Neall Alcott

Well, I’ve been really busy with work and life and I haven’t been blogging in a while. (Sorry)

My buddy Bruce was asking what was up, so I figured I should set a little time aside tonight and write. I told him that since the mainstream media (MTM) has noticed the improvements in Iraq, I haven’t had to do much writing about it. But I told him that with the 2008 Presidential election heating up, I’ll probably have plenty to write about!

And boy was I right!

It seems that Hillary Clinton has fallen behind in the polls in Iowa and now trails Barak Obama. And she’s freaking out! Today she issued a press release attacking Obama and at first I thought it was a satire piece from the Onion:

Sen. Obama Rewrites History, Claims He Hasn’t Been Planning White House Run

Today in Iowa, Senator Barack Obama said: “I have not been planning to run for President for however number of years some of the other candidates have been planning for.”

Oh really?

“Senator Obama’s comment today is fundamentally at odds with what his teachers, family, classmates and staff have said about his plans to run for President,” Clinton spokesperson Phil Singer said. “Senator Obama’s campaign rhetoric is getting in the way of his reality.”

Immediately after joining the Senate, Senator Obama started planning run for President. “‘The first order of business for Senator Obama’s team was charting a course for his first two years in the Senate. The game plan was to send Senator Obama into the 2007-2008 election cycle in the strongest form possible’…The final act of the plan was turning up the talk about a potential Presidential bid, which was greatly aided by his positive press and suggestions by pundits that he run for President.” [U.S. News and World Report, 6/19/07 ]

His law school classmates say that Senator Obama has been planning Presidential run for ‘more than a decade.’ [A]ccording to those who know him, he has been talking about the presidency for more than a decade. “It was clear to me from the day I met him that he was thinking about politics,” says Harvard Law School classmate Christine Spurell. [Washington Post, 8/12/07 ]

15 years ago, Senator Obama told his brother-in-law he was planning to run for President. Craig [Robinson] pulled him aside [in 1992] and asked about his plans. “He said, ‘I think I’d like to teach at some point in time, and maybe run for public office,’ recalls Robinson, who assumed Senator Obama meant he’d like to run for city alderman. “He said no — at some point he’d like to run for the U.S. Senate. And then he said, ‘Possibly even run for President at some point.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, but don’t say that to my Aunt Gracie.’ I was protecting him from saying something that might embarrass him.” [Washington Post, 8/12/07 ]

In third grade, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled ‘I Want To Be a President.’ His third grade teacher: Fermina Katarina Sinaga “asked her class to write an essay titled ‘My dream: What I want to be in the future.’ Senator Obama wrote ‘I want to be a President,’ she said.” [The Los Angeles Times, 3/15/07]

In kindergarten, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled ‘I Want to Become President.’ “Iis Darmawan, 63, Senator Obama’s kindergarten teacher, remembers him as an exceptionally tall and curly haired child who quickly picked up the local language and had sharp math skills. He wrote an essay titled, ‘I Want To Become President,’ the teacher said.” [AP, 1/25/07 ]

You have got to be kidding me…

First, Hillary Clinton issuing a press release ridiculing another candidate for “planning for years to run for President” is frankly hyper-ironic. Pot, meet kettle.

But the real jaw dropper here is that Hillary dug up Obama’s essays from 3rd grade and Kindergarten! LOL

So if you have a 6 or 7 year old son or daughter with political ambitions, you better teach them to be careful with their writings… it may come back to haunt them!

Is she really saying that no one but Hillary is allowed to have dreams of being President of the United States?

This reminds me of the Dean Scream… I wonder if she’ll make out better than he did.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Mostly because it’s a time for the family and it’s not overly commercialized. When Thanksgiving is approaching, you don’t have to worry about budgeting funds for gifts or credit card bills the following month. All you have to worry about is exercising and/or dieting to work off your over-consumption.

One of my favorite columnists, Mark Steyn, has written a column about Thanksgiving. As a Brit living in America, he always provides a unique perspective to things. It’s a very good column and an interesting perspective comparing the longevity of the US Constitution and the European constitutions. When you hear someone pining for America to be more like Europe, keep this in mind:

Thanksgiving (excepting the premature and somewhat undernourished Canadian version) is unique to America. “What’s it about?” an Irish visitor asked me a couple of years back. “Everyone sits around giving thanks all day? Thanks for what? George bloody Bush?”

