John Hinderaker, at Power-Line, quotes an eloquent remonstrance from John McCain to his despicable colleagues in the Senate. He titled it: A Man Addresses the Boys.

Let us keep in the front of our minds the likely consequences of premature withdrawal from Iraq. Many of my colleagues would like to believe that, should the withdrawal amendment we are currently debating become law, it would mark the end of this long effort. They are wrong. Should the Congress force a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq, it would mark a new beginning, the start of a new, more dangerous, and more arduous effort to contain the forces unleashed by our disengagement.
No matter where my colleagues came down in 2003 about the centrality of Iraq to the war on terror, there can simply be no debate that our efforts in Iraq today are critical to the wider struggle against violent Islamic extremism. Already, the terrorists are emboldened, excited that America is talking not about winning in Iraq, but is rather debating when we should lose.

***

Mr. President, the terrorists are in this war to win it. The question is: Are we?

***

The supporters of this amendment respond that they do not by any means intend to cede the battlefield to al Qaeda; on the contrary, their legislation would allow U.S. forces, presumably holed up in forward operating bases, to carry out targeted counterterrorism operations. But our own military commanders say that this approach will not succeed, and that moving in with search and destroy missions to kill and capture terrorists, only to immediately cede the territory to the enemy, is the failed strategy of the past three and a half years.

***

Mr. President, this fight is about Iraq but not about Iraq alone. It is greater than that and more important still, about whether America still has the political courage to fight for victory or whether we will settle for defeat, with all of the terrible things that accompany it. We cannot walk away gracefully from defeat in this war.

What a fine leader and desirable Republican presidential candidate a reliably conservative John McCain could have made!

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I don’t agree with Harold Meyerson‘s politics or his defeatist view of the situation in Iraq, but I wholeheartedly endorse his characterization of a number of Republican senators:

Anyone searching for the highest forms of invertebrate life need look no further than the floor of the U.S. Senate last week and this. These spineless specimens go by various names — Republican moderates; respected senior Republicans; Dick Lugar, John Warner, Pete Domenici, George Voinovich.

But if weak-kneed Republican bedwetters running for political cover are rightly described as invertebrate, leftist democrats who make a profession and career out of opposing their country’s cause and stabbing American troops in the back are obviously still lower on the evolutionary scale.

They’re very good at partisanship, but they’re doing so much of it these days that they are in danger of the public seeing through the whole thing.

AP:

The White House on Thursday pushed back against congressional investigations of the Bush administration and said lawmakers should spend more time passing bills to solve domestic problems.

In a constitutional showdown with Congress, the administration claimed executive privilege and rejected demands for White House documents about the firings of eight U.S. attorneys.

The House and Senate Judiciary committees have set a deadline of 10 a.m. next Monday for the White House to explain its basis for the claim.

The administration has not said when or if it will respond. Spokesman Scott Stanzel said Thursday the White House has received a many requests for information since Democrats took control of Congress in January and has turned over 200,000 pages of documents.

“They’ve launched over 300 investigations, had over 350 requests for documents and interviews and they have had over 600 oversight hearings in just about 100 days,” Stanzel said.

Democrats were dubious of the figures but did not offer their own.

The people of that Commonwealth will not endorse Gay Marriage, so the greasy pols in the democrat-controlled legislature have again blocked a popular vote on a Constitutional Amendment intended to reverse the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s absurd decision.

You hear a lot of talk about “democracy” from democrats, and about “voting,” until the time comes to deliver the goods to one of their pet constituencies, then so much for democracy, so much for voting.

AP

Kimberly Strassel in the Wall Street Journal explains the game plan.

If there’s a smarter guy in Washington right now than Sen. Chuck Schumer, Republicans haven’t noticed. The New York Democrat is doggedly working to dismantle what’s left of the Bush presidency, with barely an ounce of pushback from the other side.

Mr. Schumer was the instigator of the Democrats’ probe into the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, although note that the question of who fired which prosecutor is already yesterday’s news. The attorneys mess was just an opening, a hook that is now allowing Mr. Schumer to escalate into an assault on the wider administration, as well as presidential authority over key programs, such as wiretapping.

The ultimate goal? Surround the Bush presidency in a mist of incompetence and corruption, force Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to go, get a special prosecutor appointed to examine the many supposed misdeeds, and then sit back and ride the steady drip-drip of negative Bush headlines all the way to more Senate seats and the Oval Office.

Unidentified “US officials” leak to Britain’s Guardian.

Iran is secretly forging ties with al-Qaida elements and Sunni Arab militias in Iraq in preparation for a summer showdown with coalition forces intended to tip a wavering US Congress into voting for full military withdrawal, US officials say.

