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"The truck’s windshield explodes into shards of glass as their rounds take it apart and tear into the body of the son of a b@@@@ trying to get past them to kill their brothers.....American and Iraqi – bedded down in the barracks, totally unaware that their lives at that moment depended entirely on two Marines standing their ground. Yale and Haerter never hesitated. By all reports and by the recording, they never stepped back....."

BAGHDAD -- Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta marked the end of the U.S. war in Iraq at a highly symbolic ceremony Thursday. U.S. soldiers rolled up the flag for American forces in Iraq and slipped it into a camouflage-colored sleeve, formally "casing" it, according to Army tradition. Panetta said veterans of the nearly nine-year conflict can be "secure in knowing that your sacrifice has helped the Iraqi people to cast tyranny aside." Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and President Jalal Talabani were invited to the ceremony but did not attend.

Politics: A battle ensues between one vice president who defended freedom well and another who sorely needs his boss's teleprompter. Biden accuses Cheney of rewriting history while claiming that Iraq is this administration's victory. Maybe Vice President Joe Biden should think about writing talking points on his hand as his rhetoric reaches levels of absurdity where no politician has gone before. After last weekend's round of competitive gabfests, one would expect to see a billboard of former Vice President Dick Cheney with a caption, "Miss me yet?" We do, sir, we do. After yeoman service helping President Bush fight the...

http://msunderestimated.com/2008/07/05/an-unrepentant-proud-american/

The Democrat's Magical Thinking by Nancy Morgan Right Bias Something very strange is happening in the hallowed halls of the old media. From the Washington Post to the New York Times, articles are starting to appear actually acknowledging that the Iraq war may be, gasp, winnable. Even the United Nations went on record, with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon saying Iraq has made "notable progress" in the security, political and economic fields. This recent acknowledgment of the obvious has yet to extend to the Democrat Party. Despite the recent CIA assessment that portrayed al-Qaeda as essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia,...

Don't look now, but evidence of progress in the war on terror is just about everywhere. Last week CIA director Michael Hayden noted some U.S. accomplishments for the Washington Post: "Near strategic defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Near strategic defeat for al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for al-Qaeda globally." USA Today: Attacks in Iraq are "down 70 percent since President Bush ordered a U.S. troop increase, or 'surge,' early last year." The New Yorker's Lawrence Wright devoted a long essay to Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, onetime mentor to Ayman al Zawahiri, who now criticizes his former protégé and Osama bin...

There is a working assumption among the American people that a new president enters the White House free of responsibility for the errors of the past, free to set a new course in any program or policy, and therefore free—at the very least in constitutional theory, and perhaps even really and truly free—to call off a war begun by a predecessor. No one would expect something so dramatic on the first day of a new administration but it remains a fact that the president is the commander in chief of the armed forces, and the power that allowed one president...

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Kaplan, in a recent publication, the US National Defense University described the Iraq War as a "major debacle." According to the latest statistics, 500 insurgent attacks are still taking place each week. Still, you are convinced that there is a "learning curve" for the US Army in Iraq. What exactly has been learned? Kaplan: One attack is one too many. But a while ago there were 500 attacks a day. So empirically, the situation has improved -- whether measured in terms of Iraqi cilivans killed or American soldiers attacked, insurgents captured or the number of intelligence tip-offs....

THE REAL NEWS of April played second fiddle to the presidential campaign, the pope's visit to America, and the Texas polygamy case. more stories like thisThe death toll for the US military in Iraq hit 49 in April, making it the deadliest month since September, according to the Associated Press. Around Iraq, at least 1,080 Iraqi civilians and security personnel were killed last month, an average of 36 a day, according to the AP tally. While that's down from March's total of 1,269, or an average of 41 per day, those casualties certainly don't add up to a stable Iraq....

The flow of blood may be ebbing, but the flood of money into the Iraq war is steadily rising, new analyses show. In 2008, its sixth year, the war will cost approximately $12 billion a month, triple the "burn" rate of its earliest years, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and co-author Linda J. Bilmes report in a new book.

