If Josef Goebbels were alive today, he would give NPR "two thumbs up".
So the libs what to try the surge in Afghanistan even after such a dismal failure in Iraq? I don’t get it.
Left Radio has never made it commerically simply because Public Radio already ready neatly fills that niche.
Kind of unfair since they are tax subsidized, yet still solicit donations and commerical “sponsors” in addition to their public funding. They use up the audience and the ad dollars that chase them.
The Levin-Reed-Smith amendment, which would have forced our troops out of Iraq through spring of 2008, was co-sponsored by my second least favorite Oregon Senator Gordon Smith.
The failed amendment dramatized how to support the troops and not their mission. Senators unanimously confirm Lt. General David Petraeus to lead our Iraq troops, and then move immediately to thwart him. This Princeton PhD, who co-authored the Army’s manual on counterinsurgency, provided Senators a splendid dissertation defense for utilizing the surge to implement classic counterinsurgency strategies, consistently victorious when not politically sabotaged. Clearly, his comments so terrified Senators Levin, Reed, and Smith; etal they demanded legislation to cripple the strategy from the outset.
Just a few weeks ago I got a letter from Senator Smith countering the April 8 reports of General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker and maintaining illusions rejecting existence of their testimony. He contended there is a civil war. General Petraeus said the country had moved away from the brink of civil war. Smith said the source of violence was ancient Iraqi sectarian divisions. General Petraeus said impetuous for violence resided outside the country with Al-Qaeda Iraq (AQI), foreign fighters injected by Syria, and special groups trained and funded by Iran.
Smith said Iraqi leaders were unwilling to focus on steps for a better country. Ambassador Crocker reported recent passage of legislation for pension benefits extended to former Hussein regime members, de-Ba’athification reform, a far-reaching amnesty law, and agreement among all major parties for local elections in October. Smith’s statement also refused to acknowledge constitutional review, semi-autonomous region laws, minority party protections, informal sharing of oil revenues, and capital funds allocation happened when the surge was only two months old. His letter further refused acknowledgement that 540,000 have volunteered, and now serve in the Iraqi security forces. 540,000 citizens find securing peace through victorious national government sufficiently compelling to risk their lives.
Smith repudiates instruction successful counterinsurgency operations allows these people, and emerging local moderate leaders, to demand and/or facilitate national reconciliation on difficult outstanding issues. He grasps for evidence of failure by claiming a “Jeffersonian Democracy” is not emerging. These novice Iraqi legislators are just now emerging from a world in which they, and their immediate and extended families, were subject to “lobbying” amounting to murder and torture by bestial elements. Political success means a board range of constituencies substituting vitriolic rhetoric and emotional, even violent, demonstrations for abundant slaughter.
Was the Surge Successful?
Does a bear shit in the woods?
I hate NPR. They’re commies.
mark and bump...