Well, Americans have a lot to be thankful for.

Europeans think of this country as “the New World” in part because it has an eternal newness, which is noisy and distracting. Who would ever have thought you could have ready-to-eat pizza faxed directly to your iPod?

And just when you think you’re on top of the general trend of novelty, it veers off in an entirely different direction: Continentals who grew up on Hollywood movies where the guy tells the waitress “Gimme a cuppa joe” and slides over a nickel return to New York a year or two later and find the coffee now costs $5.75, takes 25 minutes and requires an agonizing choice between the cinnamon-gingerbread-persimmon latte with coxcomb sprinkles and the decaf venti pepperoni-Eurasian-milfoil macchiato.

Who would have foreseen that the nation that inflicted fast food and drive-thru restaurants on the planet would then take the fastest menu item of all and turn it into a Kabuki-paced performance art? What mad genius!

But Americans aren’t novelty junkies on the important things. The New World is one of the oldest settled constitutional democracies on Earth, to a degree the Old World can barely comprehend. Where it counts, Americans are traditionalists.

We know Eastern Europe was a totalitarian prison until the Nineties, but we forget that Mediterranean Europe (Greece, Spain, Portugal) has democratic roots going all the way back until, oh, the mid-Seventies; France and Germany’s constitutions date back barely half a century, Italy’s only to the 1940s, and Belgium’s goes back about 20 minutes, and currently it’s not clear whether even that latest rewrite remains operative. The U.S. Constitution is not only older than France’s, Germany’s, Italy’s or Spain’s constitution, it’s older than all of them put together.

Read the whole thing!

There was a comment on an earlier post of mine on my Daily Local blog that I found interesting:

gypsy hammond said…
The surge is working? That must explain why 2007 has seen the highest level of troop deaths since the war began. But then, defining success downwards has been a hallmark of this war and this administration.

While this reflects the usual “it’s all Bush’s fault” thought process, what caught my eye was the statement about 2007 being the highest level of troop deaths. So I went to icasualties.org to see if it’s true.

And it is.

But Gypsy’s comment is a little disingenuous. The commenter states that the Surge isn’t working because 2007 has the highest troop deaths so far.

So the critical point is: When did the Surge begin?

President Bush announced the Surge in January 2007, saying that 35,000 additional troops will be sent to Iraq. The troops were deployed between Febuary and May 2007. In June 2007, the Surge’s offensive operations began (once all of the troops were fully deployed).

Using Excel and the figures from icasualties.org, I built a chart to better reflect what is happening from January 2006 through November 2007 (click on the image for a larger view):

So clearly, once offensive operations began in June 2007, US military deaths have begun to significantly decline. Coupled with the Anbar Awakening, it really looks like Iraq has turned around for the better.

The media hardly reports on Iraq anymore BECAUSE deaths are down, there are few if any car bombs, etc. etc. It reminds me of the old saying about the news media: “We don’t report when a plane lands safely, only when they crash”. That’s what is happening with Iraq RIGHT NOW! Even to the point that Afghanistan (which they’ve ignored for a while) is now being painted as a failure because Iraq is not.

What is really distressing though, is the complete and utter disconnect with reality I am observing from the Democratic Leadership (Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi in particular). They continue to say that the Iraq War is lost. And worse, they are continuing to try to cut off support for the troops to ensure that the war is lost.

Whose side are they on? We can all argue about how the war began, but the reality is that it happened and we need to deal with the current situation. And the current situation shows that the Iraq War can be (and possibly is) won. To continue to try and pull the rug out from under the troops when they are succeeding is one of the most politically suicidal moves I have ever witnessed. The American people may not agree with how the war started or if the war was worthwhile, but few Americans want our troops to lose - and that’s something that Reid and Pelosi obviously don’t understand.

Here’s a really nice (although sad) article in the New York Times about the last surviving American soldier from World War I:

Over There — and Gone Forever

Four years ago, I attended a Veterans Day observance in Orleans, Mass. Near the head of the parade, a 106-year-old named J. Laurence Moffitt rode in a Japanese sedan, waving to the small crowd of onlookers and sporting the same helmet he had been wearing in the Argonne Forest at the moment the armistice took effect, 85 years earlier.

I didn’t know it then, but that was, in all likelihood, the last small-town American Veterans Day parade to feature a World War I veteran. The years since have seen the passing of one last after another — the last combat-wounded veteran, the last Marine, the last African-American, the last Yeomanette — until, now, we are down to the last of the last.

