We spent a lot of money and lost American lives defeating the Iraqi Army and conquering Iraq. We won; they lost.

But we immediately started treating the Iraqis not as a conquered and occupied enemy, but as an independent and sovereign nation which we needed to woo and court, and whose opinions, prejudices, and enactments we were obliged to honor. They shoot at US troops, then if they run into a mosque, we treat it as off-limits.

American troops don’t even have freedom of religious expression in Iraq. US authorities are enforcing Islamic law on our own troops.

AP reports:

An American service member has been removed from duty in Iraq following complaints that Marines were handing out coins promoting Christianity, the U.S. military says.

Sunni officials in the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah said the coins were given to Iraqis at an entry checkpoint and had biblical verses written on them in Arabic.

A military statement said the service member was removed from his duties “amid concerns from Fallujah’s citizens regarding reports of inappropriate conduct.”

And how do you like this typical example of the insane perspective of the secular American left (which, at least, identifies the terrible, offending verse):

It doesn’t seem right for American soldiers to force a religion upon those who are still recovering from the grips of the Islamic extremist group, al-Qaida, but residents in Fallujah say the Marines are passing out coins quoting the Bible’s John 3:16.

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16.“, is a scripture known by many Christians across the nation as the one that saved their soul. But in a military news story out of Fallujah, this same scripture is allegedly being passed onto Iraqi citizens as their residence status is verified by United States Marines guarding the city.

The Iraqi’s hand over their resident badges for authentication by a Marine at the Western Entrance of the city. Once verified, some Marines are handing out coins with the question “where will you spend eternity” on one side and the John 3:16 scripture on the other.

According to residents of the city, the coins are a “humiliating” attempt to convert them from their own faith over to Christianity.

Would we let the Germans in defeated, post-WWII Germany continue to enact and enforce racial laws? Would we hesitate “to humiliate” them by forcibly imposing our liberal and humanitarian values on them? We would, I guess, if nincompoops like George W. Bush and other liberals of today were in charge.

We actually needed to have humiliated them until they realized they were defeated and needed to change their ways, and were afraid to engage in violence against the US and US forces. We needed to convert them from from their barbarous and bigoted fanaticism. This is the same Fallujah where mobs hung up the bodies of Americans. They could use instruction in a lot of the ideals of Christianity.

Certainly, they ought to have been forced into accepting religious tolerance. And though the US Military, as an organ of the US Government, would not be entitled to convert them to Christianity as part of its operations, there is no reason we could not have allowed, and encouraged, every manner and form of Christian proselytizing and missionary work by US and European churches and denominations.

George W. Bush has internalized so much of the war-losing, incrementally-acting, enemy-appeasing perspective of the American left, he has conducted his military campaigns in the same self-defeating fashion as Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson. Like Truman, he’s been working with stalemate as his goal, and like Johnson, he’s allowed the enemy to retain safe havens, and also like Johnson, he’s frittered away the support of the public, and allowed the treasonous domestic elites to demoralize the American people and de-legitimize our own cause.

2007 Ch. English Dog & Ch. English Foxhound
Blue Ridge PIEBALD ’05

I’m taking tomorrow as a day off from blogging, I’m afraid. I will be out of town, and AFK, attending the Bryn Mawr Hound Show.

Michael Farrin, huntsman for the Quorn from 1968 to 1998, has died after a long illness at the age of 66.

Hunting author Michael Clayton said of him:

He was the most stylish horseman across a natural country you would ever see. …

Michael hunted hounds four times a week during long gruelling seasons and maintained a remarkably high standard at a time when the countryside was eroding and hunting was enduring growing political pressures.

Through it all, Michael remained a cool, calm figure riding Thoroughbreds, some off the racecourse, with extraordinary skill in front of hard-riding mounted fields.

Telegraph obituary.

Does anyone really want somebody who attends a church where this kind of thing is standard fare to be president?

We hear all the time in the MSM about how racism is alive and well in today’s America. But, of course, in ordinary conventional American society even the least hint of racial animosity toward minorities would be looked upon as disgraceful. Who knew that this kind of rhetoric and this kind of paranoid thinking was served up regularly at prominent black urban churches, including churches attended by presidential candidates?

The ranting lunatic is a Chicago-based “social activist” (read: Bolshevik) named Michael Pfleger.

3:45 video

Hat tip to Big Tent Democrat, who is absolutely wrong, by the way. This is the church Obama attends. This is where he was married, and where he baptized his children. It is impossible to say that the crazy racial hatred which is routinely spouted from its pulpit has “nothing to do with Obama.” On the contrary, this shows exactly where Obama originates politically.

Daily Mail:

For nearly a quarter of a century, Lourdes Maxwell has celebrated the arrival of summer by putting a paddling pool in the garden.

This year, however, her two grandchildren and the children of her neighbours may have to find another way to cool off in the heat.

Miss Maxwell’s local council has decided that the pool – which is only 2ft deep – needs a lifeguard.

The 47-year-old divorced mother of three has also been told she must have insurance before she can inflate the toy outside her house in Portsmouth.

Fidel Castro joins Hamas in endorsing Obama. (Hugo Chavez only said he was against McCain.)

Fox News:

In a presidential race in which unwanted, damaging endorsements seem far more plentiful than endorsements that actually could help, Barack Obama has had the unfortunate distinction of being a magnet for such well-wishers.

The latest unsought praise for the Democratic front-runner came from Fidel Castro, who wrote in a column for Cuba’s Granma newspaper Monday that Obama is “the most progressive candidate to the U.S. presidency.” …

In mid-April, Hamas adviser Ahmed Yousef told WorldNetDaily that “We like Mr. Obama, and we hope that he will win the elections.

