas): United States of America v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. The prosecution in the case has presented many internal Muslim Brotherhood documents from the 1980’s and early 1990’s that give a first-ever public view of the history and ideology behind the operations of the Muslim Brothers (known as the Ikhwan or The Group) in the U.S. over the past four decades.

David Limbaugh
The Democrats’ latest ploy of shifting the goal posts to dampen Gen. Petraeus’s anticipated report of military successes in Iraq by emphasizing the slow progress on the political side makes it increasingly hard to deny they are working for defeat at all costs.

One Hand Clapping
Bush became a hero out here with the Galileans when he refused to talk with Arafat. Then, he strode the landscape like a real master of the Bazaar. He simply turned the tables in the influence market and followed Nancy Reagan’s advice to addiction—“Just say no!” Here, they said, is a man who understands how to bargain — say nothing until you hear what you want to hear. It was very refreshing.

OPFOR
Black PSYOP is fun, but also illegal (well, for us anyway… you know how it is… the bad guys get to have ALL the fun). Black PSYOP is produced so that the target audience believes the source is someone who it is not. For example, say I go into a Sunni area one night or early one morning and I spray-paint, “Sunnis suck” on the homes and walls in the area. Sunnis wake up, see the graffiti, and think, “damn Shi’ites… let’s go kill them.” That’s black PSYOP.

SoCal Pundit
Anti-military slurs have been on the rise since the Communism-inspired Korean War. The Communists, knowing that support for the war in America depended on the people believing the war was just were very successful in infiltrating the disaffected youth and convincing them that our men in uniform are guilty of war crimes and the like. In Vietnam, the sentiment hit a fever pitch and continues to this day with people like Beauchamp & The New Republic leading the charges.

The Captain’s Journal
Sometimes our efforts at counterinsurgency by winning hearts and minds simply have to go through kinetic operations — in this case, combat action — to “close with and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver.” There are no easy ways to do this, and we cannot throw enough money at or deploy enough engineers on this problem to make it go away.

You Served
Now that I am back from an Active Duty tour in Afghanistan I had to re-engage the VA again. I had to get my disability payments started back up and I have some leftover issues from my tour that need to get addressed. I had talked with several guys that were on my team in Afghanistan whom said their experience was really good and it was nothing like they had heard (which was similar to what I had experienced). One of them told me that in recent years many people had retired, been forced out or whatever and that the new staffs of VA hospitals were much better to deal with. Due to this new information I figured I would give them another chance and I am glad I did. I have been there twice and what I have seen is remarkably better than what I ever saw before.

The D-Ring
Next month, INSA will be hosting a conference with DNI to glean new media lessons from the private sector and academia, and develop additional ways to use these technologies to support the goals and objectives of the intelligence community. Not being a part of the intellegista, I can’t go. But if you are there, would love to hear about it.

Need to Know is a short roundup of key stories that shouldn’t be missed on your cruise through the blogosphere. The number of links in the roundup may vary but if you find it here you can trust that it’s must-read material.

A Soldier’s Mind
When one looks at a photograph of SSG Brandon Zylstra, you assume he’s just an ordinary Soldier, who’s doing his job. A photograph doesn’t even begin to tell the story of the bravery, dedication and courage that this young man embodies. A photograph doesn’t tell you of the things he’s done, to ensure the safety of his Soldiers.

Blackfive
It is a tale of a bureaucracy with no one at the helm, just sailing along spending money trying not to cause any trouble. That seems to be the over-arching mode for the Clinton foreign policy and intel team. The suits were busy sipping mint tea by the pool and promising we would never actually do anything mean and the spooks were buying all kinds of satellites and technology that unfortunately was unable to read the minds of Sadaam, Kim Jong Il or much of anyone for that matter.

Blue Crab BoulevardAs Stossel points out, people from all over the world come to the US for treatment. You never hear about Americans traveling to other countries like that. Stossel also demolishes - as many people have - the grossly misleading (but much quoted) figure of “45 million uninsured” in America. Among other things that inflated number includes people who are in this country illegally and those who can afford insurance, have it available if they wanted it, but choose not to get it. There is also a large portion of those uninsured who already qualify for government programs but have not enrolled. Take all of those groups out of the number and that huge figure shrinks to a very small number.

