There's been an influx of Brits lately taking it upon themselves to be going around `endorsing' Barack Hussein Obama as our president.
This started with the MTV video Awards, hosted by one `comedian' Russel Brand who came out with this little gem:
"PLEASE ELECT BARACK OBAMA. Please! On behalf of the world. Some people, I think they’re called racists, say that America is not ready for a black president. But I know America to be a forward-thinking country, right. Because, otherwise, you know, would you have let that retarded cowboy fellow be president for eight years?"
Classy, no? Especially coming from someone who's idea of humor is dressing up like Osama bin-Laden after the 9/11 attacks, ho ho.
Do us a favor and dispose of your trash at home please, instead of dumping it here.
Next, we have your BBC. They had the nerve to run a 'world poll' showing how much everyone but his fellow countrymen prefer The Chosen One as our president.Anyone who's paying attention knows the Beeb admittedly hates anything to do with America, and it's not like they're a serious news outlet anymore like they used to be. But you'd think they would have the common courtesy to let us run our own affairs without sticking their large noses in.Whom do they think they are?
Last but not least, there's Gordon Brown....YOUR PRIME MINISTER! I could laugh off the antics of an idiot Vid-jock and the sort of drivel that gets run in the Beeb and al-Guardian,but the idea that the most craven PM in Britain's history has the nerve to try and weigh in on our elections and tell us who we should elect as our president?
I mean, I never thought much of Gordon Brown anyway. Cowardly, yes, but I never thought he was that thick, to take sides in an election before the results are even close to being announced.
Enough of this garbage, I tell you. If you want Barack Obama in charge so badly, you take him and welcome. Given Obama's views on national defense and his socialist 'tax-`em-until-they-bleed economic views,I'm sure he'd fit in better on your side of the pond anyway. But a lot of us have rather different feelings on the matter and have a rather jaundiced view of a bunch of stinkin' furriners telling us whom we should elect and inferring that we're racists and cretins if we don't 'vote the right way.'
Thanks for your interest, cousins, but we grubby colonials have been doing fairly well the last 232 years on our own without your meddling in our affairs. Let's keep it that way.
Oh,by the way, Mel Phillips, Lady Thatcher and a select few others are exempt from the above and can weigh in whenever they like. Considering the state of much of Britain these days, they might as well change teams and actually be Americans.
Classy, no? Even nastier was his comment, just as obviously addressed at John McCain:"You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called ‘change,’ . . . it’s still gonna stink after eight years."
Of course, we can expect the usual 'nuancing' from team Obama after the fact if anyone expresses any outrage at this kind of gutter insult.
Keep it coming, O Chosen One. The halo dims more very day, and the American people are starting to pay attention.
UPDATE: The dinodaur media is handling this exactly as I though tthey would. If they're not ignoring it, they're ignoring any mention of Palin. Based on the infuriated comments I've seen around the web, this is going to be a lot bigger and harder to ignore than they think.
Barack Hussein Obama has a long standing connection with the Nation Of Islam, with American Islamists and with the Saudis. That alone ought to disqualify him in most American's minds for the presidency.
The pieces fit together in an interesting way.
The story starts back in 1988, when Barack Obama had first applied to Harvard.
In the above interview, which just surfaced recently we see Percy Sutton reminiscing with host host Dominic Carter on NY1's 'Inside City Hall' about the Obama candidacy and his relationship with Barack Obama. Sutton was one of New York State's most powerful and influential black politicians in his day and was Borough president for twelve years, as well as being Malcolm X's attorney.
That friend, knowing Sutton had connections at Harvard, asked Sutton to write a letter in support of Obama's application to Harvard law school.
"The friend's name is Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, from Texas," Sutton said. "He is the principal adviser to one of the world's richest men. He told me about Obama."
Sutton wrote the letter, and likely followed up with a few phonecalls.
Sutton, by the way is a former business partner of Mansour, of whom we'll hear more shortly. And the billionaire Sutton is talking about? None other than our old friend Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal.
Al-Waleed, some of you might recall, is one of the prime movers behind the Wahabi takeover of America's mosques and madrassahs through his funding of the Islamic Society Of North America(ISNA), was a major funder of the Al Qaeda charity al-Haramain and was the Saudi prince who's $10 million dollar donation to New York City after 9/11 was spurned by then mayor Rudy Giuliani after after the prince made a public comment suggesting that the U.S. relationship with Israel were responsible for the attack.
He also has donated millions to establishing Saudi controlled Middle East Studies departments - including at Harvard, where he ponied up a mere $20 million.
Did the backing of Sutton, al-Mansour and a major donor like the Saudi Prince have anything to do with Obama being selected as editor of the Law review, even though he never contributed a single article? And did al-Mansour or Prince Al-Waleed have anything to do with an unknown law undergraduate suddenly getting a lucrative book deal that helped pay for his college education? Obama has stated that when he became president of the law review in 1990, `a few publishers started calling', even though he had never written anything for the Harvard Law review. Did these publishers find out through mental telepathy that Obama was an author?
And who is Khalid al-Mansour? He's a well connected Texas-born lawyer who used to be known as Don Warden back in Berkeley, when he was involved with the Black Panther movement. He originally comes from Texas and is primarily a black separatist, Islamist and anti-Semite, who's books include titles like "The Destruction of Western Civilization as Seen Through Islam" and "Will the West Rule Forever?" Here's a couple of samples of al-Mansour at work:
So...what did this radical Islamist and black separatist see in a young Barack Obama that he would seek to sponsor Obama's education and career? How did they meet? What else did Mansour do for him?
Here's another piece of the puzzle..Mansour also was good friends with academic fraud and plagiarist Edward Said, whom Obama knew during his two-year stint at Columbia University in the early 1980s, where Said taught comparative literature and where Obama was a student of his. Did Said flag Obama for Mansour?
We certainly won't find out from Obama. He refuses to talk about his relationship with Said.
Another interesting Mansour associate was Jabir Herbert Muhammed, the son of Nation Of Islam founder Elijah Muhammed, who just died this week and had NOI head Louis Farrakhan as the main speaker at his funeral. And - surprise- it turns out that Herbert Muhammed had a close business relationship with none other than Syrian-born convicted felon Tony Rezco, Obama's chief fundraiser and shill in Chicago. Muhammed made Rezco general manager of his company, Crucial Concessions, in 1983, and later created the Muhammad Ali Foundation to spread Islam and appointed Rezko executive director.
