Iraq and a Hard Place

So far, I've limited myself to topics which were either about our town or could be useful in analyzing what is happening here since the Liberal Siege began last January. Today, however, I feel like I have to make mention of the absolutely brainless and offensive manner in which the anti-war crowd is acting.

Yesterday, the Internet was all abuzz with Sean Penn's latest rant against the President, complete with references to "blood soaked underwear" (Ah, Sean, you silver tongued devil, you). Today, Rosie O'Donnell (foreign policy expert extraordinaire) claims that the British military personnel captured by Iran were put in a location where they were likely to be captured in order to provoke a war with Iran!

What on Earth makes these people think that the American public is so stupid as to believe these inane conspiracy theories? The people who believe this nonsense are the same sorts of people who claim we knew about (or were complicit in!) the 9/11 attacks before they took place. They are the same ones who believe the Government intentionally lied about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq in order to give us a reason to start a war. They are the same ones who believe in all sorts of unreasonable and (dare I say it?) irrational plots.

The fact is, the Iraq War served the Lib-Dems far better than it did Conservatives and Republicans. The Lib-Dems in this country grabbed onto the War with all their strength, politicized the blazes out of it, twisted facts and figures to fit their own interests, and exploited the suffering and memories of our servicemen and women. Why did they do this? For one simple reason: to retake control of the Congress.

The problem is, once the public is educated as to the truth about the War, this whole thing will backfire in their faces. Ronald Reagan was elected President less than a decade after Watergate and the end of the Vietnam War, which were supposedly the two final nails in the Republicans' coffin. Not only did he soundly trounce Jimmy Carter and roll over Walter Mondale as if he wasn't even there, his much ridiculed "Reagonomics" once again made America the world's economic 500 pound gorilla and launched us on the "two steps forward, one step back" road to decimating liberalism throughout America. We just experience our "one step back." Get ready for the next "two steps forward."

OK, so if the truth about Iraq will set us free, we need to clear up some issues:

1. Weapons of Mass Destruction. Saddam had them, no doubt about that. How do we know? He used them against the Shiites and against the Iranians. What we don't know is what happened to them. We can't find them, so he may have actually destroyed them. Or buried them in the desert. Or (as some claim) shipped them out of the country, across Syria and into Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. The point is, it doesn't matter. If there was a .1% chance that he had them and was refusing to give them up, we had no choice but to act. This isn't Boston Legal, where we have to prove the dictator is guilty before running him out of Baghdad on a rail. If he got rid of them, it was his obligation to prove that, not ours to prove he didn't. That was the gist of all pertinent Security Council Resolutions.
   
2. American Military Casualties. I, for one, think that it is a vile, disgusting tactic for the Left to keep pointing out the number of military deaths as a political tool. War is not a football game, where keeping score determines the winners and losers. Doing so makes it impossible for the families of the dead to achieve any closure because their loved ones are a part of that number being thrown about every single day. However, if the Lib-Dems want to use that as the standard, they need to be aware that we have never, in the entire history of the United States, executed a war with so few casualties. According to the iCasualties.org, there are currently 3,242 American military servicepeople dead in Iraq. In some battles we have fought in our history, there were that many dead in a single day. In almost all wars, we had single months where we exceeded that total. Our daily average is less than 2.3 war dead. A war cannot be fought without casualties. It simply will not happen. If Liberals insist on using casualties as a benchmark, what they are saying is that the Iraq war is the single most successful military campaign ever waged by the United States in 231 years of nationhood. In my humble opinion, the casualty numbers are a flawed benchmark because using them takes our attention away from everything which does, in fact, need to be fixed about the way in which we wage war. However, if they want this as the standard, their conclusions must be challenged.
3. Iraqi Civilian Deaths. The Lib-Dems have concocted a story that 650,000 Iraqi civilians have died since the start of the War. This is nothing but a fairy tale. There was no census-style survey performed in order to arrive at that figure. Instead, localized (nearly anecdotal) polling was done where people were asked if they knew anyone who had "disappeared." Those numbers were compiled and projected out onto the entire country of Iraq! The flaws in that, of course, are legion. First, assuming that "disappeared" is synonymous with "dead" is ridiculous. Second, when compiling this data, there was no way to know if the same "disappearance" was being counted multiple times, as you couldn't know if the same person was being reported by several acquaintances. Finally, we know from opinion polls here in the U.S. that the projecting of small samples out over a much larger population never works the way it's supposed to. One fact that nobody looks at, however, is the fact that prior to the War, many international organizations were reporting that Saddam's secret police and paramilitary groups were killing 100-300 people every single day. That's over 146,000 lives saved, and that's no projection, that's history. Obviously, the reason for coming up with the idiotic number they did come up with was to make sure it was far higher than the number of lives saved. It's propaganda, it's political and it cannot be taken at face value.
   

So, the Code Pinks and Women in Blacks and all the other bizarre pacifist color guards out there need to start re-evaluating the facts of life, because they have it all wrong.

One question I do have: if the President is to be held accountable for the fact that we cannot find the Weapons of Mass Destruction, is the Supervisor to be held accountable because we cannot find the famous Phantom Porn Site? Just a thought.