NEW LEFT-WING/MSM IRAQ WAR MANTRA

Here's the core of the new left-wing "anti-war" mantra:

"The diversionary and unnecessary Iraq War has made it tougher for our military to recruit, and easier for al Qaeda to recruit, and has therefore made us less safe."

Let's FISK this and see if it is true, or unfalsifiable, or false:

1 - There is mounting evidence (see below) that Saddam an al Qaeda DID have operational links. And Saddam gave safe-haven to terrorists and financed them. THEREFORE, the first assertion (that the Iraq War was a diversion from the GWOT) is FALSE.

2 - The fact is that EVERY branch of the US military is ahead or on target in recruiting EXCEPT the Army. AND, re-enlistment is IN ALL BRANCHES INCLUDING THE ARMY AHEAD. THEREFORE, the second assertion is FALSE.

3 - Recruitment levels for the jihadoterrorists is UNMEASUREABLE, and therefore UNFALSIFIABLE. Therefore, this assertion of the Left should just be ignored. HOWEVER, we do know - for a fact - that Iraqi Military and police recruiting is IMPROVING.

In summary, we MUST conclude that the Leftist mantra is false. No matter how many times the MSM repeats it, it will still be false.

PROOF THAT SADDAM AND BIN LADEN WERE ALLIES

Stephen Hayes has written a detailed piece available at The Weekly Standard which proves that Saddam and al Qaeda had JOINT OPERATIONS:

"... 13 points below, reproduced verbatim from a "Summary of Evidence" prepared by the U.S. government in November 2004.

This unclassified document was released by the Pentagon in late March 2005. It details the case for designating an Iraqi member of al Qaeda, currently detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as an "enemy combatant."

1. From 1987 to 1989, the detainee served as an infantryman in the Iraqi Army and received training on the mortar and rocket propelled grenades. 2. A Taliban recruiter in Baghdad convinced the detainee to travel to Afghanistan to join the Taliban in 1994. 3. The detainee admitted he was a member of the Taliban. 4. The detainee pledged allegiance to the supreme leader of the Taliban to help them take over all of Afghanistan. 5. The Taliban issued the detainee a Kalishnikov rifle in November 2000. 6. The detainee worked in a Taliban ammo and arms storage arsenal in Mazar-Es-Sharif organizing weapons and ammunition. 7. The detainee willingly associated with al Qaida members. 8. The detainee was a member of al Qaida. 9. An assistant to Usama Bin Ladin paid the detainee on three separate occasions between 1995 and 1997. 10. The detainee stayed at the al Farouq camp in Darwanta, Afghanistan, where he received 1,000 Rupees to continue his travels. 11. From 1997 to 1998, the detainee acted as a trusted agent for Usama Bin Ladin, executing three separate reconnaissance missions for the al Qaeda leader in Oman, Iraq, and Afghanistan. 12. In August 1998, the detainee traveled to Pakistan with a member of Iraqi Intelligence for the purpose of blowing up the Pakistan, United States and British embassies with chemical mortars. 13. Detainee was arrested by Pakistani authorities in Khudzar, Pakistan, in July 2002.

RTWT. In addition to this connection, remember (when a Leftist tells you that Iraq was a diversion) to remind them that Saddam gave safe haven to jihadoterrorists and supported them financially.

AFTER THEY BLAME BUSH, THEN THEY BLAME ISRAEL

In today's Globe essay (on the root causes of the London Attacks, and what should be done about them) Timothy Garton Ash wrote:

"A peace settlement between Israel and Palestine would remove another great recruiting sergeant for Islamist terrorists. "

In an essay for the Hoover Digest (2003 • No. 2 ) TGA wrote:

The Middle East is both a source and a catalyst of what threatens to become a downward spiral of burgeoning European anti-Americanism and nascent American anti-Europeanism, each reinforcing the other. Anti-Semitism in Europe, and its alleged connection to European criticism of the Sharon government, has been the subject of the most acid anti-European commentaries from conservative American columnists and politicians. Some of these critics are themselves not just strongly pro-Israel but also “natural Likudites,” one liberal Jewish commentator explained to me. In a recent article Stanley Hoffmann writes that they seem to believe in an “identity of interests between the Jewish state and the United States.” Pro-Palestinian Europeans, infuriated by the way criticism of Sharon is labeled anti-Semitism, talk about the power of a “Jewish lobby” in the United States, which then confirms American Likudites’ worst suspicions of European anti-Semitism, and so it goes on, and on.

