Mike's Noise

By not "taking sides", the press works to defeat us

One of the interesting aspects of this war that will be tackled by future historians is the way that the news media  reported events, specifically  which events they chose to report and which events they chose to minimize or ignore outright.

In my reading of US history, this is the first time in 60 years that US soldiers have gone to the battlefield with a clear understanding of what our enemy represents (though a less-clear picture of specifically who he is) and a clear understanding of the stakes of the war.  There is a better understanding of this war than of World War I, and certainly a far clearer understanding among average men than during the Civil War.

And yet, the media has deliberately chosen to severely limit good news about military victories, progress reports on the objectives that we continue to achieve, and profiles of individual soldiers who exhibit incredible selfless heroism.  And they have chosen to severely limit or completely embargo stories and photos of atrocities committed by terrorists and Ba'athist thugs against the civilians of Iraq. 

Instead they show the Abu Graib photos ad nauseum, interview wounded civilians, lament shattered mosques, and give front-page space to every bombing, shooting, or attack that takes the life of a US soldier.

The press is supposed to be skeptical, to ask tough questions and to cut through political spin.  But by all indications they have chosen to go an extra length and are now fully engaged in a propaganda war against the US military.  This would have been unthinkable during WWII, but it is modus operandi for the press now.

Perhaps one reason is the fact that during WWII, a good deal of reporters imbedded with the fighting units were themselves soldiers, specifically they were newspapermen who had been drafted and had completed basic training and full integration into the military.  They were not afraid to make heroes out of ordinary soldiers who did extraordinary things on the battlefield.

And they were shocked and horrified at the atrocities commited by Hitler against the civilian populations of the lands he conquered.  The military press had no trouble flooding newspapers, magzines, and newsreels with images of those who suffered and died in the Nazi concentration camps.  It was beyond question that they had a moral obligation to tell the American people just exactly how evil our enemy was, and that neutralizing the threat of the Nazis was worth the cost.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that the Viet Nam war produced no folk heroes from its soldiers, no Audie Murphy or Sargeant York.  It seems that modern wars do not produce those heroes because the press is loath to tell their stories.  Only on the blogosphere do you encounter tales like this:

I will end with a couple of stories of individual heroism that you may not have heard yet.  I was told about both of these incidents shortly after they occurred.  No doubt some of the facts will change slightly but I am confident that the meat is correct.

The first is a Marine from 3/5.  His name is Corporal Yeager (Chuck Yeager's grandson).  As the Marines cleared and apartment building, they got to the top floor and the point man kicked in the door.  As he did so, an enemy grenade and a burst of gunfire came out.  The explosion and enemy fire took off the point man's leg.  He was then immediately shot in the arm as he lay in the doorway.  Corporal Yeager tossed a grenade in the room and ran into the doorway and into the enemy fire in order to pull his buddy back to cover.  As he was dragging the wounded Marine to cover, his own grenade came back through the doorway.  Without pausing, he reached down and threw the grenade back through the door while he heaved his buddy to safety.  The grenade went off inside the room and Cpl Yeager threw another in.  He immediately entered the room following the second explosion.  He gunned down three enemy all within three feet of where he stood and then let fly a third grenade as he backed out of the room to complete the evacuation of the wounded Marine.  You have to understand that a grenade goes off within 5 seconds of having the pin pulled.  Marines usually let them "cook off" for a second or two before tossing them in.   Therefore, this entire episode took place in less than 30 seconds.

The second example comes from 3/1.  Cpl Mitchell is a squad leader. He was wounded as his squad was clearing a house when some enemy threw pineapple grenades down on top of them.  As he was getting triaged, the doctor told him that he had been shot through the arm.  Cpl Mitchell told the doctor that he had actually been shot "a couple of days ago" and had given himself self aide on the wound.  When the doctor got on him about not coming off the line, he firmly told the doctor that he was a squad leader and did not have time to get treated as his men were still fighting.  There are a number of Marines who have been wounded multiple times but refuse to leave their fellow Marines.

It is incredibly humbling to walk among such men.  They fought as hard as any Marines in history and deserve to be remembered as such. The enemy they fought burrowed into houses and fired through mouse holes cut in walls, lured them into houses rigged with explosives and detonated the houses on pursuing Marines, and actually hid behind surrender flags only to engage the Marines with small arms fire once they perceived that the Marines had let their guard down.  I know of several instances where near dead enemy rolled grenades out on Marines who were preparing to render them aid.  It was a fight to the finish in every sense and the Marines delivered. 