I love finding newpaper headlines that are either poorly worded or can be read differently. Here’s one I found in the Washington Post today:

Panel May Cut Sentences For Crack

Drug dealers rejoice! They say that crack is very addictive, but this is ridiculous… maybe they shouldn’t be responsible for sentencing.

Here’s a video of some firemen in Boston making a hasty retreat from a rooftop…

Interesting news article:

An Italian musician and computer technician claims to have uncovered musical notes encoded in Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Last Supper,” raising the possibility that the Renaissance genius might have left behind a somber composition to accompany the scene depicted in the 15th-century wall painting…

Pala explains how he took elements of the painting that have symbolic value in Christian theology and interpreted them as musical clues.

Pala first saw that by drawing the five lines of a musical staff across the painting, the loaves of bread on the table as well as the hands of Jesus and the Apostles could each represent a musical note.

This fit the relation in Christian symbolism between the bread, representing the body of Christ, and the hands, which are used to bless the food, he said. But the notes made no sense musically until Pala realized that the score had to be read from right to left, following Leonardo’s particular writing style.

Hat Tip: InstaPundit

It’s been interesting watching the news as Iraq has been improving… it’s been getting more and more difficult to find any reports, other than independent reports from Michael Yon and other freelance reporters in Iraq.

It looks like the Times of London has noticed the same thing:

The Petraeus Curve

Is no news good news or bad news? In Iraq, it seems good news is deemed no news. There has been striking success in the past few months in the attempt to improve security, defeat al-Qaeda sympathisers and create the political conditions in which a settlement between the Shia and the Sunni communities can be reached. This has not been an accident but the consequence of a strategy overseen by General David Petraeus in the past several months. While summarised by the single word “surge” his efforts have not just been about putting more troops on the ground but also employing them in a more sophisticated manner. This drive has effectively broken whatever alliances might have been struck in the past by terrorist factions and aggrieved Sunnis. Cities such as Fallujah, once notorious centres of slaughter, have been transformed in a remarkable time.

Indeed, on every relevant measure, the shape of the Petraeus curve is profoundly encouraging. It is not only the number of coalition deaths and injuries that has fallen sharply (October was the best month for 18 months and the second-best in almost four years), but the number of fatalities among Iraqi civilians has also tumbled similarly. This process started outside Baghdad but now even the capital itself has a sense of being much less violent and more viable…

The current achievements, and they are achievements, are being treated as almost an embarrassment in certain quarters. The entire context of the contest for the Democratic nomination for president has been based on the conclusion that Iraq is an absolute disaster and the first task of the next president is to extricate the United States at maximum speed. Democrats who voted for the war have either repudiated their past support completely (John Edwards) or engaged in a convoluted partial retraction (Hillary Clinton). Congressional Democrats have spent most of this year trying (and failing) to impose a timetable for an outright exit.

Me? I think the big news in Iraq is that Iraq was turned around because of two men: General Petraeus and Sec. of Defense Rumsfeld. It is now obvious that Rumsfeld’s strategy of a “light footprint” (meaning few troops on the ground) allowed Al Qaeda to thrive and move throughout Iraq unimpeded causing spiralling violence and civilian casualties. Once Rumsfeld resigned, it gave Bush the ability to change strategies and in the end appointing General Petraeus. His “surge” strategy provided the additional troops to stop Al Qaeda and help turn native Iraqi insurgents to our side. If President Bush had gotten ridden of Rumsfeld sooner, the story of the Iraq War could have been very different.

Sorry about not posting last week. I’ve been swamped at work and home!

But anyway…

I found this interesting NBC News report (via InstaPundit) that talks about the Nanny State movement and how it can create kids that are unprepared for the real world. I’ve written about this before (HERE).

In particular, this phenomenon has struck South Jersey recently, as a 7 yr. old kid was suspended for creating a stick figure drawing of him and his friend playing with water pistols…

Check this out. I think I’ll pick up the guy’s book!

Interesting stuff happening on Capitol Hill. Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) proposed an amendment to a major health spending bill that said no lawmakers’ pet projects (i.e., earmarks) would be funded until “all children in the U.S. under the age of 18 years are insured by a private or public health insurance plan.”

Sen. Coburn has been fighting both political parties on earmarks/pork projects, his amendment was an interesting political test to all 100 US Senators: Do you support pork or children?

