POLITICS

From the AP: WASHINGTON- President Bush and congressional Democrats don't agree about much when it comes to the Iraq war, but one of the areas where they disagree the least is the need to measure the Baghdad government's progress.

That makes the issue ripe for negotiation in an evolving veto struggle over the war, even though the administration and its critics are fiercely at odds when it comes to how—and whether—to enforce these so-called benchmarks for self-defense and democracy in Iraq's post-Saddam Hussein era.

...Bush also has invited the leaders of both parties to the White House on Wednesday. And he said that once he casts his veto he'll be ready to work with Democrats on a new version that provides funds without strings attached.

And the quote of the day belongs to Sec. of State, Condoleeza Rice:

"The problem is, why tie our own hands? And that's the problem with having so-called consequences for missing the benchmarks"

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Details over at GOP Bloggers.

From Newsmax:

Congressional Democrats could use the threat of impeachment as a lever against President Bush in the battle over the handling of the Iraq war, Rep. John P. Murtha, D-Pa., said Sunday.

"What I’m saying, there’s four ways to influence a president. And one of them’s impeachment,” said Murtha, according to the Web site Politco.com. Murtha, chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, made his remarks on "Face the Nation.”

What a senile, megalomaniacal, opportunistic piece of garbage.

PA-12, what were you thinking?

Go ahead, Jack--you want to put in the final nail of the dems' chances of getting in in '08, drag the President (and yourselves, for that matter) through the impeachment process.

With every question you ask Bush, know that you will be asking those same questions in a mirror.

You were privy to every piece of intelligence that Bush had.

You decided to approve this action.

Yet you run away from the consequences, and you run away from the responsibility of seeing it through.

And you want to actually lead this nation?

That is what Harry said it was, and it is certainly what nearly all American leftists think it is...but for a lost war, it does have some odd events - from Omar Fadhil over at Pajamas Media:

On Friday night, soldiers from the 5th brigade 6th division of the Iraqi army captured 75 militants and confiscated their weapons in al-Yarmouk district in western Baghdad. Qasim Ata the spokesman of Baghdad operations said the militants were found hiding in a large container loaded on a truck. It’s not clear what the militants’ destination or plans were.

In the second operation 72 suspected terrorists were captured in raids in Samrra and Anbar. Bomb-making material was discovered too.

The details of the third operation are yet to be confirmed but if the report of al-Hurra is true then this one is the most significant of the three. Al-Hurra said that the artillery barrage was followed by raids by joint Iraqi-American forces on militants’ positions in Albu Eitha and around Dora and reported that the overall operation left 70 militants killed.

Meanwhile, something small in size, big in meaning is brewing in Adhamiya. Yesterday I was asked by our friend Bill Roggio (whose reporting I admire and recommend) whether I thought the Sunni in Baghdad would follow the example of the Awakening Council of Anbar. That council is made up of Sunni tribes that have turned against al-Qaeda and are now fighting a fierce war against them side by side with government forces.

I couldn’t answer that question. The difference in social structures between tribal Ramadi and urban Baghdad alters everything. The tribal structure allows for safe communication among the members of the same tribe or clan. They most often live in the same geographic area and tend to consider themselves “cousins”. In Baghdad this doesn’t exist, making it difficult to safely spread the word among many people.

Even so, it seems that the question might have an answer now, and a positive one.

Al-Sabah reported today that “some community leaders in Adhamiya are working on forming a salvation council for their own district they will be calling The Adhamiya Awakening. Sources close to the leaders said they (the leaders) have managed to win the support of some hundred people who agree with the new position. The sources asserted that the goal of the Awakening is to rid Adhamiya of the terrorists.”

The capture of 75 and 72 terrorists is significant - not so much in the numbers (though that is a good bag), but in the fact that when you capture that many, it means you got the drop on them before they knew you were there...and that means, most likely, that they were betrayed. This could be a strong indicator that the Iraqis are more and more helping the Iraqi, American and Coalition forces.

More and more it seems that the conviction we are defeated is becoming an unreasonable shriek. A good, recent example of this is currently over at Dean's World. So invested are the critics in the BUSH LIED!!! and THE WAR IS LOST!!! meme that they simply cannot, without feeling like complete fools, back away...and as the evidence continues to mount that we're making great progress with the surge, the more determined the left is to shout that all is lost and, of course, do whatever they can in the realm of politics to make it lost. What is really sad about it is that these critics, for all their self-professed love of humanity, are taking no account of the actual people of Iraq...not the statistics on the dead, but the actual living, breathing people...300,000 of which are figting right alongside us, and millions of whom voted for liberty over tyranny.