I have called the enemy cowards many times in the past because they have never really held their ground and fought but these guys in the city did.  We can call them many things but they were not cowards.   

It will be fascinating to see how historians 50 to 100 years from now explain this complete turnaround, this complete reluctance to praise and honor our troops, that is now so deeply entrenched in our mainstream press.

Don't get me wrong on this - if our soldiers commit misdeeds, then those soldiers should be disciplined for their wrongdoing.  US Soldiers have not been a perfect lot, and have committed wrongs during every war in which they have participated.  I am not denying that, and I am not suggesting that their misconduct should be white-washed.

I don't believe that anyone would complain about news coverage if it included a reasonable and balanced amount of news about our military successes and the evil committed by our enemies, along with the problems and unfortunate circustances that occur on the battlefield.  But I am dismayed at the fact that ONLY the wrong-doings or unfortunate deaths of US military personnel seem to justify front-page news coverage.  Even if a significant US military victory is given press coverage, it is usually weighed down with so many "but-if's" and unseemly details that it loses its positive impact. 

This can only be a propaganda victory for our enemies.

A letter from a Marine in Fallujah

An elloquent letter from a Marine in Fallujah that honestly describes what these brave men face each day while fighting the terrorists that have overtaken the city.  Courtesy of PowerLine Blog.

This is one story of many that people normally don't hear, and one that everyone does.

This is one most don't hear:

A young Marine and his cover man cautiously enter a room just recently filled with insurgents armed with Ak-47's and RPG's. There are three dead, another wailing in pain. The insurgent can be heard saying, "Mister, mister! Diktoor, diktoor(doctor)!" He is badly wounded, lying in a pool of his own blood. The Marine and his cover man slowly walk toward the injured man, scanning to make sure no enemies come from behind. In a split second, the pressure in the room greatly exceeds that of the outside, and the concussion seems to be felt before the blast is heard. Marines outside rush to the room, and look in horror as the dust gradually settles. The result is a room filled with the barely recognizable remains of the deceased, caused by an insurgent setting off several pounds of explosives.

The Marines' remains are gathered by teary eyed comrades, brothers in arms, and shipped home in a box. The families can only mourn over a casket and a picture of their loved one, a life cut short by someone who hid behind a white flag.

But no one hears these stories, except those who have lived to carry remains of a friend, and the families who loved the dead. No one hears this, so no one cares.

This is the story everyone hears:

A young Marine and his fire team cautiously enter a room just recently filled with insurgents armed with AK-47's and RPG's. There are three dead, another wailing in pain. The insugent can be heard saying, "Mister, mister! Diktoor, diktoor(doctor)!" He is badly wounded. Suddenly, he pulls from under his bloody clothes a grenade, without the pin. The explosion rocks the room, killing one Marine, wounding the others. The young Marine catches shrapnel in the face.

The next day, same Marine, same type of situation, a different story. The young Marine and his cover man enter a room with two wounded insurgents. One lies on the floor in puddle of blood, another against the wall. A reporter and his camera survey the wreckage inside, and in the background can be heard the voice of a Marine, "He's moving, he's moving!"

The pop of a rifle is heard, and the insurgent against the wall is now dead. Minutes, hours later, the scene is aired on national television, and the Marine is being held for commiting a war crime. Unlawful killing.

And now, another Marine has the possibility of being burned at the stake for protecting the life of his brethren. His family now wrings their hands in grief, tears streaming down their face. Brother, should I have been in your boots, i too would have done the same.

And The London Times reports on the horrors that the terrorists inflicted on the civilian population of this war-torn city:

As US and Iraqi troops mopped up the last vestiges of resistance in the city after a week of bombardment and fighting, residents who stayed on through last week's offensive were emerging and telling harrowing tales of the brutality they endured.

[A] poster in the ruins of the souk bears testament to the strict brand of Sunni Islam imposed by the council, fronted by hardline cleric Abdullah Junabi. The decree warns all women that they must cover up from head to toe outdoors, or face execution by the armed militants who controlled the streets.

Two female bodies found yesterday suggest such threats were far from idle. An Arab woman, in a violet nightdress, lay in a post-mortem embrace with a male corpse in the middle of the street. Both bodies had died from bullets to the head.