Beside this hopeless tangle of mutually reinforcing prejudice—difficult for a non-Jewish European to write about without contributing to the malaise one is trying to analyze—there are, of course, real European-American differences in approaches to the Middle East. For example, European policymakers tend to think that a negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be a bigger contribution to the long-term success of the “war against terrorism” than the war on Iraq.

Timothy Garton Ash is WRONG to single out Israel. The Israeli/Arab conflict is far from the bloodiest flashpoint between Muslims and non-Muslims. Kashmir, Timor, the Moros, Chechnya, Nigeria, Thailand, and the Sudan have each had inter-faith conflicts which have each killed more people in the last decade than Israel and the Arabs. And then there are the several Muslim states which have had intra-faith genocide - like Iraq, Algeria, Morocco, Turkey, Afghanistan - too name a few.

SO why does he (and why do so many Europeans, AND so many on the Left - the "chatterati" ) single out ISRAEL? WHY DON'T THEY PRESSURE ANY OF THE OTHER NATIONS WHICH ARE IN CONFLICT WITH JIHADISM? Why do they think that Israel is the ultimate flashpoint and recruiting tool? It's unfair, and unreasonable - AND IT DISTORTS THE TRUE NATURE OF OUR COMMON ENEMY.

Israel has every right to defensible borders, and we should no more force Israel to live adjacent to a terrorist state than we should cede Zarqawi the al Anbar province. Or force Russia to recognize a Chechen republic. Or China an independent Uighur state. Or force India to cede Kashmir. Or allow Jihadists to take over Morocco, and Saudi Arabia and Algeria and the southern Philipines. And Spain.

Timothy Garton Ash's views -as expressed in these two essays - are generally well thought out and logically argued. He makes many goods points. BUT: On this issue he shows a long-term bias which not only smacks of anti-Semitism (or at the very least an allergy to Jews - something now common among the chattering classes in Britain and on the Continent, and prevalent on the Left all over the world), it can - most importantly - yield no effective policy for defeating the Jihadists. It merely plays into their hands.

Only people who believe that giving Hitler the Sudatenland was a good, just and an effective way to diminish the chances of war should keep pressuring Israel to give into Jihadism. I for one believe that giving into to Hitlers and Arafats and and Saddams and Bin Ladens can never bring anything but more terror.

As Churchill said: "An appeaser is one who feeds someone else to a crocodile - hoping it will eat him last." I will never allow Israel to be fed to any crocodile.

AFTER LONDON: ITALY BEGINS TO TAKE SERIOUS ACTION AGAINST DOMESTIC TERROR THREAT

BBC:

Italian police have arrested 142 people as part of a two-day anti-terror operation in and around Milan. One and a half kilos (3.3 pounds) of explosive were found, reports say. Some 2,000 Carabinieri police took part in the raid, aimed at boosting security at sensitive locations such as underground and train stations. ... Some 7,000 people are said to have undergone preventive police checks. ... Of those arrested, 83 are said to be non-EU citizens. Deportation orders have already been issued for 52 of them.

COMMENTARY: the rest of the Free World ought to be doing the same thing: rousting and deporting Islamic illegals.

THE LEFT AND THE MULLAHS AGREE: THE LONDON BOMBINGS ARE BUSH AND BLAIR'S FAULT!

BBC: One of Iran's top clerics, Ayatollah Mohammed Emami-Kashani, said the London attacks were the direct result of the UK's support for US and Israeli policies. He also said, "If you want to succeed you have to leave Palestine..."

The Left and the enemy have the same goals and the same rhetoric. That tells us EVERYTHING we need to know about the Left. We already knew it about the enemy. And it makes the Left - for all intents and purposes, the enemy, too. Like the wise man said: they're not anti-war; they're on the other side. OR: they're not the loyal opposition because they're not loyal.

DON'T BELIEVE ME?! THINK I'M EXAGGERATING THE LEFTIST RHETORIC?! Well, scroll down or CLICK HERE for a PARTIAL list of links to Leftists blaming Bush and Blair - and a few excerpts.

LONDON: SINGLE BOMBER THEORY ADVANCED

UPDATE #1: LONDON POLICE CONFIRM THAT THE BOMB WAS MADE OF HIGH-EXPLOSIVES AND THEREFORE NOT HOMEMADE.