They are our friends, these brave Iraqis who fight alongside us and this American, at least, will never, ever abandon them.

Oh, my goodness! I can't believe this shocking, new plan of John Edwards! This is just so unlike a Democrat, it actually makes me think that perhaps I should switch parties:

SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards said on Sunday he would consider raising taxes on the wealthy in addition to his earlier proposal to roll back tax cuts ushered in by President George W. Bush.

Earlier this year, Edwards became the first Democratic candidate to embrace taxes hikes to fund an ambitious health- care plan he estimates would cost from $90 billion to $120 billion a year. Under that plan, he would eliminate tax cuts Bush implemented for those making more than $200,000 a year.

The former one-term senator from North Carolina told reporters at the California Democrats' annual convention he would also consider additional taxes on the rich beyond that.

"I think it is worthy of consideration," he told a news conference. "We have gone from a record surplus to a record deficit and I think there are some judgments the next president will have to make."

To think that a Democrat would courageously ignore the fact that the "record deficit" is fading so fast that it'll probably disappear by FY 2009! What a man! It takes rare guts for a man to just ignore reality and plunge right ahead into programs which aren't needed and would be counter-productive, but would at least give MoveOn and Daily Kos types a set of mindless talking points for 2008. And that leaves aside the fact that Edwards is also brave enough to not want to tax the massive, luxurious homes of rich ambulance chasers - those Republicans, ya know?, are out to get those guardians of the right of a few lawyers to grow fat off the work of others! They must be protected! Or we'll all die!

Of lesser importance, but still an act of sublime bravery, is the way Edwards is also refusing to tax $400 haircuts.

WIth a man like Edward to lead us into that brave, new world of tax-and-spend liberalism all he needs is a ill-tempered wife who is afraid of Republicans who own guns. WIth that, he'll be unstoppable - no chance at all he'd fail to win the electoral votes of Massachusetts and Vermont.

And while our lefties are more concerned about the good feelings of Frenchmen, others are watching with delight as the Defeaticrats undermine our war effort - as Mark Steyn notes:

The Defeaticrats are being opportunist: They think they can calibrate the precise degree of U.S. defeat in Mesopotamia that will bring victory for them in Ohio and Florida. Contemptible as this is, it wouldn't be possible had the administration not lost the support of many of the American people over this war. The losses are devastating for the individuals' families but they are historically among the lowest in any conflict this nation or any other has fought. So I don't believe the nightly plume of smoke over Baghdad on the evening news explains the national disenchantment. Rather, the mission as framed by the president -- help the Iraqi people build a free and stable Iraq -- is simply not accepted by the American people. On the right, between the unrealpolitik "realists" and the "rubble doesn't cause trouble" isolationists and the hit-'em-harder-faster crowd, the president has fewer and fewer takers for a hunkered-down, defensive, thankless semi-colonial policing operation. Regardless of how it works on the ground, it has limited appeal at home. Meanwhile, the leftists don't accept it because, while they're fond of "causes," they dislike those that require meaningful action: Ask Tibetans about how effective half a century of America's "Free Tibet" campaign has been; or ask Darfuris, assuming you can find one still breathing, how the left's latest fetishization is going from their perspective:

"On Sunday, April 29, Salt Lake Saves Darfur invites the greater Salt Lake community of compassion to join with us as we honor the fallen and suffering Darfuris in a day of films, discussion and dance with a Sudanese dance troupe."

Marvelous. I hope as the "Salt Lake Saves Darfur" campaign intensifies in the decades ahead there'll be enough Darfuris to man the dance troupe. It would be truer to say that the greater Salt Lake community of compassion, like Sen. Obama with his light bulbs, is "working on" saving Darfur.

In Khartoum, Tehran, Moscow and elsewhere, the world's mischief-makers have reached their own conclusions about how much serious "work" America is prepared to do.

As I noted in Why I Still Support President Bush, the program we're following is doubly unpopular: both those who want a more aggressive approach and those who prefer a more passive program are both in opposition - and thus support for the President's policy in Iraq hovers around 35% of likely voters. With 35% you can still do a lot, especially when the other 65% is split between defeatists and "kill 'em all". With 35%, you've got a pool of more than 100 million Americans to draw from, and thus with about 10 million military-aged males, no problem maintaining troop levels in a military force approaching 2 million strong. But with only 35%, you've also got the problem of not having either a majority or at least a plurality in favor of your plan, and that allows the opportunists their opening.

