The War in Iraq Revisited

War On Terror

Investors Business Daily (editorial)

The Islamic State somehow now possesses the weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein never had. If the U.S. had finished the job in Iraq, neither IS nor its WMD would exist.

The New York Times boasts admittedly great reportorial skill, but the Old Gray Lady has a lot of trouble connecting the dots of what she uncovers.

A massive eight-part front-page extravaganza on Iraqi chemical weapons on Tuesday reported that during the Iraq War, U.S. forces found "roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs," sickening numerous soldiers, who were then ordered not to talk.

But in a story dripping in supposed irony, the Times never puts two and two together: If stumbling upon Saddam Hussein's buried WMD made our troops ill, what could he have done had he been allowed to recover what he buried? After all, 5,000 Kurds and thousands of Iranian troops were gassed by Saddam in the mid-1980s during the Iran-Iraq War.

The Times also never notices a particularly weighty gorilla in the room: At the Persian Gulf War's conclusion back in 1991, United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 required Iraq to "unconditionally accept the destruction, removal or rendering harmless" of all its chemical and biological weaponry.

In 1997, of course, Saddam began closing down WMD inspections by the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq, accusing it of being a U.S. spy agency.

The so-called "rush to war" with Iraq after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that critics of Bush's invasion talk about, charging it was all based on misinformation, actually took place over some 12 years, during which the civilized world patiently stood by amidst 17 U.N. resolutions against Saddam, all of which were based on widely accepted fact and Saddam's documented mischief.

It wasn't George W. Bush or neocon icon Paul Wolfowitz who described the "kind of threat Iraq poses now" as being "a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists." President Bill Clinton did — in 1998.

Nor did Bush say, "Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability and his nuclear program," and, "if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons." That was then-Sen. Hillary Clinton in 2002.

Bush didn't say in 1998: "Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology ... and he has made a mockery of the weapons-inspection process." Rep. Nancy Pelosi did.

No wonder more than 50 countries supported the U.S. liberation of Iraq in 2003, dwarfing the international coalition that went to war to reverse Saddam's invasion of Kuwait more than a decade earlier.

When the U.N. Security Council unanimously passed Res. 1441, "a final opportunity" for Saddam to disarm in November 2002, all it wanted to lift sanctions and avoid war was overflights and unannounced inspections. Saddam refused, knowing WMD would be found.

Now that the chemical weapons that weren't really there are in the hands of the Islamic State monster that has emerged after Obama's premature military withdrawal from Iraq, how many of the Democrats quoted above wish their president had not dismantled the victory Bush left for him?

Congress: Massively Incompetent and the Resulting Budget Fiasco

The Democrats and the 2010 Budget Fiasco

BY Gary Andres

September 30, 2010

The 2010 federal fiscal year ended unceremoniously this week – a political and substantive fiasco for the Democrats. It included a cascade of miscalculations that could haunt the party in the November elections.  But that pales in comparison to the serious harm they’ve inflicted on the American economy.

Never before has a party so bungled fiscal policy in the United States, leaving citizens, businesses, and investors with head-spinning uncertainty.

Failure to pass a budget earlier this year began the debacle, but the cavalcade of missteps continued this week with the passage of a so-called Continuing Resolution (CR) to avoid an October 1 government shutdown.

Let’s start with the annual budget plan – or lack thereof.   Facing one of the worst long-term debt and deficit crises in the past half century, Democrats in Congress decided to kick the can and skip developing a blueprint this year.

This is truly unconscionable.  How can the Democrats – with large majorities in the House and the Senate – look voters in the eye and say, we have no plan – no long term schematic to ensure America won’t become another Greece.  The only thing  more unbelievable is that they apparently got away with it because no one seems to notice.

This dereliction of duty is unprecedented. Never in the history of the modern process – dating back more than a quarter of a century – have both the House and the Senate failed to pass a budget resolution.

Investors would dump shares of a business that projected massive amounts of future debt, but told shareholders, ‘Sorry, we don’t have a plan to deal with it.’ It’s one of the reasons political markets put a strong ‘sell’ signal on the Democratic majority.

The majority party’s ‘dog ate my homework’ approach means fiscal year 2011  spending bills languish; funding levels for all of next year’s programs is uncertain; and deficit projections rival faith healers in terms of their trustworthiness.

