Senator Joe Lieberman, the honest Democrat, speaks up:

Excerpt:

Since retaking Congress in November 2006, the top foreign policy priority of the Democratic Party has not been to expand the size of our military for the war on terror or to strengthen our democracy promotion efforts in the Middle East or to prevail in Afghanistan. It has been to pull our troops out of Iraq, to abandon the democratically-elected government there, and to hand a defeat to President Bush.

Iraq has become the singular litmus test for Democratic candidates. No Democratic presidential primary candidate today speaks of America's moral or strategic responsibility to stand with the Iraqi people against the totalitarian forces of radical Islam, or of the consequences of handing a victory in Iraq to al Qaeda and Iran. And if they did, their campaign would be as unsuccessful as mine was in 2006. Even as evidence has mounted that General Petraeus' new counterinsurgency strategy is succeeding, Democrats have remained emotionally invested in a narrative of defeat and retreat in Iraq, reluctant to acknowledge the progress we are now achieving, or even that that progress has enabled us to begin drawing down our troops there.

I asked some of my Senate colleagues who voted against our amendment: "Do you believe the evidence the military has given us about the IRGC [Iranian Revolutionary Guard] sponsoring these attacks on our troops?" Yes, they invariably said. "Don't you support tougher economic sanctions against Iran?" I asked. Again, yes - no question. So what's the problem, I asked. "It's simple," they said. "We don't trust Bush. He'll use this resolution as an excuse for war against Iran.".

there is something profoundly wrong - something that should trouble all of us - when we have elected Democratic officials who seem more worried about how the Bush administration might respond to Iran's murder of our troops, than about the fact that Iran is murdering our troops. There is likewise something profoundly wrong when we see candidates who are willing to pander to this politically paranoid, hyper-partisan sentiment in the Democratic base - even if it sends a message of weakness and division to the Iranian regime.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

Update to the story about Hillary's meanness to waitresses here

Violent crime moves to smaller cities: "As rates of violent crime fall in Boston, New Bedford, and Brockton, smaller cities and towns such as Arlington and Haverhill have seen aggravated assaults and robberies increase, according to figures compiled by police chiefs in 25 of the state's largest law enforcement agencies. While the reasons for the fluctuations are not clear, some police chiefs and analysts suggest that criminals and gang members are migrating to smaller, quieter municipalities on the outskirts as bigger cities effectively clamp down on violent felons. Others suggest that heroin use is fueling more robberies by addicts trying to feed their habit. "We can't stick our heads in the sand and not recognize that there has been an increase in crime," said Arlington Police Chief Fred Ryan. Ryan said that Arlington's proximity to Somerville and Cambridge has contributed to making it the "recipient of some displaced crime from our more urban neighbors."

Impotent Europe: "For many critics of U.S. "unilateralism," there is an implicit assumption that the lack of allied participation in ongoing military efforts is due mainly to U.S. policies and the unfavorable European response to them. This begs the question of whether our European allies would be able to do much more than they are doing now, let alone respond to any unforeseen contingencies in the future, even if they were inclined to do so. The answer, to those who have examined the present state of the European defense establishment, increasingly seems to be "no": European armed forces are neither structured, nor equipped, nor trained to play a meaningful role in the scenarios most likely to challenge the security of the civilized world in the coming decades".

The Al Qaeda Reader and Mein Kampf: "A number of book reviewers have recently pointed to the similarities between The Al Qaeda Reader and Mein Kampf. For instance, writing in the New York Observer, James Buchan notes that, "In their [al-Qaeda's] brutality and candor, their fulminations against democracy and loose morals, their obsession with territory, their finicky racism and absolute disdain for the material needs of the public, these documents are a strange echo of Hitler's writings from prison." .... how is The Al Qaeda Reader similar to Mein Kampf? A single sentence from the introduction of the 1999 edition of Mein Kampf, published by Mariner Books, goes a long way in answering this question: "He [Hitler] had made his ultimate goals clear in Mein Kampf as early as 1926: rearmament, the abolition of democracy, territorial expansion, eugenics, the `elimination' of the `Jewish threat'" (Mein Kampf, xv). The Al Qaeda Reader dwells on, if not obsesses over, four of these same five "ultimate goals" of Hitler-everything but eugenics, which is a temporal byproduct of 19th century pseudo-scientific racial theories."

Positive Opinion Change on Iraq: "Being against the war after she was for it, could it be soon be time for Hillary to be for it again? The question arises in light of the findings by Charles Franklin at Pollster.com. According to his November 6th Pollster.com analysis, there has been a "remarkable" shift, in a positive direction, in public opinion on the war in Iraq."

Partial Birth Waterboarding: "Liberals wouldn't lift a finger to stop the torturing -- to the point of destroying -- unborn human life. But put a terrorist [or a baby seal, for that matter] in the block and watch them spring into sensitive-soul mode. Rosa Brooks epitomizes the mindset in her current LA Times column, "Torture: the new abortion." Her notion is that among Republicans, the new litmus test for presidential candidates is not opposition to abortion but support for U.S. officials who order the "torture of prisoners." .... Let's review the liberal moral compass: * Waterboarding a terrorist: an affront to our fundamental values. * Subjecting an unborn child to partial-birth abortion: we celebrate a woman's right to choose! To put things in perspective, and at the risk of being reductive, let me offer this challenge to Rosa Brooks. I'll call water boarding "torture" if she'll say the same about partial birth abortion."

Al Qaeda losing logistic battle in Iraq too: "The various terrorist groups in Iraq, especially the Sunni Arabs and al Qaeda, appear to be having supply problems. In a word, the enemy is running out of ammunition. Their logistical "tail" is being chopped to bits. Captured documents and prisoner interrogations mention these shortages. There are other signs as well. Many of the bomb factories, or bomb storage sites, are full of homemade explosives. Apparently most of the Saddam era, ready-made stuff, is gone. Most of the pre-2003 military explosives have been found and destroyed by American combat engineers over the last four years."

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly incorrect themes of race and IQ -- and featuring again a big coverage of reactions to James "Black IQ" Watson.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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