Just six metres away on the same street lay the decomposing corpse of a blonde-haired white woman, too disfigured for swift identification but presumed to be the body of one of the many foreign hostages kidnapped by the rebels.

Such is the fear that the heavily armed militants held over Fallujah that many of the residents who emerged from the ruins welcomed the US marines, despite the massive destruction their firepower had inflicted on their city.

A man in his sixties, half-naked and his underwear stained with blood from shrapnel wounds from a US munition, cursed the insurgents as he greeted the advancing marines on Saturday night.

"I wish the Americans had come here the very first day and not waited eight months," he said, trembling.

Another elderly man, who did not want his name used for fear the rebels would one day return and restore their draconian rule, said he was detained by the militants last Tuesday and held for four days before being freed. "It was horrible," he told an AFP reporter."We suffered from the bombings. Innocent people died or were wounded by the bombings.

"But we were happy you did what you did because Fallujah had been suffocated by the Mujahidin. Anyone considered suspicious would be slaughtered. We would see unknown corpses around the city all the time."

The same story of arbitrary executions was told by another resident, found by US troops cowering in his home with his brother and his family.

"They would wear black masks, carry rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikovs, and search streets and alleys," said Iyad Assam, 24. "I would hear stories, about how they executed five men one day and seven another for collaborating with the Americans. They made checkpoints on the roads. They put announcements on walls banning music and telling women to wear the veil from head to toe."

Will we see photos of this woman, kidnapped and murdered by these brutal thugs?  Or photos of the hundreds of civilians that they tortured and killed?  Will Amnesty International open an investigation into the treatment of civilians at the hands of the  Mujahidin, Michael Moore's infamous "Minute Men"?  How could anyone in their right mind refer to these murderous madmen as "freedom-fighters"? 

Sadly, too many around the world equate "freedom" with the defeat and humiliation of America.

UPDATE:  The Times is reporting that the mutilated body mentioned above is being DNA tested to confirm whether or not it is the body of murdered hostage Margaret Hasan.

Hasan was a British native and a converted Muslim, and was working in Iraq with an organization supplying food and medical aid to Iraqi civilians.  She had spent the better part of 30 years there.

It's hard to know why she was targeted for kidnapping and murder, but a good guess would be that as an educated Western woman and a leader, she was an insult and disgrace to those devout fundamentalist Muslim terrorists who so strongly believe in the subjugation and humiliation of women.

 

The Next Abu Graib?

Kevin Sites, a freelance journalist on assignment from NBC and embedded with the Marines in Fallujah, shot video of a Marine shooting a downed terrorist as his platoon was clearing the inside of a mosque this weekend.

You can view the raw footage here, courtesy of Retuers.

I've watched the film a number of times and each time I ask myself, "What's the big deal?"  These guys are clearing out a room, they find a terrorist pretending to be dead, and they take him out.  The Marines immediately spot the man playing possum and  yell out, "He's f**kin' fakin' he's dead!"  BLAMMO.  But not ten feet away is another wounded terrorist who is obviously alive and waving a bandaged hand.  The Marines plainly say "This one's still alive" and after they check him to ensure that his is unarmed, they walk away. 

One of the oldest battlefield tricks in the book is for wounded soldiers to attack advancing enemy troops as they pick their way through the battlefield, or as they attempt to clear the battlefield of dead or wounded men.  It is also common to use wounded soldiers to lure the enemy into an ambush.  Soliders learn in combat training that the only non-threatening enemy soldiers are those who have been disarmed and placed in guarded detention, or who have been killed.

During WW II with the Japanese, and particularly during the Viet Nam war, we dealt with enemies who routinely rigged the bodies of their dead with grenades or mines, or who gave grenades to their dying wounded in the hopes of killing Americans who came in to clear the battlefield.

If a wounded soldier is surrendering, he is required to remain in his uniform, show his weapon, and raise his hands to the enemy as a sign that he is not carrying concealed weapons. 

In Iraq, that scenario presents a few problems.  We are fighting non-uniformed terrorists, not soldiers.  They routinely break the rules of warfare, using hospitals and mosques as ammo dumps and fortresses, and kidnapping civilians to use as human shields.  They are ruthless and cold-blooded.  And they need to be treated as such.

