WILL IRAQ RUIN BUSH?


The situation on the ground in Iraq is dire - and growing worse by the minute. Ten more US soldiers killed today and no honest prospect for progress in the future.

Tuesday, a noted Wall Street Journal columnist, when asked if Iraq was going to prove fatal to the President’s re-election chances, scoffed. “ Nahhh. The American people always rally to the Commander-in-Chief in a time of war,” he cockily claimed.

Is that true?

Will the American people support G.W. Bush in November if the war continues to deteriorate into a messy occupation instead of a liberation?

General William S. Odom, the well-respected former Director of the National Security Agency, has become the first mainstream foreign policy expert to call for an American withdrawal from Iraq. And this call is echoed in a new NEW YORK TIMES/CBS poll just out today:

Only 41% of the American people support G.W. Bush’s handling of Iraq; support for the war is down - sharply - from 58% last month to 47% now; the President’s job approval rating is the lowest of his presidency (46%); and Kerry narrowly defeats Bush 46%-44%.

Politically, it is clear that Iraq is the major problem for Bush’s re-election. No Iraq and he would win this race. The economy is improving and he gets a good - 60% - rating on his handling of the War on Terror.

And the Bush commercials have done a good job portraying Kerry for the phony flip-flopper he truly is. A huge majority of American now believe Kerry says things not because he believes them but because he thinks that’s what people want to hear.

Kerry is awful. And the medal flap and lifestyle questions all show him - accurately - as a complete sham of a man.

But, despite all that, he still is ahead of Bush. And the latest Marist Institute poll virtually mirrors the NYT/CBS poll: in the 17 key battleground states where this election will be held, Kerry beats bush 47%-44%.

The deterioration of Iraq is why Bush is losing to such a weak and damaged candidate.

And the White House knows this. The problem is what to do about it?

Nothing they have tried has altered the reality on the ground: killing American soldiers is easy and fun for these crazy Arab fighters. And dying in the process is almost desirable!

And there are millions more of them ready to come into Iraq and make jihadon the infidel Americans.

So, we come back to the Wall Street Journal columnist’s assertion that Iraq won’t hurt Bush’s re-election and, in fact, will help him.

His assertion is patently false. Ask LBJ if the American voter “rallied to the Commander-in-Chief”?

Sadly, despite Kerry’s complete idiocy, he now can win this election because President Bush has completely mis-handled Iraq.

From his obsession with fighting Iraq to the WMD fiasco to the canard that we would be greeted as liberators and then to the absurd notion that the Iraqi people even want our type of democracy - it has been a Bush-created political disaster.

And he may pay for it on November 2.

POLITICAL NOTES


1) Polls: Two polls came out last week showing President Bush defeating John Kerry by about the same 5-point margin. CNN/USATODAY/GALLUP and the WASHINGTON POST/ABC polls seemed to offer good news to the President - and bad news to the Kerry camp.

Fox News Channel’s Brit Hume roundtable on Thursday night reviewed these polls - as did other networks and commentators - with the spin that Bush “is on the rebound.”

Funny, but the best and most accurate pollster - John Zogby, theonly pollster to have the 2000 deadlock right on - shows Kerry narrowly (47%-44%) ahead of Bush. Yet none of these reports mentioned this poll. I guess it got in the way of the “Bush Rebounds” headline they were promoting.


2) Tomorrow is a huge US Senate primary in Pennsylvania pitting liberal GOP 4-term Senator Arlen Spector versus a young, 3-term conservative Republican Congressman, Pat Toomey.

This race has been narrowing at the end. Spector - well-known throughout the Keystone State for decades - had been leading by 15-18 points a few weeks ago. But the latest polls taken at the end of last week showed the gap had narrowed down the about 5 points. Usually when the challenger has such upward momentum an upset may be in the making.

The key, of course, will be turnout: just who will come out to vote tomorrow. Usually it is committed conservatives who trudge out to the polls. In this race, Toomey is the hero of the Right, while the President has campaigned for Spector. (This is, I believe, a mistaken political policy by this Bush White House. They automatically support all GOP incumbents in GOP primaries. Other Republican presidents had a policy of remaining neutral in primaries. In this case, Toomey has supported Bush in the House more than Spector has in the Senate.)

If Toomey upsets Spector tomorrow night, look for this inevitable spin from the media: Bush has lost his luster with GOP primary voters; the President put his reputation on the line, came into the state, took Spector around on Air Force One last week, made TV commercials for him - and, after all that, Toomey won anyway!!!