And as you might also recall, Obama's spiritual mentor Jeremiah Wright was formerly a member of the Nation of islam, Trinity Church and Wright had cordial relations with Louis Farrakhan and the NOI and Barack Obama took part in the so-called Million Man March, an anti-Semitic orgy sponsored by the Nation of Islam that ought to raise a few questions for many of Obama's Jewish supporters.
Prince Al-Waleed, Khalid Al-Mansour, Edward Said, Herbert Muhammed, Tony Rezco..all connected to one another and all in one large circle surrounding Barack Hussein Obama.
Perhaps when the dinosaur media gets a moment off from sliming Sarah Palin, it might be nice if they saw fit to look into this.
There's obviously a lot more to the relationship between Barack Hussein Obama and ex-Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers than "just a guy I know who lives in my neighborhood."
You'll recall that I 've already discussed how Obama sought out to ingratiate himself with Ayers, a member of a politically well connected Chicago family, how Obama launched his political career from the living room of Ayer's home, and their close work together on the ultra Left Annenberg Challenge,and on the Chicago School Reform Collaborative, two 'programs' that resulted in what amounted to a ripoff of millions of dollars from Chicago taxpayers under the guise of reforming the school system.
When award winning jounalist and scholar Stanley Kurz made a Fredom of Information Act request to get access to the archives of the Annenberg Challenge from the University of Chicago where they're kept, he was suddenly denied access to the records after initially being granted permission and given an index...until the controversy over the University denying a perfectly legitimate FOIA request compelled them to open up the records again to Kurz after delay of almost a week.
At the time, I surmised that the delay was to probably allow the parties concerned to get rid of anything inconvenient....and it turns out that was exactly the case:
The President of the University of Illinois, B. Joseph White, and the University Counsel of the University of Illinois, Thomas Bearrows, contacted Kenneth C. Rolling, the former Executive Director of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) and a professional colleague of Barack Obama for many years, prior to the release of CAC records to the public late last month and offered Rolling an opportunity to recommend to the University which records of the CAC held at the University's Chicago campus (UIC) should be restricted from public access.
It's obvious. Obama and Ayers were tipped off.
There's lots more to this coverup story, which I recommend you read in full. If there was anything remotely like this in John McCain's background, there would be page one screaming headlines in every dinosaur media outlet in America.Since it's Obama, you'll hear nothing about it from them.
Obviously, there's a lot about his relationship will Bill Ayers Elmer-Gantry-with-a-tan doesn't want us to know about. Why? What's he hiding?
Short takes is my semi-daily way of cramming a lot into a small space ..kind of like the young gentleman above is doing! Here's a rundown of some of today's items of interest for Joshua's Army:
*USATODAY POLL: McCAIN takes 10-point lead over Obama in likely voters... ZOGBY: McCAIN-Palin up 4%...GALLUP: McCain's Bounce Gives Him 5-Point Lead... I chose to group these latest polls stories together for a reason...to warn you not to give too much credence to them. Almost all of these polls are commisioned by the dinosaur media and they say want the media wants them to say.I'm almost certain that whatever the GOP bounce really is, it's being mostly undereported - and will be artificially lowered again as the campaign goes on to give the impression Obama is surging to victory. I know this because that's exactly what happened in 2004,when people like Zogby predicted a Kerry landslide. Don't be either overconfident or disheartened by whatever the polls say...just work for victory.
Another thing to be wary of as the election goes down is early projected 'calls' of states and artificially inflated exit polls for Obama by the networks, designed to minimize GOP turnout. That, as we know happened before in 2000 and in 2004. Tune them out and go vote.
*Ahmadinejad's New Enemy: Women - Amir Taheri reports on how the Iranian regime is working to eleiminate what's left of women's rights in the country and targeting feminists trying to stop the process.
I guess it was getting a little too putridly biased even for NBC..Gollum and Mr. Tingle are out of the anchor chairs and have now been demoted to 'analysts:'
MSNBC tried a bold experiment this year by putting two politically incendiary hosts, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, in the anchor chair to lead the cable news channel’s coverage of the election.
That experiment appears to be over.
After months of accusations of political bias and simmering animosity between MSNBC and its parent network NBC, the channel decided over the weekend that the NBC News correspondent and MSNBC host David Gregory would anchor news coverage of the coming debates and election night. Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews will remain as analysts during the coverage.
The change — which comes in the home stretch of the long election cycle — is a direct result of tensions associated with the channel’s perceived shift to the political left.
“The most disappointing shift is to see the partisan attitude move from prime time into what’s supposed to be straight news programming,” said Davidson Goldin, formerly the editorial director of MSNBC and a co-founder of the reputation management firm DolceGoldin.
Only the New York Times could call associatingLeftards like Olbermann and Matthews with news `a bold experiment.'
Things are not going well and you know Obama is rattled when he can't even go on a friendly Sunday show like George Stephanopoulos' `This Week' on ABC without falling all over himself. First there's a cute gaffe by Obama making a reference to 'my Muslim faith' that only got contained because Stephanopoulos, a supposedly neutral interviwer, hurriedly stepped in and corrected him.And notice if you will, how the Chosen One is stuttering and stumbling...
*Just a note for the trolls...no I don't think Obama is now a Muslim, though he obviously once was when he lived in Indonesia as a boy. But I'd also submit that a man who sat in Reverend Wright's poisonous church for two decades and exposed his children to that kind 0f filth doesn't qualify as a Christian either.
In the same interview Elmer-Gantry-with-a-tan acknowledged that his `above my paygrade' answer on abortion at Saddleback was just a little too flip, and he now wishes he'd said the same thing in essence but in a more roundabout fashion ,giving the rubes more nuance - something for which I have a very different word.
Of course, what Obama doesn't realize is that what really damns him on this issue, even with people like me who aren't quite so hardline on the issue is not his words but his deeds....not that George Stephanopoulos would ever mention that little detail for the viewing public.
And last but not least, in the same interview Obama suddenly let us know that he considered joining the military, something heretofore unrevealed in two memoirs or in his countless speeches and narratives.
Obama disclosed that he had once considered serving in the military.
“You know, I actually did,” Obama said. “I had to sign up for Selective Service when I graduated from high school. And I was growing up in Hawaii. And I have friends whose parents were in the military. There are a lot of Army, military bases there.