“Iran is fighting a proxy war in Iraq and it’s a very dangerous course for them to be following. They are already committing daily acts of war against US and British forces,” a senior US official in Baghdad warned. “They [Iran] are behind a lot of high-profile attacks meant to undermine US will and British will, such as the rocket attacks on Basra palace and the Green Zone [in Baghdad]. The attacks are directed by the Revolutionary Guard who are connected right to the top [of the Iranian government]. …

US officials now say they have firm evidence that Tehran has switched tack as it senses a chance of victory in Iraq. In a parallel development, they say they also have proof that Iran has reversed its previous policy in Afghanistan and is now supporting and supplying the Taliban’s campaign against US, British and other Nato forces.

Tehran’s strategy to discredit the US surge and foment a decisive congressional revolt against Mr Bush is national in scope and not confined to the Shia south, its traditional sphere of influence, the senior official in Baghdad said. It included stepped-up coordination with Shia militias such as Moqtada al-Sadr’s Jaish al-Mahdi as well as Syrian-backed Sunni Arab groups and al-Qaida in Mesopotamia, he added. Iran was also expanding contacts across the board with paramilitary forces and political groups, including Kurdish parties such as the PUK, a US ally.

AP reports:

Former President Carter says President Bush’s administration is “the worst in history” in international relations, taking aim at the White House’s policy of pre-emptive war and its Middle East diplomacy. …

“I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history,” Carter told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in a story that appeared in the newspaper’s Saturday editions. “The overt reversal of America’s basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including those of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me.

Outgoing British PM Tony Blair also came in for criticism from the little peanut farmer from Plains:

Asked how he would judge Blair’s support of Bush, the former president said: “Abominable. Loyal. Blind. Apparently subservient.”

“And I think the almost undeviating support by Great Britain for the ill-advised policies of President Bush in Iraq have been a major tragedy for the world,” Carter told British Broadcasting Corp. radio.

I would call this a truly remarkable case of reporting so partisan that it simply becomes ludicrous.

Personally, I think there can be no doubt whatsoever that the worst president in United States history, both domestically and in foreign policy, was Mr. Carter himself.

The Carter administration’s supine failure to do anything effective in response to the revolutionary government of Iran’s taking US diplomatic personnel hostage, and the spectacle of the United States humiliated by a Third World country holding 52 American diplomats hostage for 444 days is unquestionably the absolute US foreign policy nadir of all time.

The same president managed also to preside over double-digit inflation, a stagnant economy, and an energy crisis. During Mr. Carter’s term, the prime rate hit 21.5%.

Astonishingly, Mr. Carter has managed to continue to distinguish himself with respect to all other US presidents by bustling around the world to confer a personal endorsement of the validity of elections stolen by leftwing dictators, by championing continually the causes of the adversaries of the United States, and by an unprecedented (and ungentlemanly) habit of voicing open criticism of his successors.

AP demonstrates its own contemptible lack of journalistic integrity by openly lying to its readers, putting a claim into the mouth of an unidentified Carter “biographer” that today’s attack on the Bush Administration “is unprecedented.” Carter’s unseemly and disloyal attacks on the current president have not only been frequent but inveterate.

I recall noting the sour expression on Jimmy Carter’s wizened face as he watched with visible envy the outpouring of national grief during the funeral of Ronald Reagan. I’m sure he was thinking ahead, disgruntled over the obvious truth that the nation would have no similar response in his own case.

On the contrary, I expect there will only be a collective shrug, and a momentary thought of “Good riddance” from most Americans when Mr. Carter’s time comes.

Former Harvard Crimson editor, now law professor at the University of Oregon, Garrett Epps demonstrates the classic form of the dementia afflicting members of the democrat nutroots in this spectacularly self-righteous and paranoid rant in Salon.

By evil chance, I spent the Saturday night before Election Day 2000 at a jolly dinner for high-level Republicans. Most of the talk over the entrees concerned why then-candidate George W. Bush had been too pusillanimous to tell the voters that Al Gore was not just a liberal, but a Soviet-style Marxist-Leninist. But as the desserts circulated, so too did a piece of comic relief — an anonymous leaflet explaining to voters that because of heavy voter registration, the rules had been changed: Republicans would vote on Tuesday, Democrats and independents on Wednesday.

I think of that dinner whenever I read about the widening scandal of the U.S. attorneys and the politicization of the Justice Department under Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Gonzo is probably the most endangered man since William Tell’s son Walter. The pattern behind the scandal, however, transcends Gonzales’ fate or that of his underlings.

At least part of the U.S. attorneys plot seems to derive from the “election fraud” hoax that Republicans are trying to perpetrate in order to gain control of the country’s voter lists. So nailing this inept crew of thugs won’t be good enough. We need laws protecting the right to vote from the kind of phony, partisan prosecutors that Gonzales, Rove and Co. were trying to put in place, and from the punitive, restrictive voter-ID laws that are a prominent part of the far-right political agenda.