If Spector loses it will not be because Bush endorsed him; it will be because he’s old, and tired and too liberal and the GOP voters want someone new and more conservative. But the so-called ‘mainstream media’ will want to make Bush look bad.


3) Kerry’s Vietnam War record: like everything to do with Kerry - and most liberals - things are never quite as they appear to be. Yes, Kerry went to Vietnam (when he could have avoided it) and yes he saw combat. And yes he got injured and he received 3 Purple Hearts and some other medals. But there is even controversy over all of that.

A few years later he threw those medals over the White House fence to protest the Vietnam War. Or did he? Were they his medals? Or were they the medals of his Yale pal - and grandson of WWI hero General Black Jack Pershing - who was killed in Vietnam?

Again, controversy, switched explanations, intentional confusion, ambiguity - and sometimes just outright lies.

This is the Kerry Way.

He trots out a Vietnam vet who he pulled out of the Mekong River. But no mention of all the others who served with him who despise him and thought he was a total phony.

And who took the film of him walking through the Vietnamese village carrying a gun? It was a political commercial in the making!

4) The Bush Campaign’s TV ads so far have done a good job planting the seed of Kerry as a vacillator and an unprincipled weather vane who goes whichever way the wind blows.

Whether that perception will be enough to overcome the collapsing situation in Iraq is not known.

Iraq is a disaster - and it will only get worse. The inevitable Civil War - Shi’ites versus Sunnis - will come soon enough.

Let’s face it, the Arab Muslim world is not desirous of western-style democracy. They just don’t want it.

They are too wrapped up in their primitive - and angry and resentful - jihad against modernity.

There is no hope for those people.

WAR DEATHS


We have lost almost 100 men this month in Iraq - and over six hundred since we began the war 13 months ago.

Each life is a special, sacred thing. War is awful - simply dreadful.

The comparisons to Vietnam minimize the cost of that war: some weeks there were 400-500 of our young boys dying over in the jungles of Vietnam and Laos. And it went on and on and on. Perhaps Vietnam’s greatest legacy is the pressure its memory places on today’s politicians. No President wants to get ‘bogged down’ again.

We lost 2700 people on 9/11; about 2200 at Pearl Harbor.

Do you have any idea how many people died in the Atlantic Ocean at the hands of Hitler’s U-Boats from 1940-1945?

890,000 people died at sea!

890,000 Americans, British and others involved with shipping equipment and men to Europe to fight the Nazis drowned a suffering, brutal death at the hands of torpedoes from those U-Boats.

Hitler’s most dangerous weapon - the dreaded U-Boat - was lurking at night ready to attack ship after ship. Those U-Boats sank 8,000 Allied ships!

And no matter what we did to combat these U-Boats, Hitler’s forces were able to keep them running right to the end of the war in the spring of 1945.

Based on the west coast of France, in Lorient and St. Nazaire, the U-Boats operated out of “U-Boat pens” that still exist to this day. Built by the best German engineers and construction experts - and using slave labor - the Nazis created two U-Boat ‘fortresses’ that withstood 5 years of heavy Allied bombing and commando raids. Nothing we did ever was able to stop the U-Boat campaign operating out of these two bases. We did learn how to combat and defeat the U-Boats at sea; the invention of radar and sonar helped as did new convoy tactics and communications.

But the scope of the death and suffering at the hands of the U-Boats is truly staggering.

All of this is detailed for the first time is a fascinating new book - HITLER’S U-BOAT FORTRESSES by Dr. Randolph Bradham and published by Praeger.

Dr. Bradham was a young soldier in the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) during the war. Many from this program for exceptionally high-IQ recruits - including Ed Koch - were sent to Europe just before Christmas 1944 to join the 66th Division.

In a tragic incident on Christmas Eve, over 2,000 of these American troops boarded the Leopoldville, a converted ocean liner, for a quick transport across the English Channel to France. In the middle of the night a U-Boat slammed two torpedoes into the Leopoldville. As the ship began to sink, the cowardly crew sneaked off in the only available lifeboats leaving our brave troops to either “sink or swim.”

802 brave American men drowned that night.

That is more than have died in Iraq in 13 months.

The survivors, many of whom were fished out of 48 degree water, were quickly thrown right into combat in France. Soon these were the men who went down to Lorient and St. Nazaire and forced the Nazis to surrender Hitler’s most valuable military asset: the U-Boat pens from which so much death and destruction had been launched.

