By Diana West
Friday, March 21, 2008
As a conservative in no way comforted by the Clinton-Obama-Pelosi-Reid rhetoric on the war in Iraq, I should have taken heart from the president's fifth-anniversary remarks revisiting the Battle of Baghdad, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the thrill of Iraqi elections, the perfidy of Al Qaeda terrorists, the Anbar Awakening, and the success of the surge.
I didn't.
Was it because the speech, with its tone of meandering reminiscence, sounded more appropriate to a Soldiers Home remembrance 40 years hence? Or was it because I'd heard it all 40 times before? ("Defeating this enemy in Iraq will make it less likely that we'll face the enemy here at home."... "The future of the Middle East belongs to freedom.") That's part of it. But there was something else. In these remarks taking stock five years later, there was very little sense of, well, taking stock.
Indeed, the president was still rhapsodizing about the "transformative power of liberty" -- even as such power has failed to transform any of the Islamic societies we have been micro-managing over the past few years, from Afghanistan to Hamastan, into anything resembling liberty-based societies. ("Liberty" in Hamastan has practically destroyed Israel, a bona-fide ally and genuine democracy.) Turns out the "transformative power of liberty" always hits a rut in a Sharia-based society, but such a blip still doesn't show up on the presidential radar.
Rather, as Bush put it, "a free Iraq will fight terrorists instead of harboring them" -- although wasn't Iraq perfectly happy to "harbor" arch-terrorist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a little earlier this month? (And didn't more than 100,000 Baghdad residents rally in favor of Hezbollah in 2006?) "A free Iraq," the president continued, "will be an example for others of the power of liberty to change the societies and to displace despair with hope."
Such is the conservative dream -- and, more troubling, the conservative strategy to thwart jihad coming from the Middle East. Charles Krauthammer recently contemplated Iraq in similar terms: "Imagine the transformative effects in the region and indeed in the entire Muslim world, of achieving a secure and stable Iraq, friendly to the United States and victorious over Al Qaeda."
I dunno. I look across the Iraqi border and see Kuwait -- "a secure and stable" state, to be sure, "friendly"-ish to the United States, and "victorious" over Saddam Hussein, all fruits of an earlier U.S. victory. But there was absolutely nothing transformative about that accomplishment, not in the region, not in the Muslim world. (You'd think we'd at least get a break on oil prices from countries we saved from Saddam Hussein.) Do we have reason to expect that even a democratic Iraq will turn into something better -- a linchpin of our Middle Eastern strategy?
Listening to Gen. David Petraeus low-ball the much-vaunted surge's effect -- "I wouldn't ever use the word success or victory or anything like that," he recently told Voice of America -- and express frustration at the pace of Iraqi "reconciliation" to The Washington Post, it's hard to say yes. And especially not after sifting through the more disturbing findings of a recent BBC poll of Iraqi opinion. For selective optimists, the poll does indeed reflect an increasing Iraqi optimism, which has cheered conservatives as happy anniversary news. What has gone more or less overlooked (or dismissed) are the survey results indicating a shocking Iraqi hostility to America's efforts on Iraq's behalf.
For example, 79 percent of Iraqis have not much or no confidence in U.S. forces; 70 percent think U.S. forces have done a bad or very bad job; and, most appalling, 42 percent think attacks on U.S. forces are acceptable. Acceptable! This last figure is down 15 points from six months ago, so I suppose we should applaud the "progress." But just imagine if, after D-Day in 1944, 42 percent of the French believed attacking Americans was "acceptable"; or if after the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in 1950, 42 percent of South Koreans did, too; or if 42 percent of Grenadians after being liberated by Ronald Reagan in 1983 were of the same violently anti-American mind.
Would we consider such peoples worthy of American blood and treasure? And would we consider them likely linchpins of a long-term alliance?
"Five years into this battle, there is an understandable debate over whether the war was worth fighting, whether the fight is worth winning, and whether we can win it," the president said. Me, I'm still waiting for a straightforward discussion of what it is we can reasonably expect to win. Diana West is a contributing columnist for Townhall.com and author of the new book, The Death of the Grown-up: How America's Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization.
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ReplyDeletePeter Zion, Stratfor's Director of Global Analysis, looking at the US position in regard to Iraq, Europe and Russia.
ReplyDeleteIraq is starting to "get settled." Political alignment is starting to shape up in Baghdad proper and the US has succeeded in turning the Sunnis from an enemy into an ally. The ground is set for a sustained withdrawal and a shift from a tactical overwatch to a strategic overwatch.
The US is "really only concerned with making sure that Iran doesn't try to pull a fast one" such as trying to take over Saudi Arabia. This requires US bases in the desert which are not responsible for the day to day patrolling of Baghdad. The fact that the US has started to see that as feasible means they can start to think about other things. Such as Russia.