Because Congress failed to pass a budget or enact any appropriations bills this year, lawmakers will have to rely on a CR to avoid a government shutdown.

But even a CR, which some will pitch as a “freeze at last year’s spending levels,” is a fiscal charade – the second act in this year’s budget fiasco.

Freezing spending at current levels sounds good at first blush. But as the Heritage Foundation pointed out in an August report, non-defense discretionary spending already grew at 28 percent over the past two years.  The Congressional Budget Office estimates that non-defense discretionary spending is now at 4.5 percent of GDP – the highest level in 25 years.  A CR just “freezes” spending at these already higher levels.

Today’s politics demands a “melt,” not a freeze.  In other words, a CR should not just continue the status quo, but also acknowledge the public’s demand for a least some kind of fiscal belt-tightening.

Yet even modest cuts in spending offend many congressional Democrats’ ideological predispositions. Keynes is still king in their minds, particularly liberals in safe districts, insulated from distractions of viable Republican challengers or pesky swing voters concerned about the size of government.

The third act of the fiasco concerns tax policy’s future. The media focuses on whether or not rates should snap back to their 2001 levels for everyone or only those for individuals earning over $200,000 or families making over $250,000.

Republicans say no one’s taxes should go up; Democrats want to increase rates on individual, family and small business income over $200,000 (individuals) or $250,000 (families).  Why not schedule a vote to alleviate the uncertainty? Well, it’s Because the Republican position would likely prevail.  Speaker Pelosi and Senate Leader Reid are using their unchallenged rules powers to sidestep a vote.

Democrats’ budget fiasco also caused an avalanche of other tax ambiguity.  What are the taxes on inheritance (now zero because the old rates expired at the beginning of this year)?   How about rates on capitals gains and dividends?  Then there is the issue of the Alternative Minimum Tax and child tax credits.

This fiscal indecision has harmed businesses, individuals, and investors seeking certainty.  No one knows what they will pay in future taxes – confusion that freezes needed capital investments and job creation decisions.

Democrats this year presided over a fiscal policy catastrophe. Their inability to craft a sensible budget plan, their failure to use the CR to signal spending restraint, and the sea of confusion they created over tax policy, provides voters with a host of reasons to pull the plug on a congressional majority already in critical condition. 

Published on The Weekly Standard (http://www.weeklystandard.com)

ObamaCare Coming Your Way Now!

Friday, January 29, 2010

The Democrats' Political Death Wish

by Hugh Hewitt

GOP Senate Whip Jon Kyl was a guest on my show Thursday and reported that Congressional Democrats have indeed decided to use reconciliation to resurrect the remains of Obamacare, despite Massachusetts, despite the public's continuing and still growing dislike of the bill, and despite the jam-down ultra-partisanship such a naked power play and perversion of Senate rules that such an approach entails. The transcript of our conversation is here.

The only reaction to such a stunt should be an instant and amazing level of political activism, beginning with donations to ReverseTheVote.org --the NRCC fund committed to defeating the 24 most vulnerable House Democrats who supported Obamacare. Even if Harry Reid can find 50 senators on his side of the aisle to, along with Vice President Biden, vote to overrule the American public's considered opinion about Obamacare, it would still have to make it through the House, where Nancy Pelosi's very fragile coalition faces the prospect of a wipe out in 39 weeks if this passes.

Prior to Massachusetts Obamacare was just a terrible bill with disastrous consequences for the American health care system, especially for seniors.

If passed after Massachusetts, Obamacare would become the single most contemptuous act by a Congress towards voters in American history.

The groups and efforts like Tea Party Patriots ,Docs4PatientCare.org and AMAC's TearUpYourCard.com that may have dialed back their activism since Scott Brown's win now know they have to double and redouble their efforts. In recent weeks some of the attention of the powerful anti-Democrat grass root organizing has passed over to expressions of concern over out-of-control spending. Now the groups must return their attention to the mess that is Obamacare, however that Frankenstein monster of a bill gets reassembled through the reconciliation process.