HITLER’S U-BOAT FORTRESSES also shows other things that are analogous to today’s Iraqi campaign: government’s slow and sometimes stupid bureaucracy; often baffling reverses in planning and strategy; the limits of human beings with even the best equipment.

But most of all, there are some direct similarities between the campaign to stop Hitler’s subs and today’s attempts to stop Islamic radicals: the heroism of American troops and the downright ingenuity of young Americans.

We owe much to all the young American soldiers who have died for our freedom. Today, April 19, is Patriot’s Day in Boston. It is the day we celebrate Paul Revere and the first Americans to fight against oppression and dictatorship.

Read HITLER’S U-BOAT FORTRESSES and pray for the souls of all the young American soldiers willing to die for us.

CONFLUENCE


Isn’t it amazing how things keep coming around and around and around?

Osama, Iraq, CIA, Bush and Tenet.

For three years now the news has basically revolved around these five players.

And this week all five are back front and center:

CIA Director Tenet testified yesterday about 9/11 and why he - again - screwed up. How does this guy always keep his job? In an economy which is having so much trouble keeping jobs, how does he always keep his? Why don’t we ‘outsource’ Tenet?

Iraq is a mess.

The CIA is clueless.

And President Bush is sinking in the polls as he is caught up in a Credibility Canyon of his own making: no WMD found in Iraq and constant stalling and delaying by the Bush White House about pre-9/11 intelligence, documents and the old Nixon-era bugaboo which sounds guilty: Executive Privilege.

And today comes the central figure of our time: Osama Bin Laden again taunting the West with an audiotape attempting to split Europe from the United States by offering to suspend attacks if the Europeans will withdraw in 3 months from Arab territories.

A suggestion to Bush, Kerry, Tenet and everyone else in DC: let’s put on a real effort - NOW - to get Osama before he does something horrific.

I do not believe the full focus of our government has ever been on getting Osama. Certainly the focus and expenditure and manpower we see today being spent on Iraq should have been spent first on getting Osama.

Why?

Because he did attack us - repeatedly. The US Embassy bombings in 1998, maybe the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, definitely the USS Cole and 9/11.

Let us stop blaming each other for ‘failures’ to do this or that. Instead, with full vengeance in our hearts, let’s go - as Republicans and Democrats - into Pakistan and Afghanistan and get this bastard - NOW!

And speaking of our erstwhile ally, Pakistan, it is time to face a reality: Pakistan is a nest of Fundamental Islam - our enemy - and we need to take it on. Yes, President Musharreff is a friend of the US. And he is in a tough spot. But we must stop shoveling billions in aid and forgiven loans to a country that supports the Taliban and Osama - and is probably knowingly harboring him, as well.

Iraq is a total sideshow when it comes to our real enemy. Iraq is a piddling little divided country with its own nascent civil war; Pakistan is a teaming morass of hate-filled madrassa schools churning out new waves of suicide bombers programmed to kills Christians and Jews.

And, of course, Saudi Arabia is the prime benefactor of this anti-American hatred. Oil money wends its way into these terrorist-training areas. It is either merely ‘protection money’ paid by an apoplectic-with-fear Saudi Royal Family or it is a true reflection of Arab double-dealing and double-crossing.

So while DC is convulsed over what we did or did not do in the past, we still are not now doing what we need to do: go get Osama - at all costs.

Let’s go - now!

2004 RACE


The Presidential race - Bush vs. Kerry - is changing - and few are noticing it.

As Iraq deteriorates and the 9/11 ‘political asset’ turns into a political liability for G.W. Bush, his standing with the American voter is declining at a time he had hoped to tear Kerry apart as the spineless leftist he truly is.

Suddenly, 2004 looks like 1992 for yet another President Bush: the perception of a weak economy (contrary to facts and data) combined with investigations and devastating revelations have greatly weakened his re-election prospects.

The new NEWSWEEK poll shows what has happened:

In a head-to-head match-up, Kerry now beats Bush 50% - 43%.

With Ralph Nader factored in - and please remember that he is not even going to be on the ballot this time in many states - Kerry still wins: 46% - 42% with Nader getting 4%.

On the crucial ‘right track - wrong track’ question: a whopping 59% of the American people believe our country is now headed in the wrong direction; only 33% believe it is headed in the right direction.

Incumbent presidents are in deep trouble when a majority of the voters believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.

Please keep in mind that Bush’s fall and Kerry’s rise have happened during the time of Bush’s biggest political advantage. This post-primary lull for Kerry - when his campaign is virtually broke while Bush’s campaign is bombarding the airwaves with effective attack ads - was the time of most vulnerability for Kerry.

