Politics Blog

Dennis Boyles has some glaring examples of the BBC’s baldfaced lies during the Iraq war. Here’s an excerpt:

I set up my little test. I watched the TV while listening to the World Service on my hand-held radio. It was a startling multimedia event. I could listen to the BBC’s Paul Wood telling me once again that there was no sign of the American incursion into Baghdad. Yet on the screen in front of me there was the 3rd Infantry. They were cruising through Baghdad, driving down the highway, turning into the streets. Look! Along the sidewalks, there were waving children and adults, cheering them on. Men in passed by in trucks and cars crying out, “Saddam down!” and giving the soldiers big smiles and waves. I finally turned off the World Service and turned up the television. At the airport, a correspondent was asked about the Iraqi claim that the Americans had been driven out of the airport and were being “pounded” by Republican Guards. He looked around, mystified, then replied that he’d been at the airport for two days, that it was securely in Coalition hands, and that the only Iraqi challenge he had noticed had been a couple of small skirmishes that were quickly quelled by Coalition forces. “Maybe that’s what he meant,” he said, generously. Behind him, soldiers lounged around like the stranded tourists they were.

On the BBC News channel, the anchors got Wood on camera and very gently pointed out to him that they were getting a lot of video in showing the Americans had indeed taken a drive deep into Baghdad and that the information minister’s odd claims didn’t seem to be holding up. Wood was kind of chubby, younger than I expected. He seemed obviously pained. But he had his story

The Note on that gender gap poll I pointed out yesterday:

“…Mark J. Penn, who conducted the poll, said that theparty’s image has regressed since former president Bill Clinton left office and that those weaknesses put Democrats in a weakened position.”

Regressed, in other words, to the wilderness of Michael Dukakis (tank boy) and Walter Mondale (who wasn’t exactly weak on defense but was perceived as being soft and pro-tax).

At the Campaign for America’s Future conference in early June, we were a bit astounded to hear boos

The Supreme Court’s recent divination of a right to have gay sex seems to have created a baklash:

Americans have become significantly less accepting of homosexuality since a Supreme Court decision that was hailed as clearing the way for new gay civil rights, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll has found. After several years of growing tolerance, the survey shows a return to a level of more traditional attitudes last seen in the mid-1990s.

Asked whether same-sex relations between consenting adults should be legal, 48% said yes; 46% said no. Before this month, support hadn’t been that low since 1996. (Related item: See poll numbers)

In early May, support for legal relations reached a high of 60%-35%.

Of course, the recent decision is only the latest in a long line of Supreme Court idiocies.

There is a “gender gap” and it ain’t helping Democrats:

Dramatic erosion in support among white men has left the Democrats in a highly vulnerable position and unless the party strongly repositions itself, President Bush will be virtually impossible to beat in 2004, according to a new poll commissioned for the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).

…

[Pollster Mark] Penn said Democrats must make a concerted effort to appeal to white voters, particularly men and married women, to make the 2004 race competitive. He said just 22 percent of white men identified with the Democratic Party in his poll, and he said younger men are even more strongly Republican in their leanings.

InstaPundit links to graphic evidence of US brutality in Iraq.

The Washington Post has a surprisingly unbiased story on what’s really going on in the “Sunni triangle”:

Over the past six weeks a small but intense war has been conducted in the mud-hut villages and lush palm groves along the Tigris River valley, fought with far different methods than those used in the campaign that toppled president Saddam Hussein.

As Iraqi fighters launched guerrilla strikes, the U.S. Army adopted a more nimble approach against unseen adversaries and found new ways to gather intelligence about them, according to dozens of soldiers and officers interviewed over the last week.

Thousands of suspected Iraqi fighters were detained over the six-week period, many temporarily, in hundreds of U.S. military raids, most of them conducted in the dead of night. In the expansive region north of Baghdad patrolled by the 4th Infantry Division, more than 300 Iraqi fighters were killed in combat operations, the military officials said. In the same period, U.S. forces in all of Iraq have suffered 39 combat deaths. The continuing casualties – such as the four soldiers killed Saturday – are the direct result of the intensified U.S. offensive, the military officials added.