UPDATE #2: THE MADRID TERRORIST GANG ALSO TAKES CREDIT FOR LONDON ATTACK

Earlier - UK GUARDIAN:

Early reports quoting US intelligence officials suggested that at least two of the tube blasts - probably the first, at Aldgate, and the last, at Edgware Road - were caused by bombs placed on the floor of the trains and triggered by timing devices. ... Police have been taking statements from survivors of the bus bombing who say they saw an "anxious looking" passenger rummaging inside a bag at his feet shortly before the blast. While detectives are attempting to establish whether the bus bomb, which was placed on either the floor or a seat, was detonated by a suicide bomber, they will not discount the possibility that it exploded prematurely. "It may have been a bomb that went off in transit," Sir Ian Blair, commissioner of the Metropolitan police, said. ...

A single terrorist would have been able to place bombs on both of the Circle line trains and, by doubling back or by alighting and walking to stations just a few hundred yards apart, place a third bomb on the Piccadilly line train. He or she could then have boarded the No 30 bus, where the final device exploded 56 minutes after the first tube blast. ... "We have absolutely nothing to suggest this was a suicide bombing attack, al though nothing at this stage to rule that out," he said. Speaking of the bus bomb, he added: "We can't rule it out. It may have been that [a suicide attack], it may have been a bomb that was left on the seat, it may also have been a bomb that went off in transit."

Among the bus blast survivors who have given a statement to police is Richard Jones, 61, who described spening three minutes standing next to a passenger who was handling something in his bag. "He was standing next to me with the bag at his feet and he kept dipping into this bag and fiddling about with something," said Mr Jones, an IT consultant from Binfield, near Bracknell, Berkshire. "I was getting quite annoyed because this was a crowded bus. You can imagine the crush - it was standing room only. Everybody is standing face to face, and this guy kept dipping into his bag." Mr Jones got off the bus because it was stuck in traffic, and seconds later the bomb exploded, killing 13 people.

COMMENTARY: The police will soon determine if the explosive was homemade and whether there were any suiciders. From this they may be able to ID the perp's and then trackdown his - or her - cohorts, and bring down that particular cell. But does this really matter? Are these crime scenes or battlefields? Did Churchill send the police in to examine the rubble everytime a V2 blew up a building in London during WW2? No , Churchill didn't; he didn't have to; he knew who the enemy was - and where he lived.

WW4 is different; it's ASYMMETRICAL, and our enemy is a decentralized, ideologically driven fanatical organization. And it's much harder to counter-attack against a secretive transnational organization than it is a rogue nation. That's why I think we need to be more ruthless in our counter-attacks, and broaden them out: we should make the mosques and the nations that give the terrorists safe haven and support SUFFER.

HOW? We (the USA and the EU) should start by (1) deporting non-naturalized Muslims and then (2) by closing (and possibly demolishing) any mosques that terrorists attended, and any/all mosques whose clerics preach any violence, and (3) by seizing some of the assets of the nations that have clerics who continue to preach genocidal violence, or which terrorists come from, or get money from.

That should get their attention. After that, there're the MOABS.

LONDON: MORE THAN 50 PEOPLE STILL MISSING

UK GUARDIAN:

In echoes of the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on New York, the smiling faces of more than 50 people who are missing after the London bombings yesterday began appearing on makeshift posters tied to railings, stuck to hoardings at the bomb sites, or handed out at hospitals by families and friends. ...

In addition to these missing, there are over 20 people in critical condition. So the death toll might climb well over 100.

NO WONDER THE CIA SUCKED: FORMER HEAD OF CIA'S BIN LADEN DESK IS A NUTTY SURRENDER MONKEY

Michael Scheuer - the FORMER head of the "Bin Laden Desk" at the CIA, and author of, "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War " - was just on BBC NEWSNIGHT.

He said that the GWOT won't end until (paraphrasing) "we DISENGAGE from the Middle East by ending our support for Israel - which is really the tail wagging the dog, and reduce our need for Middle Eastern/Saudi oil."

This is typical isolationist/containment/appeasement/surrender-monkey rubbish - and very anti-Semitic rubbish to boot!

I NOW see why the CIA was SO EFFING INEFFECTIVE: they had jerks like Scheuer in key jobs; (thank God Goss is cleaning house!).