President Bush will lobby the rest of NATO to extend a Membership Action Plan (MAP) to Georgia. Canada and others have suggested that a MAP be offered to Ukraine as well. Obviously Russia is not happy. Ukraine is vital to Russia's aspirations or pretensions of being a global power.
The Kosovo decision was masterminded by the French and Germans who have decided it was allright to ignore Russian concerns . Germany and France are no longer looking to make deals with Russia but to cut Russia out of deals.
The US has begun to see the light at the end of the Iraqi tunnel. The US currently has a more favorable geo-political alignment than it has had in years. If you're Russian, this is shaping up to be the worst of all worlds, but "for the US it's about as good as it gets."
How Much Bad Debt? The Economists Who Were Right Say $1 Trillion
ReplyDeleteHousing Vacancy Rates
Clickable Map
Pentagon divided on Iraq strategy
ReplyDeleteGround commanders want to keep a large troop presence but the Joint Chiefs worry about the strain of long tours of duty. The differences carry broad implications for the U.S. role in Iraq.
WASHINGTON — By many important measures, the U.S. military has reason to feel better about Iraq. Violence has declined, casualties are down, the president is touting the current strategy and the public's anguish has ebbed.
But inside the Pentagon, turmoil over the war has increased. Top levels of the military leadership remain divided over war strategy and the pace of troop cuts. Tension has risen along with concern over the strain of unending cycles of deployments.
In one camp are the ground commanders, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, who have pushed to keep a large troop presence in Iraq, worried that withdrawing too quickly will allow violence to flare. In the other are the military service chiefs who fear that long tours and high troop levels will drive away mid-level service members, leaving the Army and Marine Corps hollowed out and weakened.
"For example, 79 percent of Iraqis have not much or no confidence in U.S. forces; 70 percent think U.S. forces have done a bad or very bad job;"
ReplyDelete---
I wonder why that is so much at odds from what the troops report about their interaction w/Iraqis?
I've heard conflicting stories from the BBC and the Guardian lately too. BBC with more positive pro US interviews and the Guardian with anti-US. I guess the answer you get depends on who you talk to and what they think you want to hear.
ReplyDeleteI don't know...
Boardtracker
ReplyDeleteMurder Cycles
Check out Orlando on that Clickable Map, Whit.
ReplyDeleteWhere are you?
""We Will Accept No Outcome but Victory." George Bush"
ReplyDeleteI thought we already had our victory on May 1, 2003, "Mission Accomplished". How do conservatives define victory now, after moving the goal posts?
Funny stuff.
ReplyDeleteSaddam is gone, the WMD threat removed.
All that is left is to restructure Iraqi society, which we have given up upon, well maybe just moved the Goal posts.
The window of operations is now 95 years. Slow, but sure progress is projected.
What was that other poll, that of the US military officers who thought, 40% was it not, that the Iraq operations had strengthen the Iranians position in the region.
Or was it 40% who thought the US military was broken? The numbers were numbing, either way.
End game first, never wins.
Mr Bush forgot his rhetoric, forgot his mission, lost his war on terror. Now he'll hand off to a new President and a Senate of filibuster proof Democrats.
Those that sponsored terror, still do
Those that were against US, still are
Baathists win in Anbar
Sharia rules in Basra
Johnny is marching home, hoorah! hoorah!
Don't forget the Taliban has been enjoying safe haven in Pakistan and our strong man in the region is on his last legs. The Pak parliament inclined to talk with the tribes of the Frontier rather than fight them.
ReplyDeleteOn the upside, bin Laden has been marginalized. He and Doc Z - all bluster, no follow through. For how long? Who knows.
It'll be interesting to see how much US taxpayer $$ will be flowing into Pak for more aid in order to keep the land routes and airspace into AFG open. Funding the Taliban while we fight them.
My advocacy is simple. Invest the $500 billion a year currently spent on importing oil, in America, on clean renewable energy. Stop enriching islamers and foreign dictators with megalomaniac ambitions and dreams.
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to argue with the points that we saved the Mexicans from bankruptcy, Kuwait from extinction, and whatever we are doing in Iraq and have not received a two cent reduction in a barrel of oil from any of them. Saudi Arabia is building three new cities Dubai style. I agree with Mat.
ReplyDeleteIsn't funding the Taliban while we fight them a basic American Value?
ReplyDeleteGotta Fight Fair.
"This contextual analysis of Wright’s venom, this extenuation of black hate speech as a product of white racism, is not new.
ReplyDeleteIt’s the Jesse Jackson politics of racial grievance, expressed in Ivy League diction and Harvard Law nuance. That’s why the speech made so many liberal commentators swoon:
It bathed them in racial guilt, while flattering their intellectual pretensions.
An unbeatable combination.
But Obama was supposed to be new. He flatters himself as a man of the future transcending the anger of the past as represented by his beloved pastor. Obama then waxes rhapsodic about the hope brought by the new consciousness of the young people in his campaign.
Then answer this, Senator:
If Wright is a man of the past, why would you expose your children to his vitriolic divisiveness?