There's another development that may come into play as well as Democrats pursue collective political suicide. America's health care businesses --from insurance companies to medical care device manufacturers to hospitals and Big Pharma-- are now free under the decision in Citizens United to enter the fray directly. And they should. Quickly. The impact of just a few ads in a few states targeting a few Democratic senators and Congressmen would be profound. A very effective ad could be made featuring the CEO of any such business, staring straight into the camera and announcing that Obamacare threatens jobs in the states where the company operates and appealing to the incumbent Democrat to please stop making the job of providing health care more difficult.

Harry Reid may well have given up serious hope of being re-elected in Nevada and is thus willing to go over the cliff with President Obama. The defeat of Nancy Pelosi is less likely than any of the Supreme Soviet losing one of their contests during the '70s. Others like Barbara Boxer may not be aware a vote occurred in Massachusetts, so out of touch with public opinion have they grown through long years of beltway privilege.

But even the modest assessments of the undertow threatening Democrats puts the loss of seats in the House nearing takeover land of 40, and as many as nine Senate seats now in play. Imagine if the political anger in the land were to grow, or even double? Democrats think there is a limit to their losses, but what if they have fundamentally misjudged the American political center and the American political temperament?

That's what House Democrats especially have to be wondering this weekend as they hear that their leadership has committed them to defending the health care fiasco for another few weeks which will become months. Unemployment stays in the stratosphere, the president gives bad speech after bad speech as the prompter jokes grow, and the polls slide further and further away from the Democrats.

Sounds like a political plan every bit the equal of Obamacare on the merits.

(My thoughts: Absolutely Unbelievable! TC)

You Want CHANGE --- We Got CHANGE!

In one short year, Barack Obama has accomplished the heretofore impossible. He has done a flawless job! Through sheer force of Herculean arrogance coupled with galactic naïveté, he, unlike anyone else in history, has managed to make Jimmy Carter look like George Washington (profound apologies to George Washington).

Pelosi: As Bad As It Gets!

Nancy Pelosi's Widening Power Grab

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
April 29, 2008

Congress: On the heels of a rules change that iced the Colombia free trade treaty, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is scrapping the appropriations process in a new war funding bill. Something new and anti-democratic is afoot.

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Read More: General Politics

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Whatever is driving her, Pelosi seems to be moving Congress toward a one-woman dictatorship, showing little or no concern for holding actual votes or building consensus on key issues as she manipulates Congress.

She's altering and contorting long-standing congressional rules to get her agenda through instead of trusting the voting process. This gives clout to special interests and makes her powerful as a political boss, but it undermines Congress as an institution, making voters the losers.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has bent Congress' rules almost beyond recognition in pursuing her pork-laden, special-interest House agenda.

Pelosi's latest move is to link a $108 billion supplemental bill for U.S. troops in Iraq to an extra $70 billion in pork spending in a tacked-on economic stimulus package. It's a bad idea, one that wouldn't make it through a congressional vote. So she's getting around that by changing the rules.

Instead of submitting the package to a subcommittee vote, moving it to a full committee, and allowing debate until consensus is reached, Pelosi's skipping the appropriations process altogether. This has been done only a few times in the last 20 years — mostly in times of national emergency, like 9/11 and Katrina.

Now, it's just business as usual with Pelosi in power.

Pelosi seems to have been emboldened by her success in halting Colombia's free-trade agreement this month — again, not through votes, but by changing house rules to end the 90-day requirement to schedule a vote.

This damages our alliance with Colombia. For what price? Like the Iraq bill, she's tying passage of Colombia free trade to the new pork spending she seeks. Winner: Big Labor. Loser: the private sector, which must pay $1 billion in tariffs.

This follows Pelosi's moves to halt development of new energy resources through drilling oil in Alaska and the outer continental shelf. She's engineered this through 13 obscuring maneuvers since 2005, which keep America's energy resources in the ground, while handing out subsidies to favored "alternative energy" programs, which she has cleverly packaged as resolving the energy shortage. Winners: environmental and alternative-energy lobbies. Losers: all of us, who must now pay more for energy and food.

Just as one thinks it couldn't get worse, it does. Pelosi has left America unprotected from terrorists by not permitting a vote on enhanced FISA rules that let federal officials listen in on terrorist phone calls. Winners: The trial lawyers, who benefit from lawsuits against communications companies. Losers: again, all of us, who are now more vulnerable to a terrorist attack.