I think that this case will be dismissed pretty quickly, specifically because our troops did not fire on the wounded terrorist who openly surrendered to them.

Of course, this incident will live forever in Moonbat Land as yet another reason that our troops = The Gestapo and that President Bush should be tried for war crimes.

And I'm sure that the "independent journalist", Kevin Sites, is proud that he may go down in history as the man brave enough to bring the world evidence of the next Abu Graib scandal.  Not too surprisingly, Sites' own writing falls, shall we say, a little to the left:

I am here to ask the hard questions of the people who make the hardest decisions; ones that result in people dying or people being killed. I must remember as one journalist advised, “write in your notepad every day ‘I am not one of them.’"

Ahhh, our wonderfully objective and dry-eyed press corps.

It still makes me shake my head when I think about the fact that 60 years ago, reporters actually understood the demarcation of sides during warfare, and stayed clear of actions that could benefit the enemy.  We didn't send reporters over to Tokyo, and Hitler didn't have a press room in London.  Back in those days, that kind of activity was known as spying, and it usually landed you in front of a firing squad.  But now, anti-American terrorists delight at the presence of Western media.  What changed?

It's probably time to remind everyone about the true ethical code of our modern media with regard to warfare:

Mike "The Chicken S**t Wallace"

To very briefly summarize the link above, a group of reporters, politicos, and militiary personnel were involved in a round-table discussion of how the press should cover warfare.

When given a hypothetical situation that involved an American reporter accidentally discovering plans for an enemy attack, Mike Wallace steadfastly asserted that the reporter should keep the information to himself and not compromise his position behind enemy lines. He severely castigated Peter Jennings for not agreeing with him.

And then this excerpt:

Two days after this hypothetical episode, [Marine Colonel George] Connell said, Jennings or Wallace might be back with the American forces - and could be wounded by stray fire, as combat journalists often had been before. The instant that happened, he said, they wouldn't be "just journalists" any more. Then they would expect American soldiers to run out under enemy fire and drag them back, rather than leaving them to bleed to death on the battlefield.

"We'll do it!", Connell said. "And that is what makes me so contemptuous of them. Marines will die going to get ... a couple of journalists." The last few words dripped with disgust.

Not even Ogletree knew what to say. There was dead silence for several seconds. Then a square-jawed man with neat gray hair and aviator glasses spoke up. It was Newt Gingrich, looking a generation younger and trimmer than when he became Speaker of the House in I995. One thing was clear from this exercise, he said: "The military has done a vastly better job of systematically thinking through the ethics of behavior in a violent environment than the journalists have."

Ouch.

He's really most sincerely dead

Yasser Arafat ("General" Arafat in his own deranged mind), the mastermind behind modern terrorism, the inventor of airline hijackings, a man who devoted his life to murdering Jews and destroying the nation of Israel, a man who managed to loot a billion-dollar fortune from "his" people while they continued to live in poverty, and the only terrorist ever to win the hearts of European intellectuals and coax a Nobel Peace Prize from their stingy fingers, is finally officially dead.

Even though he claimed that the establishment of a Palestinian homeland was his cause and the Palestinians were his people, he was actually born in Cairo and was from a wealthy Egyptian family.  I have long suspected that he cared more about killing Jews than he ever did about helping the Palestinians.  Since returning from exile in 1994, his "government" has amounted to nothing more than groups of thugs with AK-47's riding around in the backs of pickup trucks and shooting anyone suspected of sympathizing with Israel.  No constitutuion, no judicial system, no economy.  Nothing. 

He showed his true stripes in 2000 by rejecting probably the most insanely gracious offer that Israel would ever make to him.  Instead of making plans to begin self-government in sections of the West Bank, Arafat renewed terrorist attacks and began the bloodiest reign of terror against Israel in recent memory.  Only Israel's determination to build a security fence, and their relentless hunting and killing of terrorist leaders, has spared them excessive casualties in the last two years.

How ironic that a man who so eagerly sent hundreds of other young men and women to kill themselves in suicide bombings dies himself in a luxury hospital bed in Paris of a still-unknown illness.  According to many rumors and reports leaking out of Paris and the West Bank, the man who so often praised "martyrdom" and who became an icon of radical Muslim extremists quite possibly died from advanced AIDS, contracted from his many years of homosexual affairs.