“And I actually always thought of the military as an ennobling and, you know, honorable option. But keep in mind that I graduated in 1979. The Vietnam War had come to an end. We weren’t engaged in an active military conflict at that point. And so, it’s not an option that I ever decided to pursue.”
Except, once again, the Chosen One tossed off another falsehood, hoping it would get by.
You see, in 1979, when Obama graduated, there was no requirement to register with the draft board. President Ford eliminated the requirement in 1975. Registration for selective service was not reinstated until 1980. So what we have here is yet another tall tale from the Chosen One...a misstatement, yeah that's it.
The shoe is finally coming down on this cockroach.
He's scheduled to resign September 21...unless they drag him off to jail beforehand. Meanwhile, he's still doing whatever he can to stab his country in the back while he can.
FF: Once again,it's time to creep through the rancid political jungle with JoshuaPundit's own political guru and former Democratic Presidential Candidate, my pal Weekend Monkey.
WM: Hideyho, Primates! Wassup, FF?
FF: Hello again Monkey. An interesting week in politics, no?
WM: Hooo,yeah! I love stuff like this. It looks like you were right about Sarah Palin, FF. I really figured the cranky old guy was gonna go for Pawlenty, to try and cop Minnesota.Instead he pulls somethin' out of left field and shocks everybody! Even I gotta admire that, Democrat though I am.
FF: Well, you were right about Biden.
WM: Hee hee, yeah..pretty easy call, especially with McCain pricking Obama Yo' Mama's vanity by holding him up as an empty suit celebrity.
FF: I think that McCain's choice of Palin was a master strategic stroke and shows he has what it takes to be commander-in-chief.
I figured he'd pick someone like Palin because he took a realistic look at his situation and saw the same strengths and weaknesses I did. He was facing a young, charismatic opponent with an energized base of followers, tons of money and the media in his pocket, but with no resume and with associations with a lot of pretty radical elements that made people question his patriotism and judgment.Plus he was weakened by the primary fight with the Clintons.
McCain has the resume, and nobody with the brains G-d gave a goat is going to question his patriotism, but he was fronting a divided party thanks to Bush and was on the defensive because of that. He's not the best speaker, especially compared to Obama, he couldn't count on the media to be even remotely fair and he realized, after Obama turned down his offer to have the townhall style debates and began ridiculing him personally in his ads that his idea of a of a high level campaign on the issues was a fantasy.
WM: Well c'mon FF, what did you expect?
FF: If you remember, I figured that at some point he'd realize he had to take the gloves off.That's when he began approaching the campaign as a warrior and a strategist, I think. He hired Steve Schmidt and began hitting Obama hard on his weak points,especially his vanity. I think the Saddleback thing was a crucial first battle - he made Obama look pretty bad, to the point that he had to start his surrogates whining about how McCain 'knew the questions in advance.'
Then he watched what happened at the convention. Not only did Obama not pick Hillary as his vice president, he went out of his way to humiliate her. And then he picked an old DC hack like Biden as his running mate, which was a choice made out of weakness, and played right into McCain's hands with that grandiose phony Greek Parthenon setting and a speech that was a typical Dem laundry list of grievance and class warfare.
Originally, I thought McCain's pick of Palin was a longshot that worked, but now I see it exactly what a master stroke it was. With that one pick, he unified the party, emphasized his 'maverick' brand,provided his campaign with a charismatic female candidate who's actually more popular than Obama and distanced himself from Bush and made the GOP the party of change and reform. I mean, the whole theme of the convention was Country First, and every speech built on that.
WM: Yowza! You really think McCain and the ReThugs planned all this?
FF: Uh huh. As a matter of fact, I think it worked even better than he figured, because of the way the media and the Dems went after Palin and her family. I mean, by the time she gave her speech, the media had painted her and her family as trailer trash and people were surprised that she had all her teeth and could actually come out with a coherent sentence.
WM: You got somethin' there, FF. Except, I gotta point out, Obama did say that he was against attacking her and her family personally.
FF: Yeah, right...what, four or five days after the crap started, Monkey? And remember, Obama has plenty of surrogates that are involved with his campaign that are keeping the sliming going. I mean, you see him refusing support from George Soros because Soros is funding MoveOn and Daily Kos? You see him doing anything concrete to reign in anybody? What's going on is that his campaign is feeding stuff to their shills in the dinosaur media, and that way he has plausible deniability.
WM: Hey, I'm just saying he was against it officially, and the rest is politics as usual. Actually, if Obama's smart, they'll ignore Palin as much as possible and concentrate on McCain.
FF: Except he isn't all that smart, Monkey. I think we've established that. I mean, if I had an opponent that beat me in the popular vote and won all the big states I was going to need to win, I'd do my best to make her my running mate. I wouldn't have picked Biden.
WM: Hey, I grant you, Biden wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but a bunch of people turned Obama down and he was the only one left with any kind of foreign policy resume. Plus, you don't get the nuances, as usual. The Democratic primary campaign was the result of a fight between the Soros wing of the party and the Clintons.Obama is Soros' horse in this race, and there was no way Obama Yo' Mama and Shrillery could have run together.
FF: I see.But why didn't he pick another woman? What about Karen Sebelius...DiFi...Boxer..
WM: First of all, after the McCain stuff, he needed somebody with experience. And second, there's only one queen in this campaign, and that's Michelle Obama. No way any other female was going to run with Obama, especially a white one. And anyway, DiFi had turned it down already.
FF: Speaking as a professional, what did you think of the GOP convention?
WM: Unfortunately, it went pretty well. The speeches were pretty good, especially Giuliani's. And the one day delay because of Gustav gave some people the illusion that the Republicans cared about some crackers in the Gulf States.
FF: Oh come on, Monkey. They busted some of your guys joking about how Gustav proved that G-d was on the side of the Dems!
WM: Yeah yeah OK... anyway Sarah Palin's speech was damned good, even if she is a yahoo from America's outback. It's made her into a major celebrity. And you're right, all the personal sniping at her wasn't productive.
FF: Americans don't like people who bully women and kids.And I'd be careful about that yahoo stuff, if I were you. I hear she's a damn good shot.
WM: Look, the Rethugs had their moment...even McCain's speech was pretty good towards the end, for McCain, I gotta admit. Let's see how it translates into numbers in the next sixty days or so and what happens in the debates. And as far as Palin goes, I think the campaign has to keep trashing McCain and ignore Palin as much as possible. That, and use their money clout to get every possible vote out.
