I guess they see what we saw:

“President Carter came to the region thinking he could achieve something. Unfortunately president Carter left without anything concrete,” he told a conference in the Spanish capital.

“The only thing he achieved was permission on the part of Khaled Meshaal of Hamas to deliver a letter from a detained Israeli soldier to his family. Nothing else,” he said.

“Hamas offered nothing to president Carter. They reiterated the same positions. There was no change on the part of Hamas,” Malki added.

Carter’s meetings with top Hamas leader Meshaal and his deputy in Syria angered Israel and the United States, which consider the movement a terror group despite its victory in 2006 elections.

He was unable to secure a ceasefire or a prisoner exchange for an Israeli soldier seized by Gaza militants in 2006, but on Monday Carter said Hamas told him it would recognise Israel’s right to exist such a deal was approved by a Palestinian vote.

This is the conflict Senator. We are at war with radical Islamic forces. Your party has proven itself to be rooting for defeat. There will be no next conflict if we walk away from this!

Some highlights of the monstrous radical ISLAMIC THREATS around the world in January 2008. That is just one month!

List of Thwarted Terror Attacks Since Sept. 11

The following is a list of known terror plots thwarted by the U.S. government since Sept. 11, 2001.

• December 2001, Richard Reid: British citizen attempted to ignite shoe bomb on flight from Paris to Miami.

• May 2002, Jose Padilla: American citizen accused of seeking “dirty bomb,” convicted of conspiracy.

• September 2002, Lackawanna Six: American citizens of Yemeni origin convicted of supporting Al Qaeda. Five of six were from Lackawanna, N.Y.

• May 2003, Iyman Faris: American citizen charged with trying to topple the Brooklyn Bridge.

Michael Rubin has a very informative compilation

Read Robert’s post to update yourself on what this idiot is talking about:

“I hope we don’t hear any glorification of what happened in Basra,” said Pelosi, referring to a recent military offensive against Shiite militants in the city led by the Iraqi government and supported by U.S. forces.

Although powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr agreed to a ceasefire after six days of fighting, Pelosi wondered why the U.S. was caught off guard by the offensive and questioned how the ceasefire was achieved, saying the terms were “probably dictated from Iran.”

“We have to know the real ground truths of what is happening there, not put a shine on events because of a resolution that looks less violent when in fact it has been dictated by al-Sadr, who can grant or withhold that call for violence,” Pelosi said.

Don’t Worry. Wait, Worry!

The director of national intelligence is backing away from his agency’s assessment late last year that Iran had halted its nuclear program, saying he wishes he had written the unclassified version of the document in a different manner.
At a hearing yesterday of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the intelligence director, Michael McConnell, said, “If I had ’til now to think about it, I probably would change a few things.” He later added, “I would change the way we describe the Iranian nuclear program. I would have included that there are the component parts, that the portion of it, maybe the least significant, had halted.” . . .

Yesterday, Mr. McConnell struck a different tone. “Declared uranium enrichment efforts, which will enable the production of fissile material, continue. This is the most difficult challenge in nuclear production. Iran’s efforts to perfect ballistic missiles that can reach North Africa and Europe also continue.”

President Bush is expected to travel to Israel, the West Bank, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt from January 8-16, 2008. Prior to Air Force One leaving the tarmac on this journey, American al Qaeda member Adam Yahiye Gadahn renounced his U.S. citizenship, destroyed his passport and cited President Bush’s trip to the Middle East, Iranian boats threatened three U.S. Naval ships in the Strait of Hormuz, and two rockets fired from Lebanon struck northern Israel overnight. Jihadi Badr Brigades are thought to be the culprits for the attacks. On a positive note, U.S. and Iraqi forces launched, Phantom Phoenix, a major operation covering the entire country to strike against al- Qaida in Iraq and other extremists, in an effort to build on a recent overall reduction of violence and push militants from their strongholds.

bbbbbbut, that can’t be:

Iraqi oil production is above the levels seen before the US-led invasion of the country in 2003, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). — The IEA said Iraqi crude production is now running at 2.3 million barrels per day, compared with 1.9 million barrels at the start of this year.

H/T to Memeorandum for the link

Hot Air:

It’d be nice to pretend this is a hedge against Iran’s oil weapon in the event of escalation, but let’s be honest: Given the size and strength of Iranian proxies in Iraq, those pipelines won’t last five minutes if Iran gives the word. In the short-term, though, it’s another hopeful sign for Bush to tout in the war-funding battle. Exit question: Do we trust the White House to be smart enough to mention this unprompted or are blogs going to have to nudge Dizzy Dana along?

Let’s see if MoveOn really does own the Democrats

Based on the links found at Memeorandum to this NYT’s article, this is the story of the moment. The New York Times looks to be inputing their own hopes into the article and trying to get a dif in at The POTUS. According to the Times, Iran ended the program in 2003.

After reading the article and reading the declassified NIE report, I don’t see where one could come away feeling good about our intelligence gathering abilities. I also don’t see how a newspaper can claim the the program ended:

Here is how Salon chose to preface this article: Sidney Blumenthal is joining the Hillary Clinton campaign as a senior advisor, and this is his last column for Salon. Take the time to read it, but I want to key in on the first three paragraphs:

Under crisis conditions of an extraordinary magnitude political leadership of the highest level will be required in the next presidency. The damage is broad, deep and spreading, apparent not only in international disorder and violence, the unprecedented decline of U.S. prestige, and the flouting of our security and economic interests but also in the hollowing out of the federal government’s departments and agencies, and their growing incapacity to fulfill their functions, from FEMA to the Department of Justice.