Exactly HOW EFFING INSANE Is SCHEUER?! Well, apparently he thinks that Bush and the USA are SIMULTANEOUSLY too beholden to Israel AND to the House of Saud. NOW THAT'S A NEAT TRICK! Scheuer would have you believe that the USA is SIMULTANEOUSLY a puppet of Sharon/Likud/the neocons/"Israeli-lobby/Zionist conspirators" and of the arch-enemies of Israel, the Wahhabist House of Saud (who are also the chief fianciers of the madrassas which teach jihadoterrorism).

Scheuer is NOT the kind of person whose advice (on 7/7 - or ANYTHING else) we should be taking. This is why he was a failure as a CIA analyst . Thank God he's now merely a kool-aid drinking anti-Semitic book-hawking talking-head. More on Scheuer HERE.

BBC NEWSNIGHT also had GALLOWAY on. Sheesh.

DOES EVERYBODY REMEMBER THOSE AFGHAN TERROR TRAINING CAMPS?

From GLOBAL SECURITY:

According to the Commission on Terrorist Attacks, as many as 20,000 individuals trained at Bin-Ladin supported camps throughout Afghanistan from May 1996 to September 11, 2001.

These 20,000 Islamic "CAMPERS" were NOT studying calculus or cooking or singing kumbaya while roasting marshmallows around campfires.

They were training to become jihadist TERRORISTS. They were NOT training in reaction to President Bush or Halliburton or the liberation of Iraq. They came from all over the world, and went back - ALL OVER THE WORLD, to lay in wait as sleeper cells which could follow orders or act on their own. That's why we attacked the Taliban and liberated Afghanistan, destroying the camps and toppling the Taliban.

That's why when the "anti-war" Left blames the liberation of Iraq for the 7/7 attack they prove themselves INSANE. This attack is what they trained to do. In places like Afghanistan. Since 1996. When Clinton was president and the OSLO PEACE PROCESS was on track!

And there are THOUSANDS more of these jihadoterrorists - ALL OVER THE WORLD - and they are trained to do the same thing as happened in London AS SOON AS THEY GET THE CHANCE.

We do not minimize or diminish in the slightest the chances of another attack ANYWHERE by appeasing the enemy or giving into their demands. Appeasing and/or surrendering to terrorism is not the answer. It ONLY encourages them. And - as Hitchens has so simply and brilliantly said: "Resisting terrorism CANNOT be the cause of terrorism."

AS I SAID: Those camps in Afghanistan were going FULL TILT LONG BEFORE we started resisting.

Counter-attacking the enemy and KILLING them until they see the futlility of their efforts and give up (WHICH WILL TAKE DECADES) is the only reasonable path.

AS USUAL: TOM FRIEDMAN GETS IT ONLY HALF RIGHT

Friedman wrote another fairly mediocre piece in the NYTIMES ;(it's his specialty). (Hat-tip Glenn.) Here's how he concludes it:

The double-decker buses of London and the subways of Paris, as well as the covered markets of Riyadh, Bali and Cairo, will never be secure as long as the Muslim village and elders do not take on, delegitimize, condemn and isolate the extremists in their midst.

Tom left out jail, interrogate, and KILL. And THAT'S what it'll take - on the part of Islamic nations. So far, very few Islamic states are FIGHTING them: Afghanistan and Iraq are doing their utmost; the Gulf States are doing a fair job; Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are schizo; Egypt cowardly and Jordan PHONY.

Until Islamic states FIGHT, KILL AND DEFEAT THE JIHADOTERRORISTS, there will be no peace. We can pressure them into doing this: by threatening them (with some of the measures Friedman outlines in his column). As Bush correctly stated in 2001: either your with us, or against us. The choice is theirs.

WHY IS THE G8 AIDING JIHADISM AGAINST ISRAEL?

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

THE LEFT: BLAMING THE BATTERED-WIFE

The Left always seems to forget - OR DENY - things like this: that 800 people have been murdered in Thailand in the last year - BY JIHADISTS; many of them were BEHEADED. These Thais victims were Buddhists who had nothing to do with Bush or Blair or Cheney or Rumsfeld or Zionism or Halliburton or Iraq. Neither did the BUDDHAS OF BAMIYAN - blown up in March of 2001, or the Nigerian women who have nearly been stoned to death, and the Pakistani women who have been gang-raped as punshiment for violating sharia. Nor do the countless victims of Islamic honor killings all over the world have anything to do with Ashcroft or Gitmo or Abu Ghraib...

Bush is no more responsible for the Jihadists' attacks on the West than is the battered wife responsible for being battered by her battering husband.

