It’s do or die

The US is fighting a fairly good war considering they are fighting on two fronts; in Iraq against the terrorists and over the rest of the world against the media. I get the opinion that some amongst us believe that Rumsfeld actually gave orders to Pte Lynndie England to parade with a naked man on a leash. It simply doesn’t happen that way. All Rumsfeld would have said was ‘Get these interrogations moving. Iraqi’s and our troops are dying. Get some intelligence. The people in Abu Ghraib aren’t traffic fine defaulters, they are people who may know from whence the explosives for the terror attacks are being sourced. They may know the pipe line the terrorists are using to infiltrate weapons and troops. They may have some answers but they are never going to answer these questions out of a desire to help Iraq. They are not there to help Iraq. This is not LA Law, you morons, its war. No clever court room debates -life isn’t a TV series. If Intelligence doesn?t get the answers to these questions then innocent Iraqis are going to die in the hundreds. US troops will die as well but more importantly, if we don’t win this war then thousands of westerners will die. All the tin pot terrorist leaders will be buoyed by any defeat of the great Satan. Recruiting will boom and you will see the result in downtown Sydney, London and New York. It’s not a bloody ratings game – its life or death. If Intelligence held a terrorist who they knew had detail about the WTC slaughter prior to Sep 11 what would you have them do. Read him his rights? Call up the local human rights lawyer? Ask him nicely if he could help? Wake up! While I would argue that it is going to take a lot of Abu Ghraib’s to equal one Nike Bergin others would say “..but the formula isn’t balanced. Nick Bergin doesn’t make Abu Ghraib right”. They are only half right right, the issue is deeper than that. What does bring some perspective; some balance to the issue is this; The US forces recognized the problem well before the media did and they reacted positively before the media attacked. They run an investigation, found there was a case to be answered, charged the offenders, have already found one guilty, sentenced him to a dishonourable discharge after he serves 12 months in prison and then the President of the US, Bush, actually apologised to the people of Iraq. Meanwhile, the terrorists in Iraq are indiscriminately targeting woman and children, they are decapitating US civilians and they are using kids as young as eight on the firing line. And they are not all Iraqis; they are from all of the far flung reaches of the Islamic world, all congregating to kill the infidels. They are there to create as much havoc and mayhem as they can to de-stabilize the march of democracy into the Middle East. People talk of moral equivalence and that the US cannot demand a high standard when they stuff up in Abu Ghraib. Well, they can. The behaviour of the guards is not the norm and the US is doing something about it. I don?t see the terrorists holding inquiries and charging people with crimes against humanity. And, aided and abetted by the media, they are making it extremely difficult. Like tone deaf, out of beat drummers, they are keeping the marchers out of step. The media are bogged down in the minutia of war and cannot see the big picture or are deliberately obscuring the big picture. They recycle the events of at Abu Ghraib time and time again. The Army acknowledged the problem in January and took remedial action straight away and it still gets front page treatment. They virtually ignore anything positive out of Iraq (and believe me there is a lot), to concentrate on a small incident. The media are fighting an American Presidential election seemingly saying anything is better than Bush in the Whitehouse. And they are very, very wrong. Not that Bush is the greatest leader ever to occupy the Whitehouse, he isn?t, but he is a leader. The war is much bigger than Bush or Kerry in the Whitehouse, it?s about civilization. This from Real Clear Politics

The decapitation of Nicholas Berg – which, it merits reminding, required several cuts of the knife to stop his screaming – was a front-page story for just one day. Only one newspaper that I know of, the Dallas Morning News, plus the Weekly Standard magazine, made the point that Berg’s murder is “why we fight.” By now, Abu Ghraib has been a lead story for weeks. And Congress has gone so far as to pull top U.S. commanders back from the battle zone to grill them about it – just as America’s enemies are launching what they hope will be the Iraqi equivalent of the 1968 Tet offensive, hoping to undermine the June 30 handover of power to Iraqis.

Common tactics. In Vietnam in 1968 the North Vietnamese were crushed in the 68 Tet Offensive but in a Presidential Election year, the media, led by Walter Cronkite, snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and saved the day for the Communists. They helped convince the voters that the war was unwinnable. There are a lot of similarities about Vietnam and Iraq, but not what the left would have you believe. The similarities are in the media assault on the Presidential Election to affect an outcome that they think is best for America. The arrogant, elitist bastards. Update: Check out Defence for the Government’s thoughts on the matter. Extreme Right wing or Looney Left you owe it to yourself to be informed Update II: For good news on Iraq visit Chrenkoff. He is doing the work of the Western Media