Joe Lieberman spoke on “the politics of national security,” and the newspapers ignored him. Bill Kristol has posted the speech and it is a good read.(h/t to memeorandum) Here is just a bit:

Between 2002 and 2006, there was a battle within the Democratic Party. . . . We could rightly criticize the Bush administration when it failed to live up to its own rhetoric, or when it bungled the execution of its policies. But I felt that we should not minimize the seriousness of the threat from Islamist extremism, or the fundamental rightness of the muscular, internationalist, and morally self-confident response that President Bush had chosen in response to it.

But that was not the choice most Democrats made. . . . Since retaking Congress in November 2006, the top foreign policy priority of the Democratic Party has not been to expand the size of our military for the war on terror or to strengthen our democracy promotion efforts in the Middle East or to prevail in Afghanistan. It has been to pull our troops out of Iraq, to abandon the democratically elected government there, and to hand a defeat to President Bush.

Continue reading

More reaction at memeorandum

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How else do you explain it?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) derided the war funding bill as an example of “misplaced priorities,” pointing to Bush’s veto of a five-year, $35 billion expansion of a children’s health program. “For the cost of less than 40 days in Iraq, we could provide health-care coverage to 10 million children for an entire year,” she said.
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) echoed that line of attack on Bush. “He repeatedly says no to health care, no to law enforcement, no to homeland security, no to stronger infrastructure,” Reid said at a news conference. “But he says yes to this intractable civil war in Iraq, which is being paid for by borrowed money.”

White House spokesman Tony Fratto rejected the comparison with the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, saying Bush wants only to make sure it focuses on poorer children and the vetoed bill would have covered families with too much income. “The president has said that the policy is wrong,” Fratto said. “He didn’t say that it’s too expensive.”

H/T to Allahpundit for this link to Tony Blair’s speech, that he gave in New York City, last night:

Islamist extremism is similar to “rising fascism in the 1920s and 1930s”, Tony Blair said last night in his first major speech since leaving office…
He told the audience, which included New York governor Eliot Spitzer and mayor Michael Bloomberg, that Iran was the biggest exporter of the ideology, and that the Islamic republic was prepared to “back and finance terror” to support it…
“Analogies with the past are never properly accurate, and analogies especially with the rising fascism can be easily misleading but, in pure chronology, I sometimes wonder if we’re not in the 1920s or 1930s again…
He added: “There is a tendency even now, even in some of our own circles, to believe that they are as they are because we have provoked them and if we left them alone they would leave us alone.
“I fear this is mistaken. They have no intention of leaving us alone. “They have made their choice and leave us with only one to make - to be forced into retreat or to exhibit even greater determination and belief in standing up for our values than they do in standing up for their’s.”

Another win for Bush, and based on the reaction from the left, it is a powerful victory! Memeorandum is chocked full of the left’s reaction.

Senate Democrats and Republicans reached agreement with the Bush administration yesterday on the terms of new legislation to control the federal government’s domestic surveillance program, which includes a highly controversial grant of legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have assisted the program, according to congressional sources.

Disclosure of the deal followed a decision by House Democratic leaders to pull a competing version of the measure from the floor because they lacked the votes to prevail over Republican opponents and GOP parliamentary maneuvers.

The collapse marked the first time since Democrats took control of the chamber that a major bill was withdrawn from consideration before a scheduled vote. It was a victory for President Bush, whose aides lobbied heavily against the Democrats’ bill, and an embarrassment for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who had pushed for the measure’s passage.

UPDATED: Democrats split on genocide resolution — Democrats are split on the value of bringing a controversial Armenian genocide resolution to a floor vote. — Five House Democrats plan to hold a news conference Wednesday to urge their leadership not to bring the resolution to the floor, although the measure passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week with strong Democratic support.

Reps. Alcee Hastings of Florida, John Murtha of Pennsylvania, Robert Wexler of Florida and Steve Cohen and John Tanner, both of Tennessee, will participate in the news conference. They plan to urge House leadership to “reconsider its decision” to bring the Armenian genocide resolution to the floor.

The non-binding resolution would require the president to call the killing of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians between the years 1915 and 1923 “genocide.”

Russian leader Vladimir Putin met his Iranian counterpart Tuesday and implicitly warned the U.S. not to use a former Soviet republic to stage an attack on Iran. He also said nations shouldn’t pursue oil pipeline projects in the area if they weren’t backed by regional powers.

Better Numbers, Violence in Iraq drops dramatically, and MORE GOOD NEWS… Casualties Continue to Drop in Iraq!

NEWS COVERAGE and debate about Iraq during the past couple of weeks have centered on the alleged abuses of private security firms like Blackwater USA. Getting such firms into a legal regime is vital, as we’ve said. But meanwhile, some seemingly important facts about the main subject of discussion last month — whether there has been a decrease in violence in Iraq — have gotten relatively little attention. A congressional study and several news stories in September questioned reports by the U.S. military that casualties were down. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), challenging the testimony of Gen. David H. Petraeus, asserted that “civilian deaths have risen” during this year’s surge of American forces.
A month later, there isn’t much room for such debate, at least about the latest figures. In September, Iraqi civilian deaths were down 52 percent from August and 77 percent from September 2006, according to the Web site icasualties.org. The Iraqi Health Ministry and the Associated Press reported similar results. U.S. soldiers killed in action numbered 43 — down 43 percent from August and 64 percent from May, which had the highest monthly figure so far this year. The American combat death total was the lowest since July 2006 and was one of the five lowest monthly counts since the insurgency in Iraq took off in April 2004. …