There IS AN EVIL, THINKING, REAL ENEMY out there - Jihadism, and these Jihadists have a procative plan and a serious goal: to re-establish the Caliphate under fanatically extremist control, and to kill or convert anyone ands everyone who gets in their way - including fellow Muslims.

If we don't want them to win, then we must continue to fight them EVERYWHERE, using ALL the means at our disposal. And we must IGNORE the insane and ill-informed ravings of the Left [see the post BELOW for a partial listing of Leftists blaming Bush, Blair and the Iraq War for the 7/7 London attacks.]

UPDATE (hat-tip POLIPUNDIT): Chris Hitchens said (about Galloway - who blamed Blair and Bush):

"I mean, according to him, it’s not the perpetrators who are responsible. They didn’t kill anybody. The murderer is Tony Blair. I mean, that’s all you have to believe, really, morally to agree with a man like him. Well, you should additionally believe that the root cause of terrorism is the resistance to it. "

My point, EXACTLY.

WORLD MAP PROVES JIHADIST ATTACKS ARE PROACTIVE, AND NOT REACTIVE TO BUSH OR IRAQ

POWERLINE posted a map from THE SUN which depicts jihadist terror attacks since 1993 - ALL OVER THE WORLD, (except Israel).

Go over and take a look at it. You'll see that most of the attacks have had NOTHING to do with Zionism or the USA and pre-date 9/11 and the Bush presidency and the Iraq War.

That's why when Leftists blame Bush and Blair, and advocate appeasement - and SURRENDER, as Tariq Ali does in today's UK GUARDIAN - they are only demonstrating their ignorance and cowardice. (YUP: Ali actually advocates SURRENDER:

"The real solution lies in immediately ending the occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. ... At the beginning of the G8, Blair suggested that "poverty was the cause of terrorism". It is not so. The principal cause of this violence is the violence being inflicted on the people of the Muslim world."

Tariq Ali - like the rest of the Left and most of the Islamic world - is either a dupe or an agent of the Jihadis. FACT: Jihadists have preemptively attacked using terror and genocide on every continent and against every religion, and even against other sects of Islam for decades.

I ask Leftists like Tariq Ali - and other idiots of the "BLAME BUSH" or "BLAME ISRAEL" crowd - what the Buddhas of Bamiyan had to do with Zionism or Bush!? (Bush had been in office for less than 2 months when the Taliban destroyed the centuries old Buddhas.)

Or what Buddhist Thais (who have been beheaded by Thai jihadis) have to do with Zionism or Halliburton? Or what Nigerian women who are stoned to death, or Pakistani women who are gang-raped have to do with Cheney and Rumsfeld?

They have NOTHING to do with Bush or Israel or colonialism or Halliburton, etc.

The truth is simple: jihadism has a proactive agenda - to re-establish the Caliphate under a fanatically extremist form of Islam and to kill or convert anyone and everyone who gets in their way. They have said as much OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN. And we have seen where their kind of rule leads: to impoverished and cruel and evil regimes like the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Gerard Baker of the LONDON TIMES concurs (hat-tip PRAIRIE PUNDIT):

The idea that al-Qaeda was no threat until we created it does not stand the slightest scrutiny of events in the 1990s — from the first attack on the World Trade Centre in 1993, to the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 and, of course, the September 11 atrocity a year later. And no one seriously thinks that only America was in their sights. The ideology of Islamism doesn’t stop at the superpower’s borders; its ambitions sweep through Europe; indeed that is where it is breeding so many of its jihadists. The fight in Iraq is not, as the opponents claim, a self-inflicted wound, suddenly giving rise to new threats on our homeland from people we should have left well alone. We are, steadily, beating the terrorists in Iraq. Not only in the military operations, but also by demonstrating who and what the enemy really is. and thereby creating the only real long-term conditions for safety from Islamo-fascism — free states that do not deny the most basic human rights to their peoples. The people who murdered innocent Londoners yesterday are the same people who are murdering innocent Iraqis.

All Bush and Blair are doing is getting in the way of the jihadists. It was about time! God Bless them. And God Bless or troops.

LONDON BOMB-SITES: CRIME SCENES OR BATTLEGROUNDS?

Aldgate East. Liverpool Street. Russell Square. King's Cross. Edgware Road. Tavistock Square.

These are NO MORE crime scenes, than are Iwo Jima or Gettysberg. And Fallujah. These are ALL battlegrounds.