Nothing new here — this has become Pelosi's style. Indeed, last year, she attempted to rewrite the House's 185-year-old rules to permit tax hikes without a vote. A pattern emerges of a person who no longer seems intent on observing the niceties of democracy.

But Americans should question a style of governing that eschews real democracy for endless pandering to special interests and power blocs. Democrats won Congress in 2006 promising to rid Congress of special interests in politics. But under Pelosi's string of rules changes, it's more beholden than ever.

Voters express a shocking cynicism about Congress, reflected in the 18% approval rating it gets in recent polls. There's little doubt Pelosi's move to keep Congress from voting on key issues so her special interest friends can rake in the cash is a part of the problem.

Voters may wonder: Just when will Pelosi start trusting the voters, Congress and the democratic process, and stop abusing her power?

Pelosi Supports Chavez, Terrorism, and War

Pelosi's War

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
April 10, 2008

Congress: The cowardly start more wars than the courageous. Nancy Pelosi's craven altering of House rules to kill off Colombia's trade pact brings that danger to the Andes. If war breaks out, her name will be on it.

Read More: Latin America & Caribbean | Business & Regulation

April 10 may end up as a date which will live in infamy. The Speaker of the House not only refused to step forward and be counted on approving the vital Colombia free-trade agreement, she ran away from letting anyone else vote on it.

After President Bush submitted the pact to a vote under fast-track rules, she changed them to ensure it wouldn't go anywhere anytime soon. By a 224-195 House vote, the voting timeline rule on trade pacts was changed from 90 days to whenever. Pelosi now can hold up Colombia's treaty however long her caprice dictates.

"The message Democrats sent today," a bitter Bush warned after Thursday's vote, "is that no matter how steadfastly you stand with us, we will turn our backs on you when it is politically convenient."

Pelosi's move leaves Colombia, an ally, in limbo and uncertainty. She may think her clever maneuver was done in a vacuum, but it wasn't. In Venezuela's capital of Caracas, where Hugo Chavez holds forth, and in the jungles of Colombia, where drug terrorists hide out, Pelosi's move was watched closely.

Indeed, within hours of the vote, Latin American media already were calling Pelosi's maneuver the "Chavez Rule."

The Venezuelan dictator is no doubt fascinated at how Pelosi could do this to America's best ally in Latin America, punishing a vibrant democracy by isolating it from all the other nations that have sought and won free trade.

Unlike, say, military aid, this deal costs the U.S. nothing, is too small to have much impact on the U.S. economy and is mainly about ending tariffs on U.S. goods sold in Colombia, matching the no-tariff trade that Colombian firms already get here.

Free trade was what Chavez's enemy, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, considered his best weapon. And Pelosi knocked it right out of his hand, just to placate her party's union supporters.

Only a month ago, Chavez sent 10 tank divisions to the Colombian border after Colombia's army blew away a FARC terrorist kingpin. He warned he would bring war inside Colombia.

Encircled by tanks not only in the East by Venezuela but also in the South by Chavez's cat's paw, Ecuador, Colombia asked the U.S. for just one thing: to pass the free-trade agreement. No tanks. No jets. Just free trade.

Now without it, Chavez might be emboldened to strike. After all, he'll hear from congressional sources that Pelosi probably won't bring up a vote on the trade pact for at least several months. He'll use that time to pick fights with its now-forsaken neighbor. The fact that Colombia can't get even a trade pact tells him all he needs to know about American commitment.

So even though the pact was not rejected outright, its absence will be inherently destabilizing. There's nothing Chavez or his FARC allies dread more than Colombia armed with trade rights that will boost its economy beyond the allure of Chavista populist promises.

At Argentina's 2005 Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Chavez made his enmity toward free trade known by hurling insults at the president of Mexico and vowing to "bury" free trade.

Now, thanks to Pelosi's bid to shunt Colombia off to trade limbo, the potential for war in a tinderbox Andean region — over any border incident or FARC terrorist attack — has been heightened.

The world and its dictators don't sleep. The cowardly number that Pelosi did on Colombia likely will prevent the soft power of free trade from working, instead opening the gates to the hard power of war — and pulling in the U.S. whether Pelosi likes it or not. If so, we'll have her to thank.