FF: Every illegal alien, convicted felon, homeless person and corpse, right Monkey?
WM: It's politics FF. And the Obama people know how to play the game as dirty as anybody.
FF: Speaking of politics, where do you see the Clintons coming down in all this?
WM: Pretty much the same as the Bushes, believe it or not. Hillary has two choices. Originally, she was going to sabotage Obama Yo' Mama's campaign and do the minimum necessary, with the idea that Obama would lose and McCain would be a one termer so she'd be ready to pick up the pieces and run again in 2012. Now, with this Palin chickee in the mix, she's gotta figure whether it makes more sense to try and suck up to Obama and hope she can maybe get on the Supreme Court or something and forget about being president or stick withthe original plan and take her chances. I see her sticking with the original plan - a lot can happen between now and 2012 and she's still pissed off at Obama.
The Bushes had the same thing going, only from the opposite end of the telescope. They've never liked McCain, and I think it was you who told me that the Bush big league financial donors, the Pioneers, are sitting on their wallets this year. The Bushes figured that if Obama won, people would be way sick of him after one term and that would pave the way for Jeb or another Bushie in 2012. Again, Palin is the monkey wrench in the equation. If McCain gets elected and serves one term, she could end up as president for another two terms, until 2020., which isn't the equation they had in mind. They gotta decide whether to help the GOP ticket and hope for whatever they can get in exchange or to simply sit this one out like they have been and hope Obama wins.
FF: Interesting as always, Monkey..talk to you next week. By the way, I understand you have something non-campaign related planned for us this week.
WM: Hee hee hee, you betcha FF. It is not to be missed. Smell ya later, Primates!
Asif Ali Zardari, Benazhir Bhutto's widower and head of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) has been elected as Pakistan's new president, which essentially gives the PPP control of the country.
His election comes at a time when Pakistan is on the verge of falling apart.The economy is crumbling, and Pakistan faces increasing violence from the Islamists, who have a defacto control of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province. To mark Zardari's victory, they set off a car bombing that killed a dozen people in the northwestern city of Peshawar yesterday and another thirty Pakistanis were killed today in a massive truck bombing on a highway outside the same city.
Zardari claims he plans to continue as a US ally against the jihadis, and has called the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban 'Pakistan's war'.
I wouldn't count on too much.
For one thing, what Zardari has to be chiefly after is stability, and that means a truce with the Islamists. The PPP have been dubbed pro-western liberals by certain elements of the dinosaur media, but what they could actually be better described as quasi-socialist kleptocrats who are definitely not particularly pro-US. Both Bhutto and Zardari are part of Pakistan'soligarch class. When Bhutto was prime minister literally anything was for sale in Pakistan, she salted away a fortune for herself, and Zardari's nickname in Pakistan is 'Mr. Ten Per Cent.' A hint; he didn't get it because of his honesty and avoidance of bribery and corruption.
Another thing to watch will be Zardari's relationship with the army, the one entity in Pakistan that functions with reasonable efficiency. As I've mentioned before, it's all but certain that Zardari made a deal with the army to allow Musharaf to resign quietly and retire to exile. They obviously have acceded to the PPP taking power, but on the other hand, their campaign against the Taliban and the other assorted Islamists has been costly and largely ineffectual. Again, another incentive for a live and let live deal with the jihadis in the NWFP, with maybe an occasional small time raid to keep the Americans quiet and the aid coming in.
An interesting counterpoint to this was the fallout over the recent US air raid over the Pakistani border into Waziristan.Th efact that the raid took place at all is symbolic of the fact that in spite of all the nice words by Condi Rice, the Bush Administration has finally owned up to the fact that their interference with Musharraf was a costly mistake and that even Musharraf's limited level of support can't be counted on any longer with the new regime.
The US raid apparently hadn't been cleared with the Pakistanis beforehand for the every good reason that the Islamists have a lot of supporters in the army and in Pakistan's ISI security service, and any information of this kind given to the Pakistanis has a way of leaking out.
So of course they were livid, and took the unusual step of closing the vital Torkham border crossing to NATO trucks and closing off supplies to Afghanistan for a full day in retaliation.
As I've pointed out before, when BarackObama and his fellow travelers in the Donkey party talk about their grand strategy of 'fighting the real war in Afghanistan' by invading the NWFP in Pakistan, they reveal exactly how clueless they really are. All you have to do is to be able to read a map, something community organizers and Harvard grads apparently aren't required to master.
Afghanistan's a landlocked country and the major lifeline for NATO's forces in Afghanistan flows through the Pakistani port of Karachi and over the highway that connects to the Torkham crossing. That's what the millions in aid money is really paying for, and the Pakistanis just reminded us how dependent we are on their goodwill to supply Afghanistan. If they become hostile, the only other practical overland route would involve going through the Black Sea through Georgia and Azerbaijan and then crossing the Caspian Sea and shipping the stuff through Turkmenistan and then over rough, mountainous desert country into Afghanistan from the Northwest. It could be done, but it would be much more difficult and time consuming.
Our only other choices would be to invade Pakistan from the coast and take control of a port and the road corridor into Afghanistan or pull out.
What we'll likely do is keep bribing the Pakistanis and attempt to work with them in the on again, off again fashion we have before.
The Game has changed, and with Sarah Palin's throwing down what amounted to a rhetorical shot over the bow, the entire election has become redefined in startling clarity.
Now it truly is about change, or more exactly a kinky version of back to the future. Which future will we pick?
On the one hand,we have BarackObama and Joe Biden, who suddenly seem a lot less novel, especially after Obama's speech at the Brittney Spears' acropolis which was nothing more than a standard Democrat class warfare and grievance list.
On the other hand, we have the electricity - and I can't think of any way to put it -generated by John McCain and Sarah Palin, something no one expected.
The candidates on both sides are throwbacks to an earlier time.
BarackObama, for all the novelty of his background is a flashback to the hard Left academics of the early seventies. Quite simply put, it's where he came from and where he has chosen to place himself with every association he's made.Joe Biden is a rerun as well, the essence of the old line Democratic machine pol, and he complements and reinforces Obama, who learned his trade as part of Chicago's Democrat machine
McCain is a throwback in a different way, to the Scots-Irish settlers who were the shock troops of our Republic from the Revolution onward, who helped form the country's basic institutions. It's no coincidence that McCains have been found in America's career military since our War of Independence.