We do not need prosecute the perps; we need to obliterate them and their bases and their safe-havens. We should attack them and their allies, and their financiers; ALL their enablers and abetters, and the fonts of their evil creed - destroying all madrassas EVERYWHERE that teach ANY form of neojihadism - Salafism, Wahhabism, Qutbism or Binladenism. We should attack them with all we've got - wherever they are. We should do whatever it takes to defeat the enemy.

NRO's ANDREW C. McCARTHY AGREES: he prosecuted the perps of the 1993 WTC bombing, so he KNOWS of what he speaks:

Amid the carnage today, Home Secretary Charles Clarke is talking about the people who carried out "these terrible criminal acts." That's an understandable reaction — and we shouldn't quibble too much over a choice of words by people who have been stellar allies, who are in the middle of a rescue effort, and who are unsure the bombing has actually stopped.

But it is worth repeating that what happened today is not mere crime. This is war.

It can't sensibly be separated from Bali or Mombassa or Istanbul or Madrid or Baghdad or Virginia or lower Manhattan — or any of the other places where the enemy has attacked. The only security — and an imperfect security it is — is to acknowledge that this is a war and fight it like a one.

Prime Minister Blair has been a staunch ally after 9/11, but many in his country, and throughout Europe, have not grasped what we are up against.

[ASIDE: Europe could make an important start at improving their domestic security situation, AND IT WOULDN'T REQUIRE THAT THEY COUNTER-ATTACK WITH ANY TOOLS OF WAR: they could deport all non-naturalized and non-assimilated Muslims. TOO CRUEL, YOU SAY?! Bah: there's no place like HOME! And that's all they'd be doing: GOING HOME! Maybe we should do it too! Buh-byee seditious aliens! And we could auction their property at e-bay!]

AL QAEDA ATTACKS LONDON: how soon before the Left BLAMES BUSH?

FIRST: I want to extend my sympathies to all those people whose lives are horribly altered by these evil al Qaeda attacks in London today.

SECOND, I want to ask: How soon before the Left blames these evil attacks in London on Bush and the Iraq War? How soon before Leftists - (folks like George Galloway, Michael Moore, Chomsky, Dean, Durbin, Kennedy, Boxer, Pelosi, et al) - AND the neojihadist enemy - (folks like Zarqawi and Zawahiri and Bin Laden) - charge "IF Blair had not been "Bush's lap-dog" these attacks would NOT have happened!"

The Left has made this kind of charge before - and as recently as this week (when the new "global terror attack" figures for 2004 were revised UP this week). The Left makes this INSANE charge as if al Qaeda --- and their allied neojihadist groups in Russia, Chechnya, Bosnia, Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Morocco, Spain, France, Germany, Scandinavia, Holland, Afghanistan, India, Kashmir, Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philipines, Mexico, and the US --- had not been attacking us ALL since 1993, and with an explicit manifesto/fatwa since 1998! Up until today, the Left has chosen TO IGNORE THESE FACTS; they are inconvenient to the Left's agenda, so they DENY, DENY, DENY; this denial is INSANE.

Bush and Iraq (and Blair's steadfast commitment to Bush and Iraq and the GWOT) are no more responsible for these evil attacks in London, than Bush is responsible for the 1993 WTC attack. (Or look at it this way: Bush and Blair are no more responsible for these attacks than a battered-wife is to blame for the attacks she receives at the hands of her vicious husband!)

Bush and Blair are no more responsible for today's attacks than they were for the beheadings in Thailand, OR the attack on Khobar Towers, OR on the USS COLE, OR on the two US African EMBASSIES, or on the MOSCOW THEATER, OR the BESLAN SCHOOL. Or on Ayodhya. Or in Turkey. Or in Kashmir. And so on. (These attacks either came BEFORE Bush was president - and BEFORE the Iraq War - or were against non-Christians in non-aligned nations which were opposed to the Iraq War. Or against other Muslims that al Qaeda fanatics don't like for sectarian reasons.)

It's long passed time the Left realized that the enemy is REAL, and REALLY EVIL, and that they have a PROACTIVE PLAN OF ATTACK, WHETHER WE COUNTER-ATTACK OR NOT. It's long passed time the Left accepted the fact that the Muslim fanatics have been waging an OFFENSIVE war - one we failed to adequately respond to BEFORE 9/11. And it's long passed time the Left accepted that we must wage a massive and probably decades long counter-offensive against these neojioahdists EVERYWHERE if we want to win. In other words: It's long passed time the Left joined us in the GWOT.

