LibAnon

If you have a liberal friend, send them here to get on the right track. Or they can go straight to the source...

THE 13 PRESCRIPTIVE PRINCIPLES ("STEPS")OF LIBERALS ANONYMOUS

1. WE admit we are not powerless over liberalism, but nevertheless, that we have allowed it to make a mockery of our cities, our schools, our universities, our borders, our foreign policy, and our daily lives.

2. WE have finally, belatedly, and bearing well-deserved shame, come to understand and know that a Power incalculably greater than ourselves can restore us to spiritual and moral sanity.

3. WE made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as He is rather than as we would have Him be for our convenience and self-esteem.

4. WE made a searching and (hopefully) fearless spiritual, moral, cultural, fiscal, and political inventory of our liberal, progressive, and/or socialist, opinions, views, selves and associations.

5. WE admitted to ourselves, to another as-yet-unrepentant liberal, our parents, a pollster, and a voting booth the exact nature of our previous wrongs, as well as the lack of either factual bases or reality to have supported much less committed them.

6. WE are entirely ready to have all these defects of character removed. Permanently.

7. WE humbly pray for the removal of our shortcomings and "good intentions" before they result in America's burial somewhere along the road to either a world-rendering nuclear "oops" or perdition.

8. WE made a list of all persons we had harmed with our kooky opinions, views, and acts by looking up everyone we ever knew in the telephone books for every city in which we ever resided and became willing to make amends to them all. Somehow.

9. WE made political and societal amends to Conservatives whenever and wherever possible, except when to do so would cause injury to anyone other than ourselves.

10. WE continued to take personal inventory of our liberal tendencies and when they are exposed promptly admit it, and symbolize that admission by making a generous contribution to the G.O.P. or a Conservative political action committee.

11. WE sought through hard work and dedication to improve our conscious contact with Conservative principles as reflected in Biblical teaching and Western Civilization, and prayed for the strength and ability to constructively carry them out.

12. Having experienced a political awakening of conscience, reality, and responsibility for this and future generations as the result of these Steps, WE evangelize the Conservative message to Liberals, progressives, academicians, and anti-American activists of every stripe wherever we can find them, and practice these principles in all our affairs.

13. Having experienced all of the above, WE vote only for true Conservative Republicans in every election, and plaster our automobiles with the biggest support stickers we can get as a visible outward sign of our inward moral regeneration.

NYT Spitting?

C.I.R. Press Editorial

WASHINGTON, D.C. – We have all heard the stories, some out there may have seen it, others taken part. As brave men returned from war in Vietnam they were shouted down as baby killers, even spat upon. Of course I am sure, now Senator, Kerry’s words of wisdom to congress did not help correct faulty viewpoints of soldiers as monsters. And like above you had the “peace protestors” taunting young men serving their country, because soldiers are just mindless killing machines they deserve no respect. Right?

Well it has been said that the pen is mightier than the sword. If that is the case the New York Times is doing nothing less to the military today than those who in Vietnam just thought of the military as killers.

Smear Campaign
Oliver North

Waukesha, WI – Here in "Cheesehead" country, where Green Bay Packer fans go to Lambeau field with snow shovels, military recruiting has never been much of a problem – until now. "These are outdoors, patriotic people," a military recruiter told me as I prepared to speak at a Boy Scout function here. "Young people up here are tough. They hunt, they ice-fish, they go to football games in an open stadium in the middle of a blizzard. This used to be a great place to be a recruiter – but not any more," he continued.

"What’s happened," I asked this two-tour veteran of the Global War on Terror.

His reply was blunt – and an indictment of the so-called mainstream media: "The press is killing us. We have parents and high school guidance counselors telling our best prospective recruits that they have too much potential to waste it in the military. Last year we had to debunk myths about how the war in Iraq was being lost. Now when we go to talk to parents they ask us about stories they have heard about suicides, drugs – and now murders. There is no 'good news.' It's very discouraging."
Remember those words: "very discouraging."

The "murders" my recruiter referred to are those "documented" by The New York Times in a front page story entitled "Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles." The "Deadly Echoes" piece appeared concurrently with the hunt for a male Marine suspected of killing a fellow female Marine in North Carolina – a story that has been repeated almost hourly on the cable news channels.

The authors of the NYT piece claim that they found 121 cases where veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing, or were charged with one, after their return from war. What this amounts to says the Times, is "a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak."

…

From October through December last year there were a series print and broadcast "investigative reports" about high rates of suicide, desertion, drug abuse and divorce among members of our military. A 17 November 2007 Associated Press headline blared: "Soldiers strained by six years at war are deserting their posts at the highest rate since 1980."
In fact, the drug abuse and suicide rates for military personnel are considerably lower than that for the same age group in the U.S. population and the divorce rate in the military remains slightly lower than in the overall population. The desertion rate for the Marines has actually declined since 9-11-01.

NYT New York Times anti-military smear

Charlie Wilson's War(?)

Whose War? Separating Fact from Fiction in 'Charlie Wilson's War'
By Paul Kengor

"Reagan specifically urged the supplying of U.S. shoulder-launched, heat-seeking missiles that can shoot down Soviet helicopter gunships."
-Martin Schram, Washington Post, January 10, 1980

Last evening I drove to a nearby theater to catch Charlie Wilson's War, starring Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. The hit movie, which is based on George Crile's book about how former Rep. Charlie Wilson (D-TX) helped fund the Afghanistan Mujahedin back in the 1980s, is written by Aaron Sorkin, of the television drama, "The West Wing," and directed by Mike Nichols.

I'm an historian, not a film critic. My objective here is to show where the movie is inaccurate -- at times, woefully so.