Not surprisingly, they chose the pork by rejecting the amendment (68 voted for pork, while 26 voted for children).

What I did find surprising is that Sen. Arlen Spector (R-PA) had 166 earmarks in the bill… 166… one hundred, sixty-six earmarks… OMG…

I’ll try to get a complete list of the 166 earmarks (as well as the Casey (D-PA), Lautenberg (D-NJ), and Menendez (D-NJ) earmarks) and I’ll post them here.

Another dispatch from Michael Yon in Iraq: Resistance is Futile:

No thinking person would look at last year’s weather reports to judge whether it will rain today, yet we do something similar with Iraq news. The situation in Iraq has drastically changed, but the inertia of bad news leaves many convinced that the mission has failed beyond recovery, that all Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence, or are waiting for us to leave so they can crush their neighbors. This view allows our soldiers two possible roles: either “victim caught in the crossfire” or “referee between warring parties.” Neither, rightly, is tolerable to the American or British public.

Today I am in Iraq, back in a war of such strategic consequence that it will affect generations yet unborn—whether or not they want it to. Hiding under the covers will not work, because whether it is good news or bad, whether it is true or untrue, once information is widely circulated, it has such formidable inertia that public opinion seems impervious to the corrective balm of simple and clear facts.

READ THE WHOLE THING!

I’m not a big John McCain fan, but this is a GREAT debate line that only he could have delivered:

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry: Man accused of hacking into 911

SWAT officers expected to find a victim shot to death, drugs and a belligerent armed suspect when they surrounded the home of an unsuspecting couple, but found they were only a part of a false emergency call caused by a teenager who hacked into the county’s emergency response system, authorities said.

As officers swarmed the home with assault rifles, dogs and a helicopter, a Lake Forest couple and their two toddlers inside their home slept unsuspectingly.

On March 29 at 11:30 p.m., authorities allege, Randall Ellis, a 19-year-old from Mukilteo, Wash., hacked into the county’s 911 system from his home and placed a false emergency call, prompting a fully armed response to the home of an unsuspecting couple that could have ended tragically.

On the surface it’s kind of comical until you spend a second and think about it. This idiot could have gotten the homeowners shot, the toddlers without a parent(s), and a SWAT team member with unbearable guilt for the rest of his life.

They should put this idiot away for 20 years.

I just received this email from Michael Yon via Basra, Iraq:

Greetings:

Iraq is on the mend, al Qaeda is on the run, and the civil war has abated to a point where the term “civil war” no longer applies.

Accurate war coverage is increasingly important. Even prominent seemingly well-informed persons can get it wrong, such as retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez who previously commanded the war in Iraq. His recent public statements – selectively excerpted and then widely dispersed by the hot winds of media – made it clear that this former senior commander is far out of touch with the current situation.

But there are commanders with a finger on the pulse.

When earlier this year I wrote about the 1-4 CAV transforming an abandoned seminary in a Baghdad neighborhood that had been decimated by civil war, the “surge” had not even begun; but already pundits, politicians and editors had declared it a failure. Though I’d spent only a few days with LTC Crider and his 1-4 CAV soldiers at the new COP Amanche, I ended the dispatch on a note of hope based on observation. I recently received an email from LTC Crider with an update on that Baghdad neighborhood. Please read “Achievements of the Human Heart” and see for yourself.

I was in al Basra province when I saw news reports claiming that Basra city had descended into chaos in the wake of an announcement about the draw down of British Soldiers. I emailed the facts about Basra to several bloggers who hold the media accountable, and the resulting effort got the attention of Tom Foreman who anchors CNN’s “This Week at War.” We were able to make a CNN interview, and the result is a segment that accurately reflects a complex and changing situation. Bravo to CNN for setting the record straight, and to the tireless bloggers who are making a substantial difference in the way news about the war is delivered.

There are major developments to share with readers in upcoming dispatches. If things go at-least-mostly according to plan (which is all we can hope for in war), and if I can rely on the help of readers who share my frustration with the lack of accurate reporting, we can significantly widen the stream of news flowing from Iraq so more people can obtain a truer picture. This will require the will and generosity of readers. But more on that, soon.

Michael
Basra, Iraq

Michael does an incredible job as an embedded reporter in Iraq. If you want a good, detailed report of what’s going on in the war (good and bad), please visit Michael’s web site. Also, please send him a donation. He is completely funded by the viewers of his web site!