Tim Sumner

Iraq, Political wind

Gray Lady Hedges: Ralph Peters

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Ralph Peters, this morning in the New York Post, on this article in the New York Times:

This matters. Because left-wing America-haters may disparage The Post and every other paper in the country, but they cling to the Times more avidly than Linus clutches his security blanket.
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But the potentially fatal problem remains the cowardice and selfishness of politicians in both parties who care far more about retaining their offices in the 2008 elections (or gaining higher ones) than they do about Iraq, our troops or our national security.

If the situation in Iraq continues to improve, let’s not forget which pols bailed out – and not just the Reid-Pelosi-Murtha Democrats, but the Republicans who ran for the trees at the first drop of rain.

9/11, Political wind, War on Terror

It’s a pre-9/11 Congress

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James Jay Carafano’s view of the ‘9/11 bill,’ this morning, in the National Review Online:

Those hoping the bill would provide a clear strategic direction for homeland-security policy will find this “signature” as inscrutable as that of a drunken doctor writing in haste. But the bill does clearly show, however, that the way Congress “does” homeland security has changed significantly under it new Democratic leadership.
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One measure of how far the bill has missed its strategic mark is how found in how very few of its more than 700 pages of provisions pertains in any way to recommendations actually made by the 9/11 Commission. Inspecting every container of frozen fish, for example, was never suggested in the commission report.

How curious that the so-called 9/11 bill can come up with so many frothy original ideas, yet scrupulously avoid so many hard-nosed recommendations from the commission. For instance, whatever happened to the idea of further consolidating the jurisdiction of congressional committees over the Homeland Security Department. The new law studiously ignores this basic housekeeping reform so strenuously sought by the commission.