Posted on 07/15/2006 8:32:36 PM PDT by West Coast Conservative
Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich says America is in World War III and President Bush should say so. In an interview in Bellevue this morning Gingrich said Bush should call a joint session of Congress the first week of September and talk about global military conflicts in much starker terms than have been heard from the president.
"We need to have the militancy that says 'We're not going to lose a city,' " Gingrich said. He talks about the need to recognize World War III as important for military strategy and political strategy.
Gingrich said he is "very worried" about Republican's facing fall elections and says the party must have the "nerve" to nationalize the elections and make the 2006 campaigns about a liberal Democratic agenda rather than about President Bush's record.
Gingrich says that as of now Republicans "are sailing into the wind" in congressional campaigns. He said that's in part because of the Iraq war, adding, "Iraq is hard and painful and we do not explain it very well."
But some of it is due to Republicans' congressional agenda. He said House and Senate Republicans "forgot the core principle" of the party and embraced Congressional pork. "Some of the guys," he said, have come down with a case of "incumbentitis."
Gingrich said in the coming days he plans to speak out publicly, and to the Administration, about the need to recognize that America is in World War III.
He lists wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, this week's bomb attacks in India, North Korean nuclear threats, terrorist arrests and investigations in Florida, Canada and Britain, and violence in Israel and Lebanon as evidence of World War III. He said Bush needs to deliver a speech to Congress and "connect all the dots" for Americans.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
"If we put the "disadvantaged" and the street kid who barely can pick his nose let alone find a job in uniform"
That's one of those Viet Nam era leftist propaganda nostrums that has become the received wisdom of which I spoke in my last note.
It is not the case that the draft picked exclusively on the poor. Sure, people with money always have a better chance to game the system, but there were plenty of middle- and upper-middle class boys drafted, and plenty of moneyed heirs went through ROTC or other officer procurement programs to avoid being drafted as a private soldier.
Matter of fact, the quality of recruits plunged in the mid-seventies after the draft was ended. I know. I was there and I saw it.
The draft will drive the quality of military personnel up, not down.
"We don't need 125000 more men"
More like ten times that.
"And some would say we already have in the person of the greatest sack of crap that occupied the Oval Office in my lifetime. "
Pshaw. Carter makes Chamberlain look like William the Conqueror.
"and resigned under pressure of a cooked-up "ethical" probe"
That's not exactly how I remember it.
There was a lot of nasty talk about him committing adultery then divorcing his first wife when she was in the hospital dying of cancer, or something like that. But we were giving him the benefit of the doubt on that gossip, and he was hanging strong.
Then it came out that he really did commit adultery in his second marriage, then dumped his second wife to marry his accomplice, and that's what sank him. His undenied faithlessness lost him the support of the faithful.
There was also an ethical probe into a history class he taught. It ended up going nowhere but was a big part of his decision to resign.
Newt has too much baggage, to put it succinctly.
The term "WWII" wouldn't serve any purpose but to make those who tend toward fear more afraid than necessary.
There is, in fact, not much to fear as you point out. That's why inflammatory verbiage which conjures up images of trench warfare, concentration camps, etc. isn't helpful.
"War on Terror" does just fine IMO because that beautifully sums up what it is.
9-11 brought the people together and made President Bush's numbers go through the roof...just ten months after losing the popular vote.
The next coordinated attack on our country may dwarf 9-11 in terms of dead and wounded.
Newt's ideology and intelligence could be the right man at the right time...just like Ronald Reagan rebounded after an unsuccessful run at the nomination.
I wouldn't hesitate to vote for him...anytime.
Most will choose entitlement and a reduced dihmini tax. And I am not joking.
"There was also an ethical probe into a history class he taught. It ended up going nowhere but was a big part of his decision to resign."
I guess I could be mistaken, but I didn't think that particular bogus charge had much of an effect.
"Newt has too much baggage, to put it succinctly."
It would be hard for me to support a man who dumped not one, but two wives in favor of accomplices in adultery.
This has been Bush's one greatest failure in the whole WoT. He has allowed the Left to splinter the big issue of Islamic terrorism into the separate issues of 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan and others. He should be relentlessly cementing all these together in peoples' minds. They're each different heads of the same Hydra.
The monster is Islamo-fascism. This is WWIII.
"Perhaps but I'm not sure why you think the American population only consists of manly American males."
Darn it, I keep forgetting that women have the vote now.
"The term "WWII" wouldn't serve any purpose but to make those who tend toward fear more afraid than necessary."
Seems to me like the term "WWIII" might serve to wake some from the slumber of complacency.
"That's why inflammatory verbiage which conjures up images of trench warfare, concentration camps, etc. isn't helpful."
What about inflammatory verbiage that conjures up images similar to those in Clancy's latest book, "Teeth of the Tiger?"
"War on Terror" does just fine IMO because that beautifully sums up what it is."
Except that a lot of people seem to think that the war on terror will be a lower-case war, fought by others a long way away, and won rather easily. Others, of course, think it's just Bush administration hokum.
LOL! I think a few hundred more million have images of WWII seared in their mind than images from "Teeth of the Tiger".
You forget often that women have the vote? Hmmm.
I believe you. Its amazing to me how the entitlement mentality has sapped the American spirit.
"You forget often that women have the vote? Hmmm."
After two Clinton administrations, you still think that is a good idea?
You want to take the vote from the blacks too?
"You want to take the vote from the blacks too?"
That is such a dirty little trick. You see the homo activists using it to draw an equivalence between race and perversion...hell, almost everybody with an axe to grind uses it to try and discredit the opposition.
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