Sarah Palin matches him exactly, and actually brings McCain more towards his Jacksonian roots as a populist and dare I say it, a maverick. She comes to the ticket with a record of reform and taking on the status quo. She's a genuine original, in her own way, and it's no accident that she comes from America's last frontier, Alaska.
Alaska's a unique place. Because it's still sparsely populated - the big city, the one the natives refer to as 'Los Anchorage' has maybe 300,000 people in it -and still largely rural, people tend to know one another pretty well.And there's a tradition of self reliance,fair play and individualism that hearkens back to America's pioneer roots.
It's not at all unusual for kids as young as eleven and twelve to have their own boats and guns and to supplement the family food supplies by fishing and hunting. The weather has something to do with it too. In a place where not paying attention to nature can kill you, people learn early that community isn't a luxury..it's a necessity. I remember the time I and a friend broke down on the Kenai Highway on the way back to Anchorage from Homer and had to hitch back into town. There we were, two scruffy looking males, and we never had to wait for more than two cars to pass before somebody picked us up.
Sarah Palin comes from small town Alaska, and it shows. She's unapologetic about her roots, and she's a type we haven't seen in our politics in quite a while. Her speech was directed at an underrepresented mainstream current in the country. She was tough, charming, poised, confident, and plain spoken, and made Obama and Biden seem artificial and even ordinary by comparison.
Even worse, she has the ability to skewer Obama on his own inflated sense of self, and to do it with humor. And it works particularly well when you have a pompous, full-of-himself opponent.
The entire country was mesmerized by her. Thanks to the dinosaur media's attempt to turn her into a white trash ogress, she spoke to an audience of 40 million people...more than tuned in to watch BarackObama's Greek Temple spectacle. And she struck a resounding chord in her fellow Americans. At this point, she has higher approval ratings than either Obama, McCain or Biden.
The Left realizes exactly how dangerous this outspoken woman is to them, and they will go to any lengths to try and destroy her between now and November.
Picking Sarah Palin as a running mate was an extraordinary strategic coup by John McCain, something worthy of a potential commander-in-chief. With that one stroke, he achieved the reunification of a Republican Party badly shattered by the current occupant of the White House, re-energized his party's base and served notice that he was actively going to re-invent the GOP's tainted reputation by returning them to first principles...lower taxes, small government and a strong defense.
And in case anyone didn't quite get the memo, McCain underlined it in his acceptance speech last night.
McCain's never been much of an orator, although he's gotten better lately, and to be perfectly frank, the first part of his speech could have been fifteen minutes shorter.Most observers, even sympathetic ones basically looked for him to simply avoid diminishing the electricity Sarah Palin created the night before.
McCain's speech signified a revolutionary change in direction for the GOP, and I'm amazed that most of the chattering classes missed it.
What we had here was McCain again telling the nation that he was going to bring the GOP back to first principles:
"I fight to restore the pride and principles of our party. We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us. We lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption. We lost their trust when rather than reform government, both parties made it bigger. We lost their trust when instead of freeing ourselves from a dangerous dependence on foreign oil, both parties and Senator Obama passed another corporate welfare bill for oil companies. We lost their trust, when we valued our power over our principles.
We're going to change that. We're going to recover the people's trust by standing up again for the values Americans admire. The party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan is going to get back to basics."
At that point, I started to pay more attention, as McCain outlined the small print in what that meant:
We believe in low taxes; spending discipline, and open markets. We believe in rewarding hard work and risk takers and letting people keep the fruits of their labor.
We believe in a strong defense, work, faith, service, a culture of life, personal responsibility, the rule of law, and judges who dispense justice impartially and don't legislate from the bench. We believe in the values of families, neighborhoods and communities.
We believe in a government that unleashes the creativity and initiative of Americans. Government that doesn't make your choices for you, but works to make sure you have more choices to make for yourself.
I will keep taxes low and cut them where I can. My opponent will raise them. I will open new markets to our goods and services. My opponent will close them. I will cut government spending. He will increase it.
My tax cuts will create jobs. His tax increases will eliminate them. My health care plan will make it easier for more Americans to find and keep good health care insurance. His plan will force small businesses to cut jobs, reduce wages, and force families into a government run health care system where a bureaucrat stands between you and your doctor.
Keeping taxes low helps small businesses grow and create new jobs. Cutting the second highest business tax rate in the world will help American companies compete and keep jobs from moving overseas. Doubling the child tax exemption from $3500 to $7000 will improve the lives of millions of American families. Reducing government spending and getting rid of failed programs will let you keep more of your own money to save, spend and invest as you see fit. Opening new markets and preparing workers to compete in the world economy is essential to our future prosperity.
McCain went on to mention the idea of investing in people as infrastructure by creating a federal program for job training for displaced workers as infrastructure, and then pulled an issue out of left field that could ignite the working class parents of America - school choice:
Education is the civil rights issue of this century. Equal access to public education has been gained. But what is the value of access to a failing school? We need to shake up failed school bureaucracies with competition, empower parents with choice, remove barriers to qualified instructors, attract and reward good teachers, and help bad teachers find another line of work.
When a public school fails to meet its obligations to students, parents deserve a choice in the education of their children. And I intend to give it to them. Some may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private one. Many will choose a charter school. But they will have that choice and their children will have that opportunity.
Has McCain figured out something that Dubbyah appears to have been totally clueless about in eight years in office, that the teachers unions and the educrats are on their collective knees in front of BarackObama and the Democrat party? And that the curators of these madrassahs of the Left are as likely to vote for any Republican as the sun is to rise in the west, so there is absolutely no downside in bucking them by presenting an issue sure to resonate with working parents who would love nothing better than to be able to afford to send their children to the same sort of private schools the elites do?
If John McCain and Sarah Palin make this an issue and follow through, it will have far reaching effects on the very nature of the country.
McCain went on to say the expected things about energy independence, and then went on to do something I absolutely was not prepared for..to talk about what happened to him in Viet Nam not from the standpoint of heroics, but what he learned about his own fallibility and what that taught him about patriotism:
I've been an imperfect servant of my country for many years. But I have been her servant first, last and always. And I've never lived a day, in good times or bad, that I didn't thank God for the privilege.
Long ago, something unusual happened to me that taught me the most valuable lesson of my life. I was blessed by misfortune. I mean that sincerely. I was blessed because I served in the company of heroes, and I witnessed a thousand acts of courage, compassion and love.