David Limbaugh
People forget that the left’s infernal hatred for President Bush began way before their famous catch-all excuse, the Iraq invasion, was a glimmer in the president’s eye. Their permanent antipathy began with the Democrats’ 2000 electoral defeat.

Michael J. Totten
Clear, hold, and build is the strategy now. The Graya’at neighborhood has been cleared of active insurgents, although there still are dormant cells in the area. The Army is working on several modest community and urban renewal projects and is planning larger ones in the near future. Constant patrols and intelligence gathering are the two crucial pieces of the hold part of the strategy.

DefenseTech
Being a highly modified Model 700 Remington bolt-action repeating rifle, the M24 is capable of great precision accuracy. However, lessons were relearned in Somalia and in target-rich environments encountered in the G-WOT that a self-loading rifle can be fired in succession 4 to 5 times faster than a bolt action rifle. Thus, the Army was determined to standardize a semi-automatic sniper rifle.

Florida Cracker
From rooftop to basement, from ceiling to floor, the St. Louis County Jail is the prettiest jail I’ve ever seen. It makes me want to pack my bags and move right in. With its glorious exterior, which, granted, most residents don’t get to see too much of, and its inner light, space, and attention to detail, it’s the kind of place we artistic types would be proud to call home.

Gay Patriot
And while many on the left (including readers of this blog) call us hypocrites, equating being a gay Republican with being a Jewish Nazi or black Klansman, most of us have discovered that gays on the left–and not just gays–give us more grief for being conservative than conservatives give us for being gay. Why, I wonder yet again, do they hate us so?

Hyscience
It’s beginning to look as though the raging crazy netroots and nutroots at the DailyKos (they really do need to get a real life and begin to look through a prism of more reality and less BDS) have so severely infected Democratic politicians that the party has now become the Party of Rage, and are behaving like the DailyKos kids.

Need to Know is a short roundup of key stories that shouldn’t be missed on your cruise through the blogosphere. The number of links in the roundup may vary but if you find it here you can trust that it’s must-read material.

Right Wing News
Robert Novak:While I was promoting this book, I had an interview with NPR in New York City and they quoted something I had said to Keith Olbermann in an interview and I said, “I have never met Keith Olbermann in my life. I have never talked to him. If he asked me to go on his show, I would refuse.” And the man said, “Well, I read on the internet that you said this to him.” There’s more nonsense on the internet than you can believe. They have lies about me that have no connection with what I really do or what I really am.

Pajamas Media
As Fred Thompson continues gearing up for his long-expected announcement, now apparently slated for just after Labor Day, he is venturing forth more often in public appearances. This week, in addition to his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars opposite Obama, he also speaks to the Midwest Republican Leadership Conference in Indianapolis. Not all his appearances go smashingly well in this shakedown cruise phase of things. Last week, he appeared at the Iowa State Fair and got a lot of gas from Fox News for his choice of footwear. It seems he wore Gucci loafers to the Iowa State Fair.

NewsBusters
Michael A. Fletcher of the Washington Post has a little snippet of a story so full of hyperbole about how wonderful and “crystallizing” so-called “Peace Mom” Cindy Sheehan has been for the country that unintentional comedy is the result — that or it raises a collective groan for its slobbering sycophancy. He so outlandishly exaggerates the impact of the “antiwar hero” and her protégé in “Camp Casey” that it just boggles the mind. Seems like Fletcher is far from a disinterested “journalist” but has succumbed to outright hero worship here.

Wizbang
Sorry, lady, that ain’t “immigration reform” you are speaking of. While a comprehensive reform might contemplate circumstances under which someone who entered the country illegally might receive a kind of legal status, you came here illegally twice, and committed at least one crime while here. Then you defied a lawful court order to hide in a church.

A Soldier’s Mind
The nonprofit organization called T.A.P.S. strives to help these children cope with the fact that their parent lost his or her life and won’t be returning home. T.A.P.S. was founded in 1994 and began holding camps and adult seminars nationwide last fall, near military bases to hopefully make coping with the grief of losing a loved one a little bit easier.

The Captain’s Journal
A senior Iranian cleric also warns the U.S. not to pick on the Guards. ”“Americans should know that in this field, as with nuclear energy, they are dealing with the whole nation. And the great nation of Iran will never abandon its revolutionary people,” Ahmad Khatami told worshippers at Friday prayers in Teheran.”

