Happy New Year!

1/1/07

It is 2007. Now what? The Democrats are in charge in the Congress. The Iraq war is still going on and President Bush is talking about how he will cooperate with the Congress on minimum wage and immigration. John McCain is considered to be the front runner for the Republicans and Hillary Clinton for the Democrats. Did you ever feel like you have no choices?
John McCain is a strong supported of the national defense and will, I think, keep us on the road to safety. McCain-Fingold is enough in and of itself to vote against him. Add in the defeated McCain-Kennedy immigration bill and you basically have more of the same. The other Republican candidates all seem to have problems. Rudy may be the best of the bunch but he has his own baggage.
Hillary Clinton is mostly unknown on national defense. So far, her votes seem to be more to satisfy the possible thought that a woman would be too soft to handle national defense. If her votes are truly her beliefs, that is a good thing. Unfortunately, we don’t really know. The Obama silliness will hopefully go away. He is perhaps the most liberal of the current bunch of candidates.
Saddam is thankfully a little longer in his coffin after having been stretched by the neck. If the mainstream media would show something other than bombings in Iraq, people might have a better idea about what is really going on.
Some changes need to be made in Iraq. I am not a general but it seems like the Ethiopians have learned from us the things to do when attempting to quash an insurgency. They said some of the fighters in the earlier hostilities might be pardoned but the leaders will be hunted down and killed. They will find and confiscate all weapons. None will be allowed weapons except for the official military and police.
No nation in the world has ever tried to do what we are so painfully trying. We are attempting to fight a politically correct war in which there are no collateral damage (accidental civilian deaths). As Mr. Sherman once so eloquently put it, "War is hell!" We tried to mitigate that but by so doing, we left a lot of combatants around to be problems over and over again.
If you look critically at any war, mistakes are always made. Remember, the enemy is also trying to win. In this case, they have had a tremendous assist in our media. They play the media extremely well.
I don’t know if a surge in troops will help or not but it is at least a new try that probably will not hurt. If they remove the arms from the militias, that would be a great first step. It should have happened 2 years ago but better late then never. I am sorry to see Rumsfield go but maybe that was needed to shake this dog of a war onto a new footing. If it does that, good.
I hope everyone has a safe and prosperous new year and that all of our troops in harms way return safely.