And what has happened?

Kerry has moved ahead - despite Bush’s money advantages!

Bush has not just shot himself in his foot, he has taken out a Russian-made AK-47 and literally blown off both his legs.

A few reminders:

1) He ticks off his base with his idiotic immigration proposal - aimed at wooing the Hispanic vote but instead angering everyone across the political spectrum.

2) He further angers his base with excessive Federal spending including increases for the NEA and his unpopular, Kennedyesque - and now dropped - Mars Mission.

3) He bets it all on Iraq - based on the claim that WMD is there - and then backtracks. But now that Iraq is falling apart, the American people are perplexed. Why are we still losing our men? What are we now fighting for? Where is this all headed? Have we actually made things worse? Will it ever end?

4) The Bush White House has mis-handled the 9/11 Commission from Day One: they opposed it and stalled it. Then they were forced by the families to agree to it anyway. And each step of the way - getting documents, meeting the President, getting Condi Rice to testify under oath in public, and the just-released August 6, 2001 PDB - the White House has delayed and then given in. The result? All of this 9/11 information is coming out in the height of the campaign season instead of two years ago when Bush was riding high and no one was even running against him. They have totally mismanaged the 9/11 investigation.


Bush has counted on his $170 million fund raising program to ruin Kerry between March and the beginning of the fall campaign. His campaign is saturating the airwaves in the 19 battleground states with ads pointing out what a flip-flopping lefty Kerry is (he is!).

But despite that, Bush is actually losing ground to Kerry!

Kerry has been skiing, had shoulder surgery and basically disappeared. Yet he now has gone ahead of Bush.

Conclusion: Bush sinks or swims with Iraq and his entire handing of what was supposedly his strong suit - foreign and defense policy. But so far these are becoming his liabilities - and they even trample on last week’s good job news.

To win this election, Bush will have to do a lot more than merely attack Kerry’s liberal record. The fact that the most liberal senator is beating Bush tells you just how weak Bush is right now.

November?

Bush can still win but only if Iraq is no longer in flames and Bush is seen as totally on top of the terror threat.

That means he needs to solve a lot of problems in the coming weeks and get the focus back on ‘good times’ rather than reacting to the deteriorating situation. Plus his penchant for secrecy is just killing his credibility.

Despite the Bush Family’s attempt to make G.W. Bush into the Son of Reagan, he is very much looking like the Son of Bush 41.

And 2004 looks more like 1992 when Bush 41 got creamed by a lefty - Clinton - than 1984 when a popular conservative Republican President Reagan in the midst of an economic recovery powered by tax cuts swept to re-election against a lefty Democrat, Mondale, who was a duplicate of John Kerry.

IRAQ FARCE


The idea that this military action in Iraq is to “give” democracy to Iraq is a total and complete farce.

A year ago we were told that this pre-emptive war - the first ever in American history - was to prevent another 9/11 attack with WMD. Well, as we now all know there are no WMD - and, as Chief Weapons Inspector of the CIA, David Kay, said on January 28, there “never were any WMD since 1998.”

We were also told that after removing Saddam Hussein from power that we would “see” democracy take root inside Iraq.

This promise from the Bush Administration was as specious as their WMD claims were. (Please note that Colin Powell now admits much of his famous UN speech about WMD was false.)

Democracy - this unique system of freedom of speech and assembly, decision-making through public voting and a free press, honest courts and a desire for justice - is not something “given” or “imposed” from outside.

Democracy has to be earned by those who want it.

Where are the Iraqi ‘democrats’ willing to fight and die to see their nation join the community of free and democratic nations?

When US troops came in a year ago, were there any local groups who took up arms alongside American soldiers?

Was there - ever - an underground movement inside Iraq that wanted to replace Saddam with a free and democratically elected government?

The Kurds up north have repeatedly fought for their freedom and been good allies of the United States. We, under Bush 41, sold them out after the first Gulf War and let them be savaged and slaughtered by Saddam. These brave Kurds do want an independent nation with democratic principles. But we oppose that new ‘Kurdistan’ as does Turkey.

The Sunnis and the Shiites have refused to fight for democracy. You wonder what Bush 43 is talking about when he says, “We are fighting to create a democracy in the Middle East.” Really? What if the people don’t want it?

Please explain how you can have democracy when the dominant religion treats women like third class citizens?

Even the United States, which for over 100 years did not allow women to vote, had a tradition of respect for women. The Muslim faith, however, treats women poorly. This is one vital reason Muslim nations are falling farther behind the developed West in education and standard of living. How can a society prosper with 52% of itself kept in second-class status.