Their McCain pile-on would not be so egregious if only the White House -- and the perks of politics -- were at stake. With 165,000 troops serving in Iraq and 26,000 serving in Afghanistan, Republican voters must guard more than their party purity. They have to vote -- and at times hold their tongues -- with an eye on what is most important: Iraq. As public support for the war has eroded, it has been disheartening to watch Democrats, who once supported the war, drop the ball on Iraq. Now, to watch Republicans bloody McCain, when they should be concentrating...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., admitted Thursday that she had underestimated the willingness of Republicans to stand behind President Bush’s Iraq policy despite the drubbing the GOP took in the polls in 2006. “The assumption I made was that the Republicans would soon see the light,” she said. Instead, the minority stuck to the president’s war policy in the face of unrelenting pressure from congressional Democrats and powerful lobbying campaigns by anti-war groups. Bush has consistently refused to accept any limitations on his authority to direct military operations in Iraq, or on funds destined for the war effort. Democrats...

Yesterday, Bill Clinton stated he's always opposed the war in Iraq, which if true would have placed him at odds with his position in 1998 when he bombed an aspirin factory just as he was about to be impeached, and -- more significantly -- with his wife's position when she voted to authorize the war. Don Surber shows that it's also at odds with Clinton's stated position during the war:

Editorial House Speaker Nancy Pelosi miscalculated once more - failing, apparently, even to glance at the calendar, and thus seeking to ram through another pull-out-of-Iraq bill on Veterans Day weekend yet. Very bad appearances there, and Pelosi rescheduled the vote for later on. Nor did Pelosi appear to note that word has come in from Baghdad that U.S. commanders are happy about the greatly improved security situation in most quarters of town. A top American commander, in fact, told The New York Times the military has routed Al Qaeda forces from Baghdad, putting U.S. brass in position to withdraw surge...

Texas Representative Ron Paul, along with several other Democrats, told Bush that the War in Iraq will end once enough Democrats and Republicans stop bending over backwards to every financial whim of the Bush administration over the war's continued escalation. These words were penned in a letter to Bush this week and signed by 88 Democratic representatives, along with Ron Paul, the sole Republican on the list of endorsers. The letter states that the signers will only support further funding on the War in Iraq for the eventual pullout of troops from the area in a safe manner before Bush's...

WASHINGTON -President Bush has no better friends than the spineless Democratic congressional leadership and the party's leading presidential candidates when it comes to his failing Iraq policy . These Democrats seem to have forgotten that the American people want U.S. troops out of Iraq, especially since Bush still cannot give a credible reason for attacking Iraq after nearly five years of war. Last week, at a debate in Hanover, N.H., the leading Democratic presidential candidates sang from the same songbook: Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, along with former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, refused...

America's existing law enforcement and intelligence services had the necessary cumulative (but unshared) information to thwart the 9/11 attacks and prosecute the plotters as criminals. But instead of giving these agencies the tools to effectively fight subsequent terrorist threats, the Bush Administration has created entirely new separate agencies, bringing the grand total to 16 (!), while still leaving American intelligence in a overall state of perpetual ignorance.

The war in Iraq will be a major issue during the Democratic National Convention in Denver, DNC chairman Howard Dean told several hundred people at the west entrance to the Pepsi Center this afternoon. "Every single one of the Republicans running for president thinks we ought to stay in Iraq, maybe for as long as 50 years," said Dean. "Every Democrat thinks we ought not to be there." The gathering was held to mark the one-year countdown to the 2008 convention.

The U.S. Senate majority leader says Republicans engaged in gamesmanship when voting on the withdrawal of the U.S. soldiers from Iraq. Also during CBS' "Face the Nation," Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., also praised Republicans who have broken ranks with the Bush administration regarding the war. Reid sought to recast the perception that Democrats are blocking Republican-back proposals after the Senate GOP stymied a vote on troop withdrawal from Iraq. Breaking News Published: Jul 22, 2007 Email This | Print | Share | Related | Send A Tip Reid: GOP Playing Games by Staff The U.S. Senate majority leader says Republicans...

SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is sharply critical of President Bush's call for Democrats in Congress to "rise above partisanship" over Iraq. Bush has accused Democrats of wanting a political debate instead of giving the troops what they need to carry out their mission, but Pelosi calls those comments out of line. "I'm sad about what the president said. It's beneath the dignity of the debate on a war that has taken over 3,600 lives, injured tens of thousands of our young people, some of them permanently," she said. Pelosi said the president is out of touch,...