It is an unfortunate fact of life that most of the world is largely ignorant of how the United States works. I know, the story line is that Americans are ignorant of a world which is much better informed than Americans are...but your average Parisian has as much knowledge of, say, Boston and the average Bostonian has of Paris...which means, hardly any at all. This ignorance works to the advantage of America's enemies - they point out that Senate Majority Leader Reid says that America has lost the war in Iraq, and that means that America is defeated, period. They don't understand that the Senate Majority Leader only has a one-seat majority (given that one of his troops is still in hospital) and that the one seat majority is dependent upon the continuing loyalty of a man who is in favor of fighting to victory in Iraq. Thus a statement from Reid is hardly definitive of American views - but the nuances are lost, and all the ignorant know is that people up top in American politics believe we've lost the war. And if we've lost, then the other side has won - and no backtracking or further explanations from Reid matter in the least.

American defeat is the signal for America's enemies to attack - and right now that fool Putin figures it is time to flex dying Russia's nearly non-existent muscle. Putin wants to play the Great Game, and America's perceived weakness - furnished by opportunistic liberal Democrats - is the chance for Putin to pretend that Russia is still a factor in world affairs. Putin is playing a game of blind-man's bluff - but more serious is the way Iran, Syria, Iraqi terrorists and other, far more dangerous, enemies view our situation. Putin's Russia barely has the strength to hold down the mid-sized town of Grozny...but the mullah's Iran has a worldwide network of terrorist groups, plenty of oil money, a burgeoning nuclear program and the will to strike hard. If the mullahs in Iran think we've lost in Iraq, then the whole world opens up for their action, in their view.

We haven't, of course, lost in Iraq - in fact, if we maintain the will to fight, there's no possible way we can lose in Iraq. But the damage is already done, thanks to the Defeaticrats. The whole world is waiting for our replay of Saigon, 1975. They won't get it, but while they are waiting the chance for massive miscalculation on the part of our enemies grows daily. It could very well be that we'll soon face a direct challenge, or a strong assault on an American interest (like, say, a revival of Iran's proxy war with Israel in south Lebanon) simply because our enemies think we lack the will to respond. People may die because Harry Reid wanted a rhetorical sop to the leftwing base of his Party.

To say these are dangerous times is to barely understand what we are going through. Right now, there is a finger in the dyke - President Bush, who stands firm. But just the moment comes when the world perceives that he no longer has control of US foreign or military policy, and the enemies of America will strike. That moment will certainly come on January 20th, 2009 - and by then we better have re-convinced the world that we're still willing to fight.

It has been said by many abortion rights advocates that South Carolina is one of the most difficult places in the country to get an abortion. I say: "Good for South Carolina." There comes a time when people have to stand for what is right, and principles of "popularity" or "relativism" should not factor in. Choose life.

And the quote of the day for values belongs to Holly Gatling:

“Our objective is to save as many lives as we can save until the U.S. Supreme Court changes Roe. We have to pass every law we can pass that will be upheld by the Supreme Court that will give women more information, that will strengthen informed consent, that will empower women to make a truly informed decision.”'

--Holly Gatling of S.C. Citizens for Life, a principal organizer among anti-abortion forces.

Thank you for standing up for your beliefs and the standards of life, Holly.

President Bush's idea for a temporary worker program that leads to the path of citzenship for the immigrants already in the United States is one that is ideal and not unrealistic. I believe that all immigrants who are currently present in the United States should strive toward legality if they have not already earned it. The President is also correct in assessing that the immigration system is broken and that something must be done to secure our borders.

At the same time, it is almost nonsensical to deport all 12 million illegal immigrants. Businesses should be held accountable. The American people do not deserve to feel cheated by the costs incurred to us with the increasing number of illegal immigrants, and border laws should indeed get tougher.

For all those who accuse the President of close-mindedness and an unwillingness to compromise and find tangible, sensible solutions to problems, this new plan proves those views to be terribly inaccurate.

And the quote of the day for compromise belongs to President Bush.
From the AP:

Bush said the immigration system is deeply broken: Employers are not held accountable enough; borders are not secure enough; businesses need workers willing to do low-paying jobs; and the 12 million people estimated to be in the U.S. illegally cannot all be deported and so must be dealt with "without amnesty and without animosity."

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