Neptunus Lex
The US military have had to endure a fair amount of old world sneering from their coalition allies to the south almost from the beginning of OIF. The British were fond of explaining how their experiences in Northern Ireland had better prepared them for the kind of “soft hat” policing that would win hearts and minds in any counter insurgency campaign, while tut-tutting over the harsher measures used by over-armored Americans in Baghdad and Fallujah.

Blackwater Tactical Weekly
Mirror Image is an intensive one-week classroom and field-training program, designed to realistically simulate terrorist recruiting, training techniques, and operational tactics. During the course, participants will receive insight into the mindset and rationale of the terrorist through hands-on experience with the methods and means terrorist employ, education about terrorist ideologies and the cultural dimensions that influence their decision making process. Military, law enforcement, intelligence, and security professionals will, in turn, be able to see themselves as the terrorists see them and understand the weaknesses in their own environment that the terrorists will seek to exploit, and which all too often they miss.

Sister Toldjah
I will never forget the picture of Hillary Clinton standing in the Senate, holding up the front page of the New York Post in May 2002, which bore the headline that read simply “Bush Knew.” That picture (which I can’t find at the moment) came to symbolize to me how the Democrats in Congress were more interested in politicizing the tragedy - ironically, something they later accused the administration of doing - than responding to it forcefully and directly, in the way any honest, decent American, Democrat or Republican, should do in the face of the tragedies that had happened in New York, DC, and PA.

Need to Know is a short roundup of key stories that shouldn’t be missed on your cruise through the blogosphere. The number of links in the roundup may vary but if you find it here you can trust that it’s must-read material.

Blackfive
Notice the uptick in troll activity? Well, that’s just the beginning. MoveOn and George Soros and VoteVets and CodePink and the cast of lunatic fringe elements are all trying to get ahead of the testimony from General Petraeus and paint the surge as a loss. In order to join the fight, Uncle Jimbo and I should be joining up with Veterans for Freedom in Washington DC on September 17th and 18th. And both of us should be at a MAF rally on September 11th here in Chicago. Please consider joining us.

The Captain’s Journal
The Sadrists are allowed their own political bloc in Parliament, their own militia, and the freedom to behave like mafiosi in the neighborhoods, while U.S. forces steer clear of entanglement with them. Conversely, former Sunni insurgents are relegated to the sidelines where policy stipulates that they can never be under the permanent employ of the Iraqi government. Even temporary support for these fighters is subject to a 90-day ’security’ contract, permission for which likely sits in bureaucratic quick sand, the location of which only God and a few people know.

Hyscience
So, one might reasonably ask, just why is it that the Left has such a propensity to embrace lies but condemn the truth, especially when the truth has anything at all to do with Iraq and/or defending America against radical Islamists?

Right Wing News
In the end, whether Iraq succeeds or not is going to depend on the Iraqis and all we can do is hand them “a republic, if (they) can keep it.” However, there’s a heck of a lot of difference between pulling out when we know they’re not ready or setting a timeline for defeat and doing all we can within reason to help them succeed before we take the training wheels off.

Wizbang
Considering how emotional the war in Iraq has become, American public’s views of Patraeus are very important because they indicate how much they’ll trust his report come September.

A Soldier’s Mind
I just received word today from one of our regular readers, Leta, that there’s a group of Soldiers who are with 2nd Battalion (Airborne) 503rd Infantry, B Company, who are currently deployed in Afghanistan. They’re in the very same mountainous region of Afghanistan that Marcus Luttrell and SEAL Team 10 were dropped into in 2005, some of the most rugged and dangerous terrain there is, on the Afghanistan and Pakistan border. They’re living in tents, with very little in the way of creature comforts. They have no lights, so they have to rely on filtered lens flashlights in order to dress, read, wash or eat. It gets cold in this mountainous outpost at night, even during the summer. The winters are hell, but yet, they continue their mission.

Redstate
Despite all of the problems, it seems nonetheless that we have been given genuine cause for optimism. The question is whether we will short circuit any of the gains we are making in Iraq, leading us to rue actions that emanate from a lack of patience and forbearance in the future.

Need to Know is a short roundup of key stories that shouldn’t be missed on your cruise through the blogosphere. The number of links in the roundup may vary but if you find it here you can trust that it’s must-read material.