It's not often that I wish someone a nasty death, but Arafat certainly deserves to die in shame and suffering.  It's also nice to know that by dying as a sick old man, he'll never get to see those 72 virgins.

(100th post!) - A Leftie comes to grip with ignorance ...

... unfortunately, it's not her own.

Slate Magazine ran a series of essays by Democrats on why their party lost again.

The response was predictable - "the Amercian people are just to stooopid to realize how much smarter we are and how much better off they would be if they let us run their lives, and maybe even eliminate these silly elections alltogether."

But this essay by author Jane Smiley just really takes the cake.  (Thanks to Drudge for linking it on his home page.)

In attempting to paint non-Leftists as unteachable, ignorant white trash, she reveals (quite possibly by accident) that she is the epitome of ignorance itself.

Feel your jaw hit the floor as you browse her fevered rantings and wade hip-deep through possibly every vile stereotype known to man; well, everything except stereotypes of ethnic and religious minorities, the final sacred cows of the Left.

Maybe she should have just pulled out all the stops and thrown in a few lines about Muslims fucking goats and camels, and negroes being the descendants of monkeys and apes.

Or maybe these self-righteous educated idiots (who like to pat themselves on the back with clique-nicknames like "The Brights") are just too blind to realize that they are a distinct minority in this country. 

Maybe they just don't get the fact that most people who make money are not wild-eyed James Bond villians who live in hollowed-out volcanoes or menacing underwater cities and want to see the earth burnt to a crisp so that they can repopulate it with genetically-engineered copies of Donald Trump and Elle MacPherson.  Most of them do it so they can use their fortunes for a greater good, and put money in the pockets of the workers and investors whose shared sacrifice leads to their success.

Maybe they just don't get the fact that most Americans are willing to have disagreements with their neighbors, but still be friends and co-exist together as long as each stays out of the other's way.  Maybe they don't understand that most people don't have an all-engulfing hatred for those with idological differences, and that most people don't engage in intellectual masturbation by comparing everyone they dislike to Adolf Hitler.

And in what must be the saddest display of ignorance witnessed herewith, these big thinkers, these open-minded, compassionate, sensitive, morally superior nit-wits have absolutely no freaking clue about religious faith.  Period.

I probably should expand the whole religion thing into a unique essay, but for now here's a clue:  religious faith has nothing to do with wearing your hair in a bun, shooting doctors outside abortion clinics, incarcerating "heathens" in concentration camps, or brainwashing your children to be little clones of John Ashcroft or Anita Bryant.

I suppose the bottom line is this - if these people can't see just how bigoted, hate-filled, and petty they really are, then it will be a long time before they respond to the Right with reasoned arguments and a proactive legislative agenda that includes something else other than socialism.  And it will be a long time before they earn back the trust and respect of the American people.

Good News

Today's MSN.com news headlines read:

Bush wins as Kerry concedes

Arafat worsens, in intensive care

US bombs targets in Fallujah

Now that's what I call good news.

It's all over but the shouting -uh- lawsuits -uh- whatever

This morning, Drudge has Bush leading in the popular vote by 3,518,453, with a total of 58,301,150 votes, a clear majority and a new all-time popular vote total, surpassing Reagan's massive victory in 1984.

But there is still Ohio ...

As of this writing, Bush is up by 136, 221 statewide. Now it's up to the Dems to decide if they are going to open Pandora's Box and file lawsuits to persuade the courts to order the counting of provisional ballots, which are assumed to lean heavily in Kerry's favor. There are over 200,000 of these ballots. The names, addresses, and voter registration status of the ballot voters must be individually verified before the ballots can be counted, which could take weeks.

Is it worth doing this with a clear 3.5 million popular vote margin for Bush? We'll have to wait and see.

Tom Daschle, the prune-faced, obstructionist Democrat most likely responsible for the bad taste that the party leaves in the majority of American mouths, lost his senate race. In the immortal words of Nelson Muntz: "HA! HA!"

Overall, the Pubbies picked up additional Senate seats and additional House seats and now have a clear majority in both Congressional delegations. That's a 10-year winning streak. Again, not good for the Dems.

Ballot measures to ban gay marriage carried by decisive margins in all 11 states that had them, even liberal Oregon. Here in Oklahoma, it wasn't even close, a 3:1 margin. That should crimp the gay marriage issue for a little while. Of course, if you can't win, you can still sue.