On an October morning, in the Gulf of Tonkin, I prepared for my 23rd mission over North Vietnam. I hadn't any worry I wouldn't come back safe and sound. I thought I was tougher than anyone. I was pretty independent then, too. I liked to bend a few rules, and pick a few fights for the fun of it. But I did it for my own pleasure; my own pride. I didn't think there was a cause more important than me.
Then I found myself falling toward the middle of a small lake in the city of Hanoi, with two broken arms, a broken leg, and an angry crowd waiting to greet me. I was dumped in a dark cell, and left to die. I didn't feel so tough anymore. When they discovered my father was an admiral, they took me to a hospital. They couldn't set my bones properly, so they just slapped a cast on me. When I didn't get better, and was down to about a hundred pounds, they put me in a cell with two other Americans. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't even feed myself. They did it for me. I was beginning to learn the limits of my selfish independence. Those men saved my life.
I was in solitary confinement when my captors offered to release me. I knew why. If I went home, they would use it as propaganda to demoralize my fellow prisoners. Our Code said we could only go home in the order of our capture, and there were men who had been shot down before me. I thought about it, though. I wasn't in great shape, and I missed everything about America. But I turned it down.
A lot of prisoners had it worse than I did. I'd been mistreated before, but not as badly as others. I always liked to strut a little after I'd been roughed up to show the other guys I was tough enough to take it. But after I turned down their offer, they worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me.
When they brought me back to my cell, I was hurt and ashamed, and I didn't know how I could face my fellow prisoners. The good man in the cell next door, my friend, Bob Craner, saved me. Through taps on a wall he told me I had fought as hard as I could. No man can always stand alone. And then he told me to get back up and fight again for our country and for the men I had the honor to serve with. Because every day they fought for me.
I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's. I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency; for its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again. I wasn't my own man anymore. I was my country's.
I'm not running for president because I think I'm blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need. My country saved me. My country saved me, and I cannot forget it. And I will fight for her for as long as I draw breath, so help me God.
Listening to McCain relate this, I could almost sense the audience draw its collective breath. This then became the final part of the frame around the slogan of the McCain campaign..."Country First".
This isn't the usual way politicians present their military service. Typically, presidential candidates use their service to trumpet their toughness and readiness to command. Remember John Kerry and 'reporting for duty'? McCain turned that upside down last night. It wasn't his heroism in war that makes him ready to command, but the horrors of war he experienced that made him realize that this country is the greatest on earth, and why it's worth fighting and if need be dying for.
You wouldn't find John McCain answering a 7-year-old's question about why he wanted to be president by saying that the country isn't what it used to be.
McCain, as he relates, was a selfish, self-centered man until he was broken by his captivity. It was the ideal of America that saved his life, and gave him his rebirth, as America's humble, imperfect servant.
And to end the speech, in an electrifying moment, he urged his fellow Americans to join him in a fight for their country, for the ideals and character of a free people, to defend the country from its enemies, and for their children's future.
Such expressions of patriotism are considered rather unfashionable in certain quarters, and McCain's speech drew a fair amount of disdain from the usual subjects. It remains to be seen whether ordinary Americans differ with that opinion. A fair amount of them saw the speech and will make up their own minds in time.
One thing that isn't in question is that this election is about change, or more accurately, which version of our past we want to revisit. Are the old virtues that created our beloved Republic outdated? Are we prepared to take another vacation from history, or will we embrace it?
There is an opportunity here to choose not only a president, but our national destiny.
We'll know in November.
UPDATE: heartfelt thanks to everybody who pointed out the embarrassingtypo in paragraph 4! Color me redfaced...I should know better than to try and finish something in a hurry...
The Council has spoken! A complete rundown of the voting tallies is here.
Among the Council members, the winner was Wolf Howling - Palin in Comparison - GW's amusing photo essay comparing the qualifications of Barack Obama and Sarah Palin for high office. In second place was my piece , The End Game In Iraq , an examination of what we accomplished there, as well aas what we didn't.
Sarah Palin just delivered her acceptance speech, and in the words of FOX's Chris Wallace and even that evil little CNN rat Wolfie Blitzer, "a star is born."
The worst Gollum ( AKA Keith Olbermann) at MSNBC could say, the very worst, was to sniff that "People who like this sort of thing....like this sort of thing."
She went for a softer look tonight,but the steel underneath came through just fine. She still isn't totally polished and has a habit of stepping on her applause lines a little bit,but that'll come in time, and the slight tinge of amateurness adds to her image as an outsider.
Most of all, she spoke from the heart..and it came across over the airwaves.
Also endearing were the audience shots, especially the ones of Willow and Cindy McCain taking turns holding baby Trig..not sure if you saw those unless you were watchng the live feed here, courtesy of the RNC.
John McCain, the perennial flyboy looks to have won his gamble,and afterwards, he took the stage with Palin's family to congratulate her.
Tomorrow night, it's McCain's turn.
But tonight, the burden was on Sarah Palin's shoulders and she came through like a champ.
The Dems and their shills in the dinosaur media demonized this woman and inflated her into a monster. They have no clue, even now, what a big mistake that was.
"I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town. I was just your average hockey mom, and signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids’ public education better. When I ran for city council, I didn’t need focus groups and voter profiles because I knew those voters, and knew their families, too. Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown. And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities."
On why she is going to Washington, D.C.:
"I’m not a member of the permanent political establishment. And I’ve learned quickly, these past few days, that if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone. But here’s a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion - I’m going to Washington to serve the people of this country."
On energy policies that the McCain-Palin administration will implement:
"Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America’s energy problems - as if we all didn’t know that already. But the fact that drilling won’t solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all. Starting in January, in a McCain-Palin administration, we’re going to lay more pipelines...build more nuclear plants...create jobs with clean coal...and move forward on solar, wind, geothermal, and other alternative sources. We need American energy resources, brought to you by American ingenuity, and produced by American workers."
On John McCain:
"Here’s how I look at the choice Americans face in this election. In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers. And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change."
If anyone had any doubts left on the biased and partisan nature of the dinosaur media, I'm sure they've evaporated by now. The dino media jackals have their collective heads so far up Barack Obama's posterior that a sudden turn without signalling could disable a large part of America's so-called Fourth Estate with severe whiplash.