Despite their losses, Army officers and soldiers asserted that they are making solid gains in this region, where most of the fighting has taken place and where about half the 150,000 U.S. troops in the country are posted.

At the beginning of June, before the U.S. offensives began, the reward for killing an American soldier was about $300, an Army officer said. Now, he said, street youths are being offered as much as $5,000 – and are being told that if they refuse, their families will be killed, a development the officer described as a sign of reluctance among once-eager youths to take part in the strikes.

At the same time, the frequency of attacks has declined in the area northwest of Baghdad dominated by Iraq’s Sunni minority, long a base of support for Hussein. In this triangle-shaped region – delineated by Baghdad, Tikrit to the north and the towns of Fallujah and Ramadi to the west – attacks on U.S. forces have dropped by half since mid-June, military officers reported.

US soldiers are not just rooting out the enemy; they’re conducting extensive civil affairs projects to win people over:

After the fighting is over, U.S. military officials say, it becomes important to repair the damage – a door smashed, a wall breached, an irrigation culvert flattened by a 70-ton M1 Abrams tank. Every U.S. brigade commander in Iraq has a “Commander’s Emergency Repair Fund” of $200,000 that is replenished as he spends it. Over the past six weeks of the U.S. offensive, commanders across Iraq dispensed $13 million to rebuild schools, clinics, water treatment plans and police stations, said Army Col. David MacEwen, who helps coordinate the civic works.

“During Peninsula Strike, we worked very hard for every combat action to have a ‘carrot’ that followed,” MacEwen said. “We’d do a cordon and search in one area, and then make sure the next day that LPG [cooking gas] was available, or that a pump at a water plant was working.”

The efforts aren’t just aimed at winning hearts and minds, but also at gaining intelligence. “When you’re out doing the civil affairs operations, you get a lot of people coming up and giving you good information,” said Maj. David Vacchi, the operations officer for a battalion operating just northeast of Baghdad.

Read the rest.

About half our troops in Iraq are focused on the Sunni triangle, which comprises only about 10 percent of the country. As former Baathist elements are rooted out, this part of the country should become much more stable and manageable.

As for the other 90 percent of Iraq, it’s apparent from various reports that things are going swimmingly. In the north and south of the country, small numbers of American soldiers administer large cities, handling everything from elections to buying and selling the local wheat crop. Our young men and women in arms are proving to be the best diplomats and administrators in the world. They make me so proud!

What if the lying socialist treasonous liberal media had covered the aftermath of World War II the way they’re covering Iraq today? Well, you need wonder no more. (link viaInstaPundit.)

Ron Brownstein laments the coarsening of political tactics used by both sides.

At therisk of sounding partisan, it’s all Democrats’ fault. Republicans are still far too nice to describe Democrats as the treasonous leeches that they are.

Republicans still suffer from Battered Republican Syndrome. For example, no Republican holding major elected office will describe Democrats as treasonous, even if said senior Democrats make it a point to hobnob with America’s enemies.

32 House Democrats, including the ranking members of the Judiciary and Ways and Means Committees, opposed a congressional resolution supporting our troops. Did Republicans question their patriotism? Not a chance. Democrats, on the other hand, routinely describe Republicans as evil racists who want to starve children and destroy the world.

Democrats hate our country and everything it stands for. They’re aided and abetted in their quest to destroy the American Ideal by the lying socialist treasonous liberal media. It’s about time Republicans began to tell the American people these facts.

What does this say about Democrats:

Independent pollster Jim Kane, publisher of Florida Voter in Fort Lauderdale, earlier this year predicted that “most of these ex-felons would register as Democrats and vote as Democrats in any election and most likely in the next presidential election.”

Polls taken in the last few days are showing the president’s job approval rating recovering from the dip of the previous two weeks.