Several of the gay marriage ballot initiatives also carried language banning civil unions for gays. Ours did. I'm a little out-of-synch with most Christians because I do not oppose state-granted, secular civil unions for gays. Unfortunately, the marriage and civil union options were tied together on our ballot. And keeping marriage intact is too important for me to have voted "no" as a protest to the civil union language.

And in other news here at home, we now have a lottery. And a 4 cent/stick cigarette sales tax. And new state-controls on Indian casino gaming. Whoopee. (Not)

I have always been an ardent foe of lotteries. I think that they are a deceptive way to raise tax revenue. In fact, they are an outright tax on the poor. More lottery tickets are sold in poor neighborhoods to low income people hoping to "strike it rich" than in neighborhoods of middle class and wealthy citizens. We could raise the same amount of money off the backs of the same people if we added an income tax to state welfare benefits and increased the state income tax rate on families that make less than $40,000 per year. Of course, nobody would vote for that. But enough ranting. The deed is done.

Hopefully later today the Democrats won't be total asshats and will make the right decision, which is to concede defeat to Bush and get on with their pity party.

And for all the lefties who again made their pitiful threats to leave the country if Bush is re-elected - don't let the door hit you on your way out. Asshats.

UPDATE: 10:35 AM - Fox News is reported that John F. Kerry is officially the loser, and has called President Bush to congradulate him on his win. Kerry will formally announce his concession around noon today.

And we had 120 million voters, or 60% of the electorate turn out at the polls. That's the highest percentage since the 1968 Nixon/Humphrey slugfest. And the youth vote didn't happen. It stayed at about 17%, just as in 2000. Which proves that 18 - 25 year olds still aren't smart enough to be trusted with anything.

May I gloat a little?

FOUR MORE YEARS!!!

FOUR MORE YEARS!!!

FOUR MORE YEARS!!!

FOUR MORE YEARS!!!

FOUR MORE YEARS!!!

FOUR MORE YEARS!!!

Thanks. That felt a lot better.

I Voted - hope you did same

I voted at 9:00 am this morning. For President Bush, of course.

I also voted for Tom Coburn (R) for US Senate. I'm not a big Coburn fan, but the more I learned about Brad Carson, the less of a Carson enthusiast I became. Anyway, putting the Senate back in the hands of the Democrats, particularly after their shameful and unconstitutional filibuster tactics to block Bush's judicial appointees, is not something that I would want to do.

Voter turnout was good so far - I was voter # 475, as reported by the ballot-reading machine. I voted at about the same time of day during the 2000 election (different precinct, though) and I remember my ballot count being less than 350.

Here in Oklahoma, we have optical scan ballots. Each candidate's name is followed by an arrow with its center section missing. To vote for a candidate, you simply draw in the center section of the arrow with a special black felt-tip pen. Then you insert your ballot into a machine that tallys the votes. It's pretty simple, and as far as I know, Oklahoma has not had nearly the problems with spoiled ballots or unreliable voting machines that other states have.

I also took my 3 1/2 year old daughter with me to the polls. I think she was a little bored, and a little miffed that she didn't get a pen and a card to draw on. But it was a good opportunity to explain that in our country, we get a choice about what laws go on the books and who our leaders will be. Even at her age, I think it's an important lesson to learn.

Tomorrow is election day

In about 8 hours, the polls officially open across America.

Since I have been following national elections, I haven't seen one that even compares to this one in terms of being an absolute nail-biter up to the finish.

I have never seen passions run so high. And I believe that there is good reason for it: the stakes in this particular Presidential election are extremely high. And so, tomorrow will be a true defining moment in our nation's history.

Without hesitation, I will be pulling the lever for George W. Bush. Basically, the decision comes down to two factors:

1) National security. As much as I dislike some of the things that Bush has done domestically as President, I believe that he is by far the most serious of the two major candidates in terms of understanding the stakes in our global war on terror. 9/11 gave him a mission, which was simply to declare all-out war on terrorists and on the global infestation of terrorism. He sought to de-legitimize terrorists, to correctly classify them as criminals and evil-doers, and to use the full power of the US and her steadfast allies to root out and destroy terrorists and to undermine the societal underpinnings of terrorism in general. This is the right thing to do. Period.