I expect the "anti-war" Left in the UK to do what their Spanish fellow-travellers -- (THIS IS NOT "RED-BAITING; THEY CALL THEMSELVES SOCIALISTS!) -- on the Left did after the ATOCHA attack: they blamed Bush. Which is why they're not really anti-war; they're on the other side.

I hope the Left proves me wrong - and FINALLY and UNAMBIGUOUSLY joins Bush and Blair in the GWOT, (and stops acting like The Fifth Column for the enemy!). I PRAY they do... but I do NOT expect it. WHY?! Because it would mean that the Left has to finally admit that their LEFTIST CREED is totally bankrupt, and this is too emotionally difficult for most people to do; (hence the cognitive dissonance and denial reaction-responses). Stay tuned...

UPDATE: THE LEFT RESPONDS - AS PREDICTED: GALLOWAY BLAMES BUSH! That was fast! (Hat-tip INSTAPUNDIT.) MORE "5th COLUMN/LEFTIST" REACTION OVER AT MICHELLE MALKIN.

UPDATE #2: More at MY PET JAWA, too.

UPDATE #3: Hitchens weighs in on the Left's idiotic anti-Bush/Blair/Iraq War response to today's bombings. (Hat-tip Michelle Malkin.)

UPDATE #4 - NORMBLOG has more examples of Leftists blaming Bush/Blair/Iraq War; he calls the post "CONTEMPTIBLE." Apt.

UPDATE #5: POWERLINE has another disgusting and INSANE example of illogical Leftist explanations for today's attacks , (and it once again reveals the Left's preference alterior/"occult"/hidden/conspiracy explanations over the simple facts).

UPDATE #6: Lorie Byrd at POLIPUNDIT links to a post by HUGH HEWITT citing Al Franken and Tom Oliphant blaming Bush.

UPDATE #7: I have never read a more angrrrrrry WRETCHARD over at The Belmont Club:

The Al Qaeda have characterized the attack on London as 'punishment' for Britain's temerity to resist the inevitability of Islam. It is the kind of punishment these self-ordained masters of the universe are accustomed to meting out against harem women and insolent slaves. A few administered licks, and no doubt the cowardly kuffar will crawl back to his place. The tragedy is that Al Qaeda's perception is perfectly correct when applied to the Left, for whom no position is too supine, no degradation too shameful to endure [UMPH added!]; but incorrect for the vast majority of humans, in whom the instinct for self-preservation has not yet been extinguished. It will result in history's greatest case of mistaken identity; the mismatch that should never have happened. The enemy is even now dying at our feet, where we should kick him and kick him again.

Right on!

UPDATE #8 [JULY 8]: Tariq Ali - writing in the left-wing UK GUARDIAN - blames Buhs, Blair and Zionism.

UPDATE #9: Josh Marshall of TPM - part of the "new mainstream of the democrat Party" (which puts him slightly to the Left of McGovern and Dukakis and Mondale and Kerry and Kennedy!) blames Bush and Iraq. (Hat-tip Hugh Hewitt.) Josh writes: "Certainly, it's no accident that the two acts of terror in Europe in the last three years happened in America's two main Iraq war allies... If anything our folly in Iraq has made the immediacy and intensity of this basic threat worse."

The Left always seems to forget - OR DENY - things like this: that 800 people have been murdered in Thailand in the last year - BY JIHADISTS; many of them were BEHEADED. These Thais victims were Buddhists who had nothing to do with Bush or Blair or Cheney or Rumsfeld or Zionism or Halliburton or Iraq. Neither did the BUDDHAS OF BAMIYAN - blown up in March of 2001, or the Nigerian women who have been stoned to death, and the Pakistani women who have been gang-raped as punshiment for violating sharia. Nor do the countless victims of Islamic honor killings all over the world have anything to do with Ashcroft or Gitmo or Abu Ghraib...

Bush is no more responsible for the Jihadists' attacks on the West than is the battered wife responsible for being battered by her battering husband.

There IS AN EVIL, THINKING, REAL ENEMY out there - Jihadism, and these Jihadists have a procative plan and a serious goal: to re-establish the Caliphate under fanatically extremist control, and to kill or convert anyone ands everyone who gets in their way - including fellow Muslims.

If we don't want them to win, then we must continue to fight them EVERYWHERE, using ALL the means at our disposal.

UPDATE #10: Here's a compendium of anti-American, unpatriotic/anti-patriotic ravings from the Left - ON JULY FOURTH. From LE SABOT MODERNE.

