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silent_jonny: Thank you for posting the DOSE tonight — AWESOME job per usual!!
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MUST READ . . .

BUSH AS COMFORTER IN CHIEF
By NeoNeocon

One of Bush’s less well-publicized roles is to pay condolence calls on families of soldiers who have been killed in the war. To date, he has visited:

…more than 1,500 relatives of the 4,255 American troops who have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to White House officials. As he travels around the country, the president often makes the time to console them — one family at a time, often including children — in sessions that he calls “one of the hardest things” about his job.

I’ll bet it is; this must be an almost unimaginably difficult task to add to the other burdens of a Presidency.

Some who think the Iraq War was fought for oil, plunder, hubris, or other nefarious reasons, will say it’s the least Bush should be doing. Others who support him will consider it a mark of his compassionate nature that he spends so much of his time this way.

Although I’ve been unable to document this, it’s my distinct impression and recollection that this sort of intense activity on the part of a President is new. In wars such as World War II, in which the casualties were magnitudes greater, FDR wouldn’t have had the time even if he had the inclination, which he apparently did not.

I doubt very much that LBJ or Nixon did anything similar during Vietnam, either. And Lincoln’s famous letter Mrs. Bixby is the only Civil War reference I can find to the subject. Here’s a brief treatment of how the military itself helps the relatives of fallen members of the armed forces; there’s no mention of the role of a President.

You can read the entire commentary here: [Note: This commentary provies an accurate analysis of our Comforter-in-Chief vs the leftist drivel that was published on this subject by a Bloomberg reporter this morning.]
http://neoneocon.com/2007/10/10/bush-as-comforter-in-chief/
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THE DEMS’ DEFEAT
By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY

War On Terror: Wasn’t it just a month ago that Democrats in Congress were promising to hold vote after vote after vote on withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq to embarrass the Republicans? Well, forget about it.

The Democrats have made it official. Having lost every battle in Congress over pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, they’re flying the white flag of surrender. It’s the Democrats who’ve decided they’ve had enough.

. . . But that doesn’t mean they should be left off the hook. Withdrawal was a horrible idea, one that would have endangered not only the troops but all Americans, as terrorists would have been emboldened to attack both in Iraq and on our own soil.

We hope voters remember this.

Iraq, at a delicate point in its democratic history, might have collapsed into outright civil war, with terrorists slaughtering millions of innocents — as in Southeast Asia after a Democrat-led Congress abandoned South Vietnam in 1975.

Osama bin Laden himself said the U.S. departure from Somalia in 1993 after 31 troops died encouraged him in his campaign of terror against the West. The U.S., he concluded later, was a “paper tiger.”

Thanks to our brave men and women in Iraq, some very competent generals and a resolute commander in chief, our terrorist enemies have learned Osama was half-right — and it isn’t the “paper” half. It’s taken a while, but Democrats seem to get it, too.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=276908548262528
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[FOR THE ‘BDS-FREE’ FACTS, READ THE FOLLOWING:]
Jose Medellin and International Law
By Mark Noonan at 03:43 AM

Rick G over at Lone Star Times provides a relentlessly honest look at the case of rapist/murderer/illegal immigrant Jose Medellin and the Bush Administrations concerns vis a vis the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. I highly recommend reading the whole thing if you want to be fully informed on this increasingly contentious case. At issue is whether or not Medellin - a man undoubtedly guilty of a horrible crime - shold have his case reconsidered because the Texas authorities did not provide access for Medellin to the Mexican consulate prior to his trial and conviction.

Texas is holding that since Medellin did not bring this up at trial he de-facto waived his rights - which are unquestioned under the Convention: people arrested in foreign lands have a right to consular access and it is incumbant upon the State authorities to notify the consulate in question when a national of that consulate is arrested.

To listen to my fellow conservatives, President Bush has essentially sold us down the river to the UN and the ICC over this issue. Somehow or another, a rather arcane legal case has been translated by some into a case where UN/ICC law will now trump US law unless Medellin is executed without review under the provisions of the Convention. Over in the real world, all that President Bush has done, as noted in Lone Star Times, is observe that the Convention does call for consular access. Additionally, President Bush has asked the courts of Texas to review the case - not to overturn it, but to ensure that the failure to provide consular access didn’t alter the outcome of the trial (it is clear even on a cursory examination that 10,000 Mexican consuls would not have been able to alter the trial result - Medellin is guilty, guilty, guilty). Finally, Preasident Bush has also announced a US withdrawal from that part of the Convention which allowed the ICC to intervene in American criminal justice - of course, this can’t change the past; Medellin’s crime is from a period of time when the US was so bound by the Convention.

You can read the entire commentary here:
http://blogsforbush.com/