Republicans do cherish their little practical jokes — the leaflets in African-American neighborhoods warning that voters must pay outstanding traffic tickets before voting; the calls in Virginia in 2006 from the mythical “Virginia Election Commission” warning voters they would be arrested if they showed up at the polls. The best way to steal an election is the old-fashioned way: control who shows up. It’s widely known that Republicans do better when the turnout is lighter, whiter, older and richer; minorities, young people and the poor are easy game for hoaxes and intimidation.

Mr. Epps does not even seem to realize that he is telling us in so many words that he is an enthusiastic partisan of the claim to power of a coalition in which people so gosh-darned stupid that they can be made to believe absolutely anything, and people actively fearful of arrest, are essential components.

Voting returns from urban areas characteristically featuring democrat percentages resembling the margins achieved by dictators in the mock elections conducted in one-party states would tend to suggest that democrats don’t really have any such problem. But, personally, I am quite prepared to argue that anyone successful at persuading the cluelessly stupid and the inveterately criminal elements of society to stay out of politics was doing the Lord’s work.

Leftists, like Professor Epps, have long since abandoned any pretence of desiring a democratic process consisting of a rational debate based on Constitutional principles. For them, democracy simply consists of getting together a large enough mob to overwhelm any opposition so it can get down to work looting the means and property of others.

There is no issue about the quality of judgement or the purity of motive of the democrat voter. Stupid is fine, and selfish and greedy is even better. From the viewpoint of the left, Society is just a collection of warring factions, all fighting for the largest possible share of the spoils. The left doesn’t care if its constituents are dishonest or dumb, it just wants them numerous, loud, and aggressive.

David Broder, in today’s Washington Post, claims the left has a mandate for defeat, surrender, and withdrawal.

The gap between public opinion and Washington reality has rarely been wider than on the issue of the Iraq war. A clear national mandate is being blocked — for now — by constraints that make sense only in the short-term calculus of politics in this capital city.

The public verdict on the war is plain. Large majorities have come to believe that it was a mistake to go in, and equally large majorities want to begin the process of getting out. That is what the polls say; it is what the mail to Capitol Hill says; and it is what voters signaled when they put the Democrats back into control of Congress in November. …

The question that naturally arises is why the strongly expressed judgment of the people — responding to news of increasing American casualties in a seemingly intractable sectarian conflict — cannot be translated into action in Washington. …

One way or another, public opinion ultimately will be heeded on the war in Iraq. It is hard to imagine the Republicans going into the presidential election of 2008 with 150,000 American troops still taking heavy casualties in Iraq.

It’s true that the democrats won control of Congress last November, but many other issues and factors besides the war, and a number of Republican scandals, undoubtedly also played a role in that election’s results. The democrats gained a very narrow Congressional majority, and can hardly be described as possessing a mandate to do anything other than avoid taking bribes and molesting pages.

Which mandate alone should represent a more than adequate challenge, requiring all the moral resolve and political will the democrat party can possibly muster, if not more.

One hears the claim a lot these days that public opinion thinks this, and public opinion demands that, as if opinion polls conducted by news organizations represented some sort of meaningful, objective, binding, and official process. This sort of claim represents the grossest sort of attempt by journalists to usurp political authority.

The poll Mr. Broder cites in his own editorial was conducted by two notoriously biased news organizations, the Washington Post and ABC News. And its results are based on the responses of a mere 1082 adults, including an intentional “oversample of African-Americans.”

Opinion polls of 1000 or so of the people willing to talk to pollsters on the phone prove basically nothing. Opinion polls are typically artfully crafted. The questions they contain steer answers in the direction their creators desire.

That WaPo/ABC poll, which Broder cited, asked:

Do you think (the United States should keep its military forces in Iraq until civil order is restored there, even if that means continued U.S. military casualties); OR, do you think (the United States should withdraw its military forces from Iraq in order to avoid further U.S. military casualties, even if that means civil order is not restored there)?

But if I asked instead:

Do you think (the United States should abandon the civilian population of Iraq to Islamic Fundamentalism and sectarian violence, if that means destroying our future credibility in the eyes of both our friends and our adversaries abroad): OR, do you think (the United States should keep its word and implant stable and democratic government in Iraq, even at the cost of US military casualties)?

the poll results would be quite different.

Mr. Broder’s polls never can produce anything resembling a mandate. They only represent propaganda, typically created by dishonest and dishonorable advocates.

The only opinion polls which count occur officially and in November. The last election was inconclusive, as are the war’s current results.

Members of the left and its allies in the punditocracy looking for a mandate for surrender, withdrawal, and defeat need to look for it in the results of the 2008 election, and stop claiming that they already possess it.