Notice, for instance, the skimpy coverage the GOP Convention in St. Paul is getting from the nets as compared to the 'all Democrats, all the time' coverage the Donkey gathering in Denver received. The bloviations of Teddy Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Bill Clinton and the rest of the usual suspects were carried live and in full, while last night's speeches by President Bush and superb offerings by Joe Lieberman and Fred Thompson were well, ignored for the most part.
Could the fact that Lieberman is a renegade Donkey who strayed off the reservation and Thompson's speech contained a superb smack down aimed at the dinosaur media and the Obama campaign for their vilification of Sarah Palin have anything to do with it? You think?
That vilification has approached new levels of slime that ought to make it necessary for most newsrooms to install showers for the hourly cleansings necessary to keep most of the denizens of the dinosaur media smelling even remotely human.
Not only are they out to destroy this woman and her children, they're out to make her a tabloid white trash cartoon character.
The above garbage, by the way, is published by Jann Wenner, the ultra Left partisan Rolling Stone has-been. And its parent company, Time-Warner, has one of its top executives sending out cheerful little emails to everyone pimping this US Weekly `scoop'. But then, that same executive used to work for the Clintons at the White House...so pimping is probably second nature.
Nor is it just limited to the dinosaur media's tabloid outlets. Here's two samples ( and I had literally dozens to pick from) of the garbage being peddled by these shills, who actually refer to themselves as journalists and serious commentators:
The truth? This crap - and I dignify it by calling it crap- refers to Covenant House. Palin merely cut back on the expansion of state funding for the program. The original state funding for the previous year was $1,194,788. The proposed increase was to increase the government funding up to $5 million. What Governor Palin did was to reduce the increase to a mere $3,900,000...which for those of you whom are math challenged is an INCREASE by more than three times the government allotment from the previous year. And by the way, the WAPO has yet to retract this garbage, and it is still getting massive play on Lefty blogs and Air America.
As you know, Governor Palin is undergoing a trumped up and partisan fueled 'ethics violations investigation', based on her supposed firing of a state cabinet member she appointed because he refused to fire a loose canon state trooper who threatened members of her family. You can read exactly how spurious this all is at the above link. The real story here is ABC News, who breached any semblance of journalistic ethics by publishing an interview with the Democrat conducting the ongoing ethics investigation...and the Democrat in question, Alaska state senator Hollis French,who is supposed to be conducting an impartial investigation but is violating his mandate to conduct an impartial investigation by taking advantage of the Democrat shills is the main stream media to try and convict Governor Palin in the media, giving out soundbites about her `credibility problem' and the 'damaging report' he plans to release on October 31st.
Talk about an ethics violation! If you read the interview, it's obviously that this little tool already had his report written before he did any 'investigation'. Yet he's planning on timing the release four days before the election, so there's no chance of rebutting it. And the partisan hacks at ABC are aiding and abetting him in an attempt to influence the election.
And that's just two examples of so-called straight news pieces. The Leftist commentary is even worse.
While I'm not going to dignify any of this horse manure with links, the basic focus is clear. They are out to destroy Sarah Palin and her family.Yesterday, as I reported here, the New York Times had, count `em three page one stories about Bristol Palin's pregnancy. MSNBC and the Huffington Post, when they're not demonizing Palin over her support for gun rights or her religion are providing `exposes' of Todd Johnston, who is now referred to as `Bristol's baby daddy. Much is being made of the fact that he's joining the Palin family at the convention.
Slate, owned by the Washington Post, is actually running a 'Name Bristol Palin's Baby' contest.
Let's contrast this, shall we, with the media's 'hands off' policy on the teenage Chelsea Clinton when she was in the White House. Were any of the dinosaur media sniffing around her sex life? And does anybody recall how NBC News suspended reporter David Shuster for claiming that Hillary's campaign was 'pimping' her daughter?
How about when Al Gore's son was arrested on dope and speeding charges back in 2007? Or when Howard Dean's son was busted for burglary back in 2003? And what about Joe Biden's daughter getting arrested in a bar scene and threatening the arresting officers with her daddy's power? Did these shills give it more than a cursory glance, or impute anything to their fathers because of it?
Even more hypocritically, these are the same people who are attacking Sarah Palin as a woman for supposedly placing her political ambitions above her family, for running for vice president rather than 'being there for her 4-month-old baby and her daughter.'
I wonder how many of these cretins have actually raised children in a traditional nuclear family with both parents present to work as a team? Or imagine the guilt in a seventeen year old if her behavior caused her mother to lose out on a chance to run for vice president?
Though of course, that's not the point. The only way Sarah Palin could get these people's approval would be to abort Bristol's baby with her own two hands, live on national TV. And then endorse Obama and the pro infanticide ticket.
Come to think of it, that's exactly what this is...an attempt by the democrats to abort Sarah Palin's candidacy before the American people have a chance to get to know her and make up their own minds.
The dinosaur media will undoubtedly run all of Sarah Palin's acceptance speech tonight. Having outdone themselves in sleaze and made her personal life The Story, I can't how they can avoid it. And they're hoping she'll buckle under the pressure and fall flat on her face.
I have a feeling she might just surprise them with a killer outing, particularly if the McCain campaign doesn't try to overscript her and just lets her be herself. She has an opportunity tonight to let the American people meet her and tell them who she is, what she's done and what she stands for.
I give her a decent shot. Americans in general dislike bullies, and, as the Rasmussen polls revealed, most of the American people already know the media is shilling for Obama and trying to foist the Chosen One on our Republic.
It would be a superb bit of irony if the attempt to demonize Sarah Palin and make her persona the issue exploded in the faces of the perpetrators.
Every week, the Watcher's Council members nominate two posts each, one of their own and one from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.
As you know, our infamous leader,the Watcher of Weasels retired and is now our leader emeritus, but our brand spankin' new site is up, courtesy of our new Watcher,Terry Trippany and a full list of entries, including the non-Council ones can be found here.
As you can expect, the submissions were dominated by the Angry Left's crazed attack on Sarah Palin and her children and of course, on abortion and pregnancy. Let's see what we've got this week:
1. JoshuaPundit - The End Game In Iraq It's been a very long time since Iraq's been mentioned much, considering that it was supposedly the whole reason for Barack Obama's camapign. Yet, it hasn't gone away. I try to take an honest look at where we succeeded in Iraq, and more importantly , where we failed...and what it might portend for the future.
3. Soccer Dad - Two Years Soccer Dad reflects on one of the joys of life, watching a child grow. Goodness, SD, has it really been two years already?
