December 09, 2005

New RNC Web Ad Quotes Dean, Kerry, etc. : “Message to Dems—Retreat and Defeat is Not an Option”

Posted today at GOP.com:

The spot includes video with the following quotes: 

Howard Dean:
The idea that we're going to win this war is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong. (San Antonio's WOAI's Website, www.woai.com , Accessed 12/5/05)

Barbara Boxer:
So there's no specific timeframe but I would say the withdrawal ought to start now, right after the elections December 15th. (Fox News' "Fox News Sunday," 12/4/05)

John Kerry:
There is no reason Bob that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night terrorizing kids and children, you know, women. (CBS' "Face The Nation," 12/4/05)

The text the soldier is looking at says:

Our Soldiers Are Watching 

And Our Enemies Are Too

Iraqi Shiite Leader States that U.S. Forces are not Occupying Iraq

Iraqi-American Fawaz Saraf emails:

In an interview [on December 5th] with Al-Arabia TV, Mr. Hakim, leader of an Iraqi Shiite political party, and a party with perhaps the largest popular base in Iraq, made the following unequivocally clear statements on his thoughts on the “occupation” and the “resistance”.
 
Asked by Al-Arabia if he considered the presence of the coalition forces in Iraq an Occupation, Mr. Al-Hakim responded by saying that the presence of foreign forces in Iraq is not an occupation.  These military forces are in Iraq in accordance with UN resolutions and at the request of the elected government of Iraq ( and only elected government in the Arab world, “my words here” ).  When the elected government of Iraq asks the coalition forces to leave and if the coalition forces refuse to leave then and only then the presence of such military forces in Iraq could be called an occupation.
 
Asked by Al-Arabia about the final communiqué at the Cairo Conference and wherein an allusion was made to the legitimate rights of the “resistance”, Mr. Al-Hakim stated that Baathist and Saddamist murderers, terrorists led by Zarqawi, and those who kill Iraqi babies, women and children are not a resistance and that the statement in the communiqué was a general reference to the right of any people to resist an occupation.  In Iraq this would not apply since there is no occupation, instead there is a UN sponsored coalition force that is protecting a political process to build democratic institutions and what we have is a group of murders and terrorists who kill and commit massacres in their effort to derail a political process supported by the majority of Iraqis.  If there is an Iraqi resistance, then let them show their face, let them join the political process and then ask the coalition forces to leave.  These murders are not a resistance.  When we were in the resistance when Iraq was occupied by the Baathists and Saddamists, we did not hide our faces, everyone knew who we are and we did not go about murdering Iraqi babies.

The Trial of Saddam: A Cultural Shift for the Mid-East

EARLIER THIS WEEK the folliowing arrived via email from Iraqi-American Fawaz Saraf:

Yesterday at the Trial of Saddam
A First in the Arab Word
What a setting - What a Message
An Ordinary Arab citizen in a courtroom
Face-to-Face with a former Arab Tyrant
Free to speak, he tells the world of his years of anguish at the hands of the man he now faces.
Sic Semper Tyrannis, in the midst of the Arab World, At Last.

This is what the trial must look like to many Iraqis. 

lennon

Thanks for allowing me to play in your sandbox, Vik.

A lot has been written today about the 25th anniversary of the murder of John Lennon. Some commentators have speculated that if he had been allowed to continue his journey through life he might have morphed into somewhat of a conservative.

This tidbit of history from the archives of my memory-

A few months before he was killed, New Yorker John Lennon made a large donation to the New York City Police Department to pay for bulletproof vests.