“I hope Mr. Obama and the Democrats will change the political discourse,” he said. “I do believe [Obama] is like John Kennedy, a great man with a great principle.”

Giotto, The Kiss of Judas, c. 1305, Fresco, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua.

Michael Reagan explains that McClellan did it for money, revenge for being sacked, and to crawl back into the good graces of the establishment media. History will reserve for Scott McClellan a special place in its accounting of the Bush Administration.

It’s amazing what some people will do for 30 pieces of silver.

Scott McClellan was given the signal honor of being the spokesman for the president of the United States, a distinction few Americans have ever achieved. Being the spokesman for the world’s most powerful political figure is no small thing, and I’m sure that the men and women who have held the post view their service as an honor more given that deserved.

It doesn’t appear as if McClellan sees it that way. He is not the first press secretary to be forced out of the job, and he won’t be the last. But he’ll be the first to sink his teeth into the hand that gave him the job in the first place.

It is a tough job, especially when the spokesman of a president the liberal media despises wears a large bull’s eye on his chest. It’s an even tougher job when the person who holds the job is clearly not up to it, as was the case with McClellan. He was an easy target for the nastier members of the largely hostile White House Press corps.

His lack of competence is what cost him the job, and it is now obvious that he left the White House burning with resentment over his forced departure. The fact that he had held the job as long as he did obviously created no sense of gratitude for his having been given the post to begin with.

His act of vengeance has delighted the media who once excoriated him. Their onetime foe is now their hero, an ally in their never-ending campaign to portray George Bush, a good and decent man, as a bumbling fool if not an outright criminal.

Britain’s Government has banned ownership of pistols, rifles, self defense, and hunting. Participants in the Countryside March against the Blair Government’s Hunt Ban wish Britons had defended their liberties before it was too late. Tony Martin, the Norfolk farmer jailed for defending his home, certainly wishes so even more.

9:07 video

Hat tip to Bird Dog.

British leftist George Monbiot (whose name is believed by many to be the etymological source of “moonbat,” the popular pejorative used on the Blogosphere for a seriously addled leftist) is thinking of arresting John Bolton.

Telegraph:

John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, faces a citizen’s arrest when he addresses an audience at the Hay Festival in Wales this evening.
George Monbiot, the journalist and activist, is planning the action because he believes Mr Bolton is a “war criminal”.

He said he was surprised that a “war criminal” such as Mr Bolton would be allowed to “swim through the politest of polite soirees – which is of course Hay.”

Mr Bolton, who was the American ambassador to the UN from August 2005 to January 2006, is due to talk at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival at 6.30pm on international relations.

Let’s hope JB decides to resist arrest, and commits a minor war crime on Monbiot’s nose.

Politico describes democrat party efforts at negotiating a compromise between the Clinton and the Obama camps on the issue of the seating of delegations from Michigan and Florida.

Those people who believe all problems have solutions may be unfamiliar with the inner workings of the Democratic Party.

On Saturday, the party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee will try to solve a big problem, in order to avoid a huge problem in order to prevent a train wreck.

The big problem is what to do about Michigan and Florida, two states stripped last year of their delegates to the Democratic National Convention because both broke party rules and moved their primaries up too early in the election year.

The rules committee will try to work out a compromise Saturday to try to seat those states in some form or fashion. It will be difficult, and the 30 members of the committee, who come from all over the nation, have been warned to keep their hotel rooms Saturday night, because the meeting may go into Sunday.

The huge problem is what happens if one side or another does not like the rules committee’s compromise. In that case, the controversy would go to the 186-member Credentials Committee, which will convene in July or August.

And if that happens, the party will be presented with a possible train wreck: Whatever the Credentials Committee decides will have to be voted on by the Convention in late August as its first order of business. And this could create what the media might love but the party dreads: a floor fight in Denver.

Read the whole thing.

This is probably the battle which will decide the nomination. Whoever controls the credentials committee will have the key to securing the nomination.

The Republican National Committee observes that Obama’s Memorial Day speech featured a really big problem with historical fact.

I had an uncle who was one of the — who was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps. And the story in our family was is that when he came home, he just went up into the attic and he didn’t leave the house for six months. Right, now, obviously, something had really affected him deeply. But at that time, there just weren’t the kinds of facilities to help somebody work through that kind of pain.”

0:41 video

As Wikipedia explains: Aushwitz was liberated by the 322nd Rifle Division of the Red Army on January 27 1945.

But, his making mistakes on these kinds of details was understandable, after all, as he notes at the very opening of his Memorial Day speech, on Monday Obama was seeing dead people, so he was naturally a bit agitated.

On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes — and I see many of them in the audience here today — our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.

9:20 video

In Washington to promote the newly-published English-language translation of his book, Blue Planet in Green Shackles: What Is Endangered: Climate or Freedom, Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus wants to debate Albert Gore on Global Warming.

Earth Times:

Klaus, an economist, said he opposed the “climate alarmism” perpetuated by environmentalism trying to impose their ideals, comparing it to the decades of communist rule he experienced growing up in Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia.

“Like their (communist) predecessors, they will be certain that they have the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their idea reality,” he said.

“In the past, it was in the name of the Marxists or of the proletariat – this time, in the name of the planet,” he added.

Klaus said a free market should be used to address environmental concerns and said he oppposed as unrealistic regulations or greenhouse gas capping systems designed to reduce the impact of climate change.

“It could be even true that we are now at a stage where mere facts, reason and truths are powerless in the face of the global warming propaganda,” he said.

Mr. Klaus’ statement can be read in full at his web-site here.