4. Bookworm Room - Examining the Unborn Ms. Bookworm reflects on the SF Chronicle's report on the murder of a mother and her unborn child and cleverly uses it as a launching pad to examine our attitudes towards abortion and the unborn.
I'm particularly glad she cites halacha (Jewish law based on the Torah)in the piece since many secular Jews continue to erroneously make the argument that Judaism sanctions abortion on demand.
5. The Razor - Life in a One Party State: America’s Future Under Obama-Biden Like me, Scott lives in a one party state. And he uses it here to predict what we're in store for should the Democrats carry both the legislative and executive branches of government come November.
6. Wolf Howling - Palin in Comparison A nifty photo essay by GW, contrasting Sarah Palin and Obama.
7. The Colossus of Rhodey - The inanity begins with Bristol Palin Hube takes exception to the Left's idea, sparked by the Bristol Palin brew hah hah, that comprehensive sex education reduces teen pregnancies.
As he points out, these programs have been ubiquitous since the 1970's...an dteen pregnancy has skyrocketed. Nice try, no sale leftards.
8. Rhymes With Right - When Does Human Life Begin Greg examines the question from a scientific and ethical standpoint, and compares it with the current Democtic nominees position in support of infanticide.
I particularly liked the graphic that went with this and plan to swipe it borrow it to use at an appropriate occasion...er, thanks Greg!
9. Cheat-Seeking Missiles - Juno In Juneau Laer examines the Sarah/Bristol Palin pregnancy dustup in detail, with this week's cutest title.
10. The Education Wonks - China Arnold: Monster a particularly sordid story from EdWonk as he returns to the fray, concerning the microwaving of a baby. Out of respect, I'll resist the temptation to make any tasteless jokes or puns on what is actually a very depressing matter.
I'm fairly disgusted by the media in general today...and that includes talk radio. With all the crucial issues there are to talk about, with all the things that are going on in the world, they have nothing better to do than report on a 17-year-old teenage girl's pregnancy.
Sarah Palin said it quite well - that her daughter is five months pregnant, that she would be keeping the baby and that she and the father intend to marry, that she had the love and support of her family and words to the effect that her daughter was about to discover what a huge job and responsibility motherhood was.
And then she asked the media to please respect the young couples' privacy.
Fat chance. The media glommed on to this like the jackals they truly are, discussing every possible implication ad nauseum. Today's New York Times had no less than three page one stories on this.
FTR, I think Sarah Palin and her daughter have exactly the right take on it.Bristol Palin has made a decision to own her choices and take responsibility for them, and her family is doing what lots of other families through the ages have done in similar situations, giving her the support she needs. And it ought to end there.
As far as I'm concerned, this has nothing to do with the campaign. If anything, it shows that Sarah Palin is not only living her principles, but that she has passed them on to her children...that you do what you feel is right, not what happens to be convenient at the time.
If anything, this should be an indication of what kind of public servant Sarah Palin is and will be. I'm only sorry that she was forced to go public with what was and should have remained a private matter.
Russia has pretty much seen fit to ignore the Georgia ceasefire agreement hurriedly cobbled together by French President Sarkozy, and the EU is doing very little about it if anything.
The Russians have announced support for the 'independence' for the breakaway enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, with the announced intention that they will soon be part of Russia, and they still maintain a stranglehold on what's left of Georgia.
The EU's response has been pathetic.
What they mainly agreed to in an emergency meeting today was (a)to issue yet another warning to Moscow to abide by their agreements, 'or else' they'll cancel a meeting with Russia on mutual cooperation: (b)to threaten another scary emergency meeting of the EU if Russia refused to keep its word; (c) to appoint an EU bureaucrat to monitor the situation; (d)to shelve any notion of meaningful sanctions and (e) to throw some aid money at what's left of Georgia to salve their collective conscience.
And oh yes - At Poland's insistence a specific mention was inserted about the importance of building ties with Ukraine.
That's about it, and I'm sure Putin is absolutely quaking in his moccasins.
Actually, the Russians were pretty quick to respond, with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov urging Europe to follow its "core interests."
By that, what he meant was simple blackmail. The EU imports about a third of its oil and about 40 percent of its natural gas from Russia, and now with the rape of Georgia, th eRussians are in position to cut off Europe from the gas and oil of Central Asia entirely. And the European winter approaches.
I have a feeling that President Bush and the American troops stationed in Germany and elsewhere in Europe and those missile defense bases are starting to look very different to the EU about now. It might be a very good time to re-negotiate the terms of some of those military facilities if they want us despised Yankees to hang around. Perhaps our insisting on a suitable EU contribution to the cost of deploying them on foreign soil might be in order.
Anbar province, once regarding as lost and proclaimed by our enemies as 'the capitol of Al-Qaeda in Iraq' was handed over to complete Iraqi control today.Anbar is predominantly Sunni, and this is the first Sunni province to be turned over fully to the Iraqi government.
There was a brief ceremony in Ramadi, the provincial capitol to commemorate this historic day.
President Bush remarked, "Today, Anbar is no longer lost to Al-Qaeda - it is Al-Qaeda that lost Anbar." he added.
"Anbar has been transformed and reclaimed by the Iraqi people. This achievement is a credit to the courage of our troops, the Iraqi security forces, and the brave tribes and other civilians from Anbar who worked alongside them," Bush added.
US Ambassador Ryan Crocker and the top commander of American forces in the region, General David Petraeus, said Iraqi forces had already been operating independently for the past two months in Anbar.
The Iraqis will now have responsibility for security in the entire province. With the official transfer, US forces will withdraw to their bases and take part in any military operations only at the request of the provincial governor.
It's a lot different than the old days, when Anbar was the most dangerous place in Iraq.It was the heartland of Al Qaeda assault against our forces there, with bloody battles in Fallujah and Ramadi.Around one third of the 4,00 US fatalities, 1,305 of our brave warriors, fell in Anbar province.....plus an untold number of Iraqi civilians, who were murdered by Al Qaeda.
That was the key to things, in a way. The Sunnis were the first to hop on the Al Qaeda bandwagon after the US invasion, and the first to find out exactly how brutal and murderous these cockroaches actually are, even to the people they claimed to be defending.
As you know, I have my own questions about what we achieved in Iraq. But our victory over an in country terrorist insurgency that had nations on its borders that were havens, training grounds and transit points, something thought to be impossible in modern warfare, is something military strategists will be studying and marvelling at for a long time to come.