2) The angry, venom-spitting tactics of the Left. I know that there are a lot of reasons that the Left dislikes Bush, and probably a majority of those reasons have to do with the 2000 election. But those reasons are not sufficient to justify the all-out hatred and venom directed at the President, particularly when those actions aim to simply tear him down and undermine his abilities to lead, regardless of the cost. I simply believe that such unrestrained evil should not be rewarded by the electorate. If the Left wins, then we the people will have given them a mandate to replace reason and civil discourse with all-out hatred.

So what will tomorrow night's results look like? Personally, I have never believed that John Kerry has carried a clear majority of popular support. I know that all of the polls have both candidates in a dead heat. But things change when you are in that booth all alone and you have to weigh the stakes one last time before casting your vote.

I don't trust opinion polls and never have. They are simply manufactured news. They are a way for news outlets to measure how much the slant of their stories is affecting the way the general population perceives current issues. The press is admitedly 90% Democrat and so I believe that it is a given that their polling will be skewed to reflect significant agreement with the Democrat party platform. I also believe that their polls are designed to keep the race close and to continually generate interest in the "closeness" of the election. I believe that this becomes a significant factor when "their guy" is losing.

So my prediction is this: Bush 53, Kerry 46, Nader/everybody else 1.

I'm not up to speed enough to predict the fall of electoral votes (even though these are really what matter), but I am confident that Bush will win a decisive victory in the Electoral College as well. However, I will be surprised if Bush wins more than 300 electoral votes.

I will also predict that there will be major voter fraud in precincts with a high population of Blacks and illegal aliens. This fraud will be in the form of over-votes and multiple votes. I wouldn't be surprised to see many precincts in heavily minority areas have more votes than registered voters. And of course 90% + of these votes will be for John Kerry.

This is why I am so hopeful for a 5% or greater margin of victory for Bush (or God forbid, Kerry). If the decision by the people is beyond reproach, then lawsuits and court orders will be worthless.

I think that claims of voter indimidation will be hard to prove, since there will be watchers, and watchers watching the watchers, and watchers watching the watchers who are watching the watchers. There will be more cameras than a Japanese tourist convention could boast pointed at polling places.

Congressional elections will ride on Presidential coat-tails, though I have difficulty believeing that the Democrats could regain control of Congress if Kerry wins. At worst, the Republicans will retain a majority in the House and there will be a 50/50 split in the Senate.

So do your duty. Go and vote. There is too much at stake not to.

The return of Osama

I must say that I was disappointed with the appearance Friday of the new Osama video. Actually crestfallen. We hadn't seen him in so long that it was almost a given that he was dead. I actually joked to some friends that the video by Adam Gadahn that made news headlines Wednesday "proved" that Osama was toast. After all, wouldn't Al Queda use their most notorious leader to deliver their most important message of 2004?

So I was wrong.

But on the whole, this video was lame. Osama looks weak and old. He is no longer a contender; he is a battered and beaten man who is surviving the fight by shielding his face with his gloves and clenching his opponent, and trying to find enough strength to simply remain standing until the next bell.

Gone is the rhetoric about the American soldier being a paper tiger and a coward. Gone is the boasting about the brave warriors of Allah bringing decadent and lazy America to its knees. In fact, Osama actually makes a weak promise to offer dhimmitude to each state that gives its electoral votes to John Kerry.

This is a quivering Che Guevarra with a gun to his head. This is Adolf and Eva in the Berlin bunker. This is a dishevled and terror-stricken Ceaucescu appearing on television after his capture by Romanian soldiers. This is Saddam being hauled out of his septic hole.

This is a man who has seen, in the words of our president, 3/4 of his leaders and key operatives killed or captured. This is a man who sees the US Marines mop up Al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq with a 100:1 kill ratio. This is a man who has seen his base camp in Afghanistan obliterated, and who knows that his entire organization is on the run. This is a man who knows that every cell phone call or log-in to the Internet is probably being intercepted. This is a man with no where left to run except another safe house or hiding place.

Donald Sensing has a nice analysis of the pitiful state of Osama and Al Qaeda today, as evidenced by this videotape.

It is also telling, in a humorous way, that Osama seems to have adopted the Democrat talking points in this video tape, particularly the cants about Bush misleading the American people and only invading Iraq for oil.

Just another indication that tomorrow (election day) is going to be a very big event indeed.