Of course, you don’t have to travel all the way to Kurdistan to find superstitious savages, you just need to locate a few democrats.

Rasmussen Reports:

Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know, and 26% are not sure.

I read this kind of paranoid lunacy on my class list from time to time. “Republicans wanted a war, so the Military-Industrial Complex would get rich, and to benefit the oil companies.” I’ve frequently suggested that if my classmates really believe this stuff, they should go out and buy stock in the relevant companies, and become fabulously wealthy.

Take Halliburton. Dick Cheney is obviously looking out for them (any leftist believes). Why, in November of 1997 (during Clinton’s presidency) Halliburton’s stock was at $31.62, and after 7 years of Dick Cheney conspiring for their benefit, in yesterday’s trading session that same Halliburton stock closed at $32.28.

AP:

President Bush vetoed legislation to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq Tuesday night in a historic showdown with Congress …

Bush signed the veto with a pen given to him by Robert Derga, the father of Marine Corps Reserve Cpl. Dustin Derga, who was killed in Iraq on May 8, 2005. The elder Derga spoke with Bush two weeks ago at a meeting the president had with military families at the White House.

Derga asked Bush to promise to use the pen in his veto. On Tuesday, Derga contacted the White House to remind Bush to use the pen, and so he did. The 24-year-old Dustin Derga served with Lima Company, 3rd Battalion 25th Marines from Columbus, Ohio. The five-year Marine reservist and fire team leader was killed by an armor-piercing round in Anbar Province.

Hat tip to Jules Crittenden.

Terrye reflects on the liberals’ commitment to bringing about American defeat.

There is a commercial I have seen in which some old baby boomer sitting in a fancy office says he is going to use some service {I forget what it is} so that he can stick it to the man. His young assistant says But sir, you are the man. To which the old boy responds, Maybe.

I think liberals have found themselves in a world in which they are the man. They are the people running the World Bank with all of its phenomenal corruption. They are the people responsible for the United Nations with its corruption and incompetence on display every day. They are the people who railed against the likes of Saddam Hussein for years, only to rail against the United States even more. The truth is if they have to choose between the leader of the free world, the President of the United States and some tin pot dictator with a swiss bank account…they are more than likely to choose the dictator.

For years, they played the rebellious teenager speaking truth to power and now they find they are the power. And guess what? They are no better than the other guy. That is what is eating at them. They know they can’t reason with the Iranians or the Syrians or people like Hugo Chavez or that nutcase in North Korea. They have shown time and again that all they can do is declare defeat and demand reform. They are good at the defeat part, after all it is some other poor bastard who is sitting out on that limb they are sawing off, but the reform part…not so good. They will spend a lot more time complaining about Wolfowitz than they will the 800 billion lost to corruption at the World Bank. After all, if they go after the Mugabes of the world they will lose the support of those dictators. Better to let them line their pockets and pretend not to notice the kickbacks. Just blame the poverty on capitalism and free trade and ignore the obvious thievery.

They will not demand anyone go to jail over the Food for Oil scandal even though it made a mockery of the United Nations, an institution they show reverence for. No, they will go suck up to Assad and pretend he did not kill the political opposition in Lebanon. They will turn their back on democracy in Iraq. They will whine about the Patriot Act, but they will demand we talk to the Mad Mullahs who are proud of the fact that they publicly execute women of ill repute. They will worry over global warming and the supposed end of the world, but they will not deal with the threats that face us in the here and now. They don’t know how.

The Democrats woke up in the world of the 21st century and discovered they are the man. And all they know how to do is bitch. And while bitching might be fun, it doesn’t fix a damn thing.

Mark Levin argues.

Harry Reid… by word and action is actively undermining our fighting men and women in Iraq. His legislative efforts to starve our armed forces in the middle of a war are as contemptible as anything I’ve witnessed in my 25 years in Washington. And yesterday he made a statement that was so disgraceful and brazen that it could have been uttered by Tokyo Rose during World War II or Jane Fonda during the Vietnam War. The difference, of course, is that Reid is the highest ranking Democrat in the United States Senate.

For those who are so pre-occupied with Gonzales that they may not have heard it, this is what Reid said yesterday: “I believe … that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week.”

So, Reid announces to our brave volunteers that their country is sending them to a lost war. And he announces to our enemy that victory is within their reach — just keep up the killing a little longer. During my radio show last night, I received a call from a Gold Star father. He was outraged by Reid’s comment. He has called before and has become a good friend. But I’ve never heard him as angry and frustrated as he was last night.

Rather than join the chorus demanding Gonzales’s resignation, let me be the first to demand Reid’s resignation. And let’s see how many pundits, conservative and otherwise, will join me.

He’s dead right.

Hat tip to Seneca the Younger.