Patrick Ruffini
Looking beyond the blogosphere, a place the MSM isn’t as familiar with, and you’ll see that the conservative Web is larger than the liberal Web. Sites like Townhall, WorldNetDaily, and Free Republic have monthly audiences that regularly beat Daily Kos and the Huffington Post, to say nothing of Drudge, which still reigns supreme.

Boots & Sabers
Something appears to be going haywire with Giuliani campaign’s email server.

Captain’s Quarter’s
Seoul confirms that the two Korean armies exchanged short bursts of gunshots across the DMZ, one day before disarmament talks expected to set the procedure for permanently disabling the Yongbyon nuclear plant. The exchange could mean that Kim Jong-Il wants a way out of his agreement, or it could have more implications for the role of the DPRK military in the disarmament.

Cheat Seeking Missiles
Yon knows, from having the stink of al Qaeda’s brutality burn his nostrils, what will come next: first bloodshed in Iraq, but then, flushed with victory and still committed to spreading Islam by the sword, bloodshed everywhere. That is the perspective Bush has in fighting this war, a perspective he’s had since its first days, and one he articulates even now. Ingatieff and the Left don’t get it. They think the war will be over when we say it’s over, and they couldn’t be further from the truth, for all their intellectual heavy lifting.

Cold Fury
Possibly in preparation for some new, ah, level of action involving the upcoming Presidential contests, the Fred Thompson folks have completely redesigned their web site, giving it a lot more capability for, um, something or other.

Outside the Beltway
Bush has certainly harmed the Republican Party, contributing mightily to the loss of both Houses of Congress in the most recent midterm election (with plenty of help from his counterparts in the legislature) and making it much harder for a Republican to win the White House in 2008. It’s not clear, however, that conservatism per se has suffered any long term damage.

Michelle Malkin
Well, the YearlyKos convention is over, but the nutroots are still marching on. A few weeks ago, Kos himself assailed “nasty rhetoric” that was “rampant in the primary war diaries” of the Daily Kos website. Yet, the site went ahead and featured a troop-bashing rant by Saturday Night Live has-been A. Whitney Brown, who wrote: “Do I still support the individual men and women who have given so much to serve their country? No. I think they’re a bunch of idiots. I also think they’re morally retarded.”

Hyscience
In his 2006 TED lecture (Technology, Entertainment, Design, Professor of International Health), Hans Rosling, shows that, contrary to rumors, the end is not yet almost upon us. Complex global trends in life expectancy, child mortality and poverty are revealed in ways that may surprise you.

Defense Tech
Any MSM dismissal of blogs because of their inherent absence of editorial oversight misses the point. Well-read blogs do have an oversight process: the “comments” feature. We prove it daily here at Defense Tech. The staff has learned (the good ol’ fashioned “hard way”) that even the most casual sub-truth or pseudo-falsehood will be savaged by our readership. As the dialectic goes high order, the truth emerges . . . every time.

Dean’s World
So really, my question for Beauchamp and his supporters is simply this: you say you saw some bad stuff, and I mostly believe you. But do you think any of that is really typical? As a friend and relative of many who’ve served over there, I don’t think it is. Do you?

Homeland Security Watch
Out of the ashes and tumult of Katrina, a new National Response Plan is near ready. This might be considered a debut for the National Protection and Programs Directorate at DHS, but I am certain many had a hand in the drafting of this document.

One Hand Clapping
So, since even SUVs are many times less polluting than jet liners, especially of carbon dioxide, then would it not make sense for the global warming alarmists to lobby for raising interstate speed limits to make driving more attractive than flying for many trips?

Sister Toldjah
Kinda sad when people who claim to ’support the troops’ in reality are hoping that the negative stories they read about the military are true, and furthermore go out of their way to try and spin them as true, even when it turns out they’re not. These same types of people want us to give accused murderers here at home the benefit of the doubt, but don’t extend that same courtesy to the men and women who put their lives on the line so they can have the right to spout their idiotic, troop-hating nonsense.

The Captain’s Journal
The professional counterinsurgency community famously points out the unintended consequences of inadvertent noncombatant deaths resulting from U.S. kinetic operations, i.e., that they could negatively impact winning the hearts and minds of the population. As we have discussed here before in our coverage of rules of engagement, Dunlap turns this on its head and forces us to ponder the fact that this notion can be carried too far and have the equivalent unintended effect of lack of security, thus losing the battle for the hearts of the people.