Simply put, the movie vastly exaggerates the influence of Charlie Wilson at the expense of individuals who were equally or even far more influential, and who somehow are not mentioned whatsoever -- a gross, intentional, and rather shameless oversight.

Here's the situation: The movie, and the book, is about a moderate-to-conservative Democratic Congressman, a profane, hard-drinking, womanizing, anti-communist politician who was indeed -- as the movie makes abundantly clear-- very important to providing a huge amount of covert financial and military support to the Mujahedin rebels who resisted the Soviet Union after the Red Army invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The USSR brutalized the nation and its innocent people. Charlie Wilson's goal was to give the Afghan "freedom fighters" the supplies they needed to defeat the Soviets.

While all of this is true, this is (at best) half the story -- maybe even a quarter of the story. It helps explain what happened in the Democrat-controlled Congress, where the likes of Charlie Wilson were a godsend to counter the San Francisco Democrats and Massachusetts liberals who would have let Central America become a Soviet-Cuban outpost.

But the rest of the story, which receives no mention, is that it was the Reagan administration, and specifically CIA director Bill Casey, National Security Adviser Bill Clark, Secretary of Defense Cap Weinberger, and Ronald Reagan himself -- plus numerous aides -- who were the driving force behind supplying the Mujahedin. This movie could have been made 10 years ago about Bill Casey, whose actions were even more dramatic than Charlie Wilson's -- albeit not as obscene -- or about Bill Clark.

It is an obvious reflection of the liberal biases of Aaron Sorkin and Mike Nichols -- and the CBS News / "60 Minutes"-affiliated staff-that Casey, incredibly and unforgivably, is not referenced even once. This is an outrage, and yet another stunning example of how liberals in Hollywood literally create their own fictional versions of history, totally airbrushing conservatives they never liked and forever refuse to credit even in the face of overwhelming evidence. The movie-makers don't seem to realize, nor care, that this undermines their overall work -- including the parts that have merit. Their lack of fairness works against them.

Ironically, conservatives have been fair in telling this story. For instance, in a book where I laid out the Reagan administration strategy of funding the Afghan rebels, I paused to shoehorn in a paragraph acknowledging the input of Charlie Wilson and his sidekick, Gust Avrakotos, who is portrayed colorfully in this movie by Philip Seymour Hoffman. My editor suggested that I remove the paragraph, but I argued that it was crucial -- even ethical -- to give credit where credit is due, even when editorially awkward.

This movie isn't nearly so fair-minded. In one maddening scene, Charlie Wilson asks Gust Avrakotos about America's strategy in Afghanistan. "Well, strictly speaking, we don't have one," says Avrakotos, "but me and three others are working on it." (Read the rest...)
USSR Charlie Wilson Afghanistan

CIR Radio Tonight 01/11/08

2100hrs Friday. Broadcasting from DC Area.

Catch Doug on Political Pistachio Radio first, Followed by Loki, then CIR RADIO.

CIR Radio Tonight 01/04/08

CIR Radio tonight at 2030hrs eastern time.

Forget Time!

Time Magazine can keep its affinity for the USSR... I found the real deal.

General Petraeus: man with a message of hope

The critics said it couldn't be done, but the vision and determination of General David Petraeus have brought greater security and cause for optimism to the people of Iraq. He is The Sunday Telegraph's Person of the Year

For a man whose critics say he is far too fond of the television cameras, General David Petraeus, commander of US forces in Iraq, has been rather out of the limelight this Christmas.

The sprightly, media-friendly 55-year-old is not perturbed, however, that his face is no longer number one item on the US networks. As he said last week, where Iraq is concerned, "No news is good news."

Today, we put him in the spotlight again by naming Gen Petraeus as The Sunday Telegraph's Person of the Year, a new annual accolade to recognise outstanding individual achievement.

He has been the man behind the US troop surge over the past 10 months, the last-ditch effort to end Iraq's
escalating civil war by putting an extra 28,000 American troops on the ground.

So far, it has achieved what many feared was impossible. Sectarian killings are down. Al-Qaeda is on the run. And
the two million Iraqis who fled the country are slowly returning. Progress in Iraq is relative - 538 civilians died last month. But compared with the 3,000 peak of December last year, it offers at least a glimmer of hope. (Continued...)

...

But the reason for picking Petraeus is simple. Iraq, whatever the current crises in Afghanistan and Pakistan, remains the West's biggest foreign policy challenge of this decade, and if he can halt its slide into all-out anarchy, Gen Petraeus may save more than Iraqi lives.

A failed Iraq would not just be a second Vietnam, nor would it just be America's problem.

It would be a symbolic victory for al-Qaeda, a safe haven for jihadists to plot future September 11s and July 7s,
and a battleground for a Shia-Sunni struggle that could draw in the entire Middle East. Our future peace and prosperity depend, in part, on fixing this mess. And, a year ago, few had much hope. (Continued...)

Iraq Petraeus surge

Happy New Year!

Well hope everyone has a great New Year! Mine has started pretty well by reading this report from CNN:

Fox, meanwhile, has invited five GOP candidates to a forum with Chris Wallace scheduled for its mobile studio in New Hampshire on Sunday. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee received invites, leaving Paul of Texas and Rep. Duncan Hunter of California on the sidelines.

In a nationwide poll conducted December 14-20 by The Associated Press and Yahoo, Thompson had the support of 11 percent of GOP voters and Paul was at 3 percent. Paul's support is at 6 percent in a
CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll conducted in early December.

About time some people started saying this is a primary, and Paul has almost NO support in the GOP. But who knows...this might be that .1% reason to go independent.


Also for those who actually slept last night you missed the "random out of freaking no-where" Happy New Years CIR Radio Show that rang in the New year with talk of some politics, UFOs, religion... all from 0330hrs-0630hrs eastern with the phone lines filled.