Politics Blog

Like The Onion? You’ll love The Lemon.

Final proof that Scott Ritter has lost it:

The United States does not have the military means to take over Baghdad and will lose the war against Iraq, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter said.

“The United States is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated. It is a war we can not win,” he told private radio TSF in an interview broadcast here Tuesday evening.

“We do not have the military means to take over Baghdad and for this reason I believe the defeat of the United States in this war is inevitable,” he said.

“Every time we confront Iraqi troops we may win some tactical battles, as we did for ten years in Vietnam but we will not be able to win this war, which in my opinion is already lost,” Ritter added.

Sorry to spoil your fantasy Scott, but we’ve gotten to within 50 miles of Baghdad in six days with about 20 dead. We may be losing the war in some alternate universe, but not in this one.

One of the shrewdest Democratic strategists around, Donna Brazile, says that prominent Democrats have been catering too much to the “anti-war” movement. She says that she was “livid” when she saw those POW photos and wishes prominent Democrats had come forward to express support for the troops.

I couldn’t agree more. One of the consequences of this war will be a distrust of anyone who didn’t support it enough, much as after Gulf War I. Howard Dean’s position will prove to be an albatross around his neck if he wins the nomination. John Kerry’s Vietnam protester days will come back to haunt him. Kerry said some pretty intemperate things back then and they won’t do him much good if he wins the Democratic presidential nomination. He could have exorcised some of those doubts by showing up on TV these days to talk about his tour of duty in Vietnam, but he’s been MIA so far in the PR wars on Iraq.

Where is the 101st Airborne? We know they’re deploying somewhere because the reporters who’re “embedded” with them in Kuwait pause occasionally, between breathless recountings of the grenade-throwing incident, to say that the 101st is moving out to somewhere in Iraq. Something tells me their location could be important.

Could they be opening up a northern or western front on Baghdad? Or are they helping the Kurds in northern Iraq? Or are they serving as a buffer force in the north to prevent the Turks from complicating things?

The New York Times spinning a poll? It can’t be!

BTW, this poll analysis is by the same Adam Nagourney who spun a very significant 47-40 lead for the GOP on election eve 2002 into this headline: “In Poll, Americans Say Both Parties Lack Clear Vision.” Nagourney only mentioned the numbers, in passing, in the sixth paragraph.

And Mickey Kaus, Andrew Sullivan and countless others have previously ripped into other Times polls that were blatantly spun. Here’s an example.

You can watch Iraqi TV live on the web. If they’ve somehow managed to bring it back up (it was knocked out yesterday.)

Jack Schafer says that “embedding” reporters among the troops is a great idea. Other “mainstream” media observers have been saying the same thing.

I vehemently disagree. Most “mainstream” media reporters are minions of Satan. They’re a bunch of George McGovern-loving, ultra-liberal, wannabe-hippies, who’d rather be marching with the “anti-war” protesters. These reporters are elitists from places like Boston, New York and LA and have sheer contempt for the sort of people who abound in the US military, people from Omaha, Nebraska who eat red meat, fly a flag on their lawn and like Nascar. Placing these reporters amidst our troops is like placing Baath Party propagandists among our troops. They will dwell on every failure, report their own corner of the action as though it were everything and make it seem like the overall military strategy is in dire straits. Every time we take a hit, they’ll raise the prospect of a “Vietnam-like Quagmire.”

The “mainstream” media haven’t earned the trust necessary to be “embedded” amongst our troops.

We’ve bombed out the Iraqi column that seemed to be heading south a few hours ago:

U.S. military officials said the convoy leaving Baghdad consisted of 1,000 vehicles that were believed to contain fighters hoping to reinforce Iraqi forces engaging U.S. troops near Najaf. The movement was detected about 4 p.m. (8 a.m. EST). “Something big and metal is moving,” one radio operator reported.

About two hours later, U.S. jets began bombing the front of the convoy after receiving confirmation that the column carried militiamen. Eventually, B-52s flew over, dropping 500-pound bombs every 500 meters along the length of the convoy. The casualty total was not immediately known, but the attack appeared to add significantly to the Iraqi militia losses in recent days.

Not that I’m a military analyst or anything, but isn’t this precisely why we invented the MOAB? The American people need to hear that we’re trouncing the Iraqis. We would feel reassured if the following statement were to be made at a CentCom briefing: “Yesterday, Iraqi militiamen attempted to break out and head south in a 1,000 vehicle formation. We dropped ten Massive Ordnance Air Burst weapons on the convoy. There are no known survivors.”

Don’t worry about the sandstorm. Our ground troops near Baghdad don’t need to move today anyway. They’ll let the planes do their work and make the Republican Guard an endangered species. Our GPS-guided bombs aren’t hindered by bad weather and, if we need to visually track or find targets, we can do it with synthetic aperture radar, which will see right through the storm.

As for those GPS Jammers that Russia sold to the Iraqis, the Americans have bombed out all of them. And they turned out to be ineffective anyway. In fact, one “GPS Jammer” was taken out by a GPS-guided weapon.

Ralph Peters explains the upcoming endgame with Saddam.