UPDATE #11 - 7/9: From Taranto's BOTW -

"... columnist Derrick Z. Jackson of the Boston Globe:

The world, of course, shares the sympathies of Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York, who said the London bombings were a ''despicable, cowardly act." Yet every invoking of the innocents also reminds us of our despicable, cowardly killing of innocent Iraqi civilians. . . .

The innocents in the so-called war on terror are always ''our" citizens or the citizens of our allies. The only innocent Iraqis are those killed by ''insurgents." Our soldiers clearly did not intend to kill innocents. But this posturing of America as the great innocent, when everyone knows we kill innocents ourselves, is likely only to make us look more like the devil in the eyes of a suicide bomber.

And here's someone with the unlikely name of Jann Wenner, on the Huffington Post:

If the London bombings are the work of an Al Qaeda offshoot, then you have to fairly say, in the same way we condemn other's [sic] terror, this is in part the result of Bush's War on Iraq.

To Jackson, there is no moral distinction between deliberately targeting civilians and accidentally killing civilians in a war of liberation. To Wenner, it is America's fault that terrorists deliberately target civilians. And note that the Times and Jackson both sneer at the "so-called war" on terrorism. This has been a brief tour of the mindset of some American liberals. Folks, Karl Rove is not making this stuff up."

UPDATE #12: Michelle Malkin reports: NPR's Daniel Snore, er, Schorr bloviated on air this morning that "Tony Blair has paid a heavy price for his support of his friend George Bush." "Heavy price:" PM Tony Blair's approval rating jumped from 32% to 49%.

TEDDY : MARY JO KOPECHNE :: TEDDY'S POLICIES : VIETNAM AND IRAQ

Young Teddy abandoned Mary Jo, and was one of the leaders advocating our abandonment of Vietnam. Now faot old Teddy wants us to abandon Iraq. I figure this proves that Teddy is the epitome of bailing out too early, before the job is done. He'd rather save his own big fat partying-ass than risk it for his fellow man - or woman.

What I don't get is this: how come Teddy is such a Leftist anti-American dove!? After all, Teddy's oldest brother Joe Jr. was a war hero in WW2 who died on a secret mission. His next oldest brother, JFK, was a war hero in the Pacific in WW2 - skipper of PT BOAT 109, and said in his inaugural, "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. This much we pledge—and more." (I have NEVER heard a better statement of the "neocon creed" - except maybe by FDR in his FOUR FREEDOMS speech!). Teddy's next oldest brother RFK was a legal aide to anti-communist Senator Joe McCarthy and as USAG fearlessly fought the Mob.

And Teddy!? He got kicked out of college, murdered a woman, got divorced, and has advocated either retreat from. or appeasement of. every tryant in the world. His brothers must be rolling in their graves.

Teddy has certainly tarnished the Kenedy name and the Kennedy legacy. What a loser. What a shame.

Beth at MY VAST RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY has a "photo" which illustrates this point nicely. (Hat-tip MY PET JAWA.)

FRANCE AND CHIRAC LOSE THEIR 2012 OLYMPIC BID

And, the war-mongering Bush-poodle wins it! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! OR: C'est la vie, baby! Au "reservoir!" OR - as they say in Merry Ol' England: Cheerio!

GEORGE M., GEORGE W. AND IRAQ

ROGER L. SIMON linked to a poster for a GREAT Janes Cagney movie, YANKEE DOODLE DANDY. (One of my all-time favorites.) Which is sort of a coincidence because I was gona post on that movie today, too! WHY? Because I saw a little bit of it late last night (or the night before) on TV. In fact, just the last scene. The movie closes with Cagney - playing George M. Cohan - the GREAT singer/dancer/producer/song-writer - watching and then joining a parade of soldiers marching off to war while singing one of his songs. THE SONG?

"OVER THERE!

The lyrics are what made me wanna post something on the movie. The CHORUS of the song goes like this:

Over there, over there,

Send the word, send the word over there -

That the Yanks are coming,The Yanks are coming,

The drums rum-tumming ev'rywhere.

So prepare, say a pray'r,

Send the word, send the word to beware.

We'll be over, we're coming over,

And we won't come back till it's over Over There.

"We won't come back till it's over Over There." That was a good motto then, and it's still a good one now. George M. knew it then; George W. knows it now. God Bless Our Troops - EVERYWHERE. God Bless America. HAPPY FOURTH!