Ironically, the Shia view women differently than the Sunni: Shia women are truly secondary to men - from work to education to ‘covering up’ with veils. But it is the Shia who want to win any ‘elections’ by capitalizing on their 60% majority status. Suddenly, this oppressed majority want elections - based on one-person one-vote (even including women!) - in order to seize power.

And yet the US opposes a Shiite government. So we have torpedoed a one-person one-vote national election. Instead, we have hand-picked this provisional Iraqi council to run things. It appears these folks couldn’t run their way out of a wet paper bag.

No wonder there is now widespread rebellion among the Sunnis and the Shiites.

And it is only going to get worse.

These are not a people thirsting for our form of freedom or democracy. G.W. Bush is naive and inexperienced; he has never traveled around the world and has no understanding of other people. There is no substitute for the ‘gut feel’ you get when you go somewhere and meet and talk to people. Bush had never left the US before becoming President - except for a trip to visit his parents in Red China back in the 1970's when his father was our representative to Peking.

Instead he has relied on advisers - many of whom brought their own personal agendas to the job.

They sold Bush - and the nation - a “bill of goods.”

First it was WMD.

When that didn’t work they tried “democracy.”

That, too, is failing.

What will be their next excuse?

SHIA REVOLUTION?


Since before our pre-emptive invasion of Iraq my biggest fear has been what a post-Saddam Iraq would become. President Bush - naively - talked of a ‘democracy’ in this bitterly divided Muslim state.

Guess what?

Ain’t gonna happen.

Do you know why?

Because the Bush Administration does not want it to happen.

The American principle of one man, one vote?

We, the USA, vetoed it!

Why?

Because the Shiites are 60% of the Iraqi population and they would automatically win any national election. And that could result in an all-out civil war with ‘score-settling’ for years of Sunni repression under Saddam.

A little bit of history: 13 years ago at the end of the first Gulf War, the first President Bush urged a Shiite Muslim revolt against Saddam and promised American support. Based on that pledge, the Shiites indeed did stage a massive uprising in the southern section of Iraq. But the promised American support never materialized and Saddam brutally crushed the revolt using mass executions, torture and gas.

Do you believe that the Shiites today trust another President Bush when he says we are going to have ‘democracy’ in Iraq? Do you think they believe that - after we turn over sovereignty to the Iraqi Provisional Government on July 1 - the Sunnis and Kurds will treat them fairly and as equals?

No. In fact, the Shia are panicking as that turn-over deadline approaches. They fear what will happen with the Sunnis again running the show from Baghdad. Are more brutal reprisals possible with another Bush standing idly by focusing on his own re-election?

And do not underestimate the trouble-making influence of the Iranians infiltrating across the border to stir up a fundamentalist revolution. Don’t forget that Tehran, too, despises the Sunnis and wants their fellow radical Muslims running that nation and controlling the oil.

What a mess!

And over the weekend the first disturbing signs appeared. In Baghdad’s Sadr City on Saturday and Sunday the Shiite Militia began marching and then engaged in street combat with US troops for the first time.

This is a deeply disturbing development. Should this first vestige of Shia revolt spread south to Basra where the most influential cleric, Ayatollah Sistani, is headquartered then all bets are off. We could then be witnessing the equivalent of Iran in 1979 after the Shah was deposed by an incompetent Jimmy Carter and just weeks later Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile in France. Millions greeted him - and the fundamentalist revolution began.

That is our real enemy in the so-called War on Terror: radical Islam which has declared a Jihad against the west and against the United States of America.

Meanwhile to the east there is another awful problem looming: who is going to be killed first: Osama Bin Laden or Pakistani President Pervez Mussharref? Twice the pro-Osama group has tried to assassinate the president. What if they succeed on a third try? Who would replace this un-elected coup leader? Most observers fear a fundamentalist Muslim - loyal to Osama - would seize power. And that would mean Al Qaeda might control the Pakistani nuclear arsenal.

It has been reported that in the event of a coup against the Pakistani government, a special US military team would enter Pakistan to ‘secure’ the nuclear weapons. But this is pure speculation. And what does rival nuclear power India do in event of mayhem in Pakistan?

It is possible that from Iraq through Iran and on into Pakistan our real enemy - racial Islam - could soon control the majority of the oil and have its own nuclear arsenal.

And this could happen soon - even this week.

If it does, it will change the world even more than 9/11 did.