This is a man who curses America and who proclaimed moral satisfaction in the deaths of 3,000 innocents at a time when their bodies were still being sought at Ground Zero.
It is not just the older congregants who stand and cheer and roar in wild approval of Wright’s rants, but young people as well.
Why did you give $22,500 just two years ago to a church run by a man of the past who infects the younger generation with precisely the racial attitudes and animus you say you have come unto us to transcend?"
- Krauthammer
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ReplyDelete(It's easy to understand why Barry chose to attend the Church)
ReplyDelete...it is impossible to understand why he would expose his children to such evil unless he bought into some of it himself.
Obama channels Jimmy the Greek:
ReplyDelete“The point I was making was not that my grandmother, uh, harbors any racial animosity — she doesn’t — but she is a typical white person who, uh, you know, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know, you know, there’s a reaction that’s been bred into, uh, our experiences that— that don’t go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way.”
Audio is available from 610 Sports Radio in Philly,
interview with Angelo Cataldi:
And wasn’t it a bit of a cheap shot to take public aim at grandmother, who sacrificed so much for Obama, who served as his surrogate mother during his high school years? If she used racial and ethnic stereotypes, that was wrong.
ReplyDeleteBut the episode about the bus, as related in his book, is hardly a damning indictment of a secret racist. After Obama’s grandmother confessed to having been harassed by an aggressive panhandler, Obama writes:
“He (Obama’s grandfather) turned around and I saw now that he was shaking. ‘It is a big deal. It’s a big deal to me. She’s been bothered by men before. You know why she’s so scared this time? I’ll tell you why. Before you came in she told me the fella was black.’ He whispered the word. ‘That’s the real reason she’s bothered. And I just don’t think that’s right.’
---
His liberal bastard grandfather would not give her a ride to avoid being mugged by a homeless guy who happened to be black.
...that makes Grandma LITERALLY fodder for throwing under the bus!
where is that rugged individualist, libertarian, or conservative
ReplyDeletedoug is now commenting on the leftist, collectivist potential POTUS and he needs defending
ran out on the last thread again
when catholic obfuscation fails...run away
come learn us
Gee, I missed that one.
ReplyDeleteMy apologies, Whit.
Back when we saved Kuwait from extinction there was a lot of talk about liberalizing the place, votes, women's rights, etc. Whatever came of that?
ReplyDeleteOn C2C last nite there was a lot of talk about the Bakken Formation in Dakota and Montana. Evidently there's some oil there, hard to get out.
Poor elijah, he never got a kiss
ReplyDeletepoor old elijah, he don't know what he missed.
Time and threads just keep moving on, certainly do not wait on you or I to reply.
If you want to continue the discussion of the Pope's culpability in Salvadorian deaths during the Catholic Liberation Theology wars, have at it.
I'll answer at my leisure, or not at all.
As suits me.
If you wish to continue name calling, that's okay, too.
I know Salvadorians that died, due to the Pope's silence on the matter.
Implied consent and approval, by El Papa, by staying silent. Same as Obama has been accused of.
Goose and gander, the same standard applies.
Tens of thousands died, in total. Though I knew but a few of them.
Religion is best kept out of politics, but bring it on, if you have any points beyond name calling
Hmmm. 20% of Obama voters will vote for McCain if Hillary is the nominee, and 19%% of Hillary voters will vote for McCain if Obama is the nominee. Hurt Feelings
ReplyDeleteThe great liberalization of the Middle East, the lynch pin of Team43s foreign policy.
ReplyDeleteIt's working so well.
Rather than defeat the enemy, we failed to name it. Now the past allies, that became enemies, are allies once again.
Those Baathists, just keep on turnin'. Now it is the past allies, that are the future enemies.
al-Sadr has gone to ground, building his political base, while the US Army enforce his words of cease fire upon those that break faith with the Mahdi Army policies.
Doing the bidding of the Mahdi, in Baghdad.
Elections are coming, again, to Iraq. al-Sadr's bloc is gaining ground, at least in the recent polls. Those that find it acceptable to attack US troops, our allies.
In Basra and Anbar.
95 years and a wake up.
Only way to stop that bleeding for the dems is the 'dream ticket' it would seem. But Hillary wouldn't take second place, I'd bet.
ReplyDelete---------
New life forms found in Antartican waters. Giant starfish among other curiosities. Life Forms
Deuce, it looks like there's some Equal Opportunity Breachers over at State.
ReplyDelete"Religion is best kept out of politics, but bring it on, if you have any points beyond name calling"
ReplyDeletei don't know how many more times i can post it impostor
i have posted the same thing on two different threads and you keep running, dodging
if you are not an impostor why are you so sweet for a collectivist
maybe habu or cutler can help you with your responses
Reverend Wright's an impastor:) So's Hagee. Impastors, all.
ReplyDeleteI take pride in being a simple poster.
"We Will Accept No Outcome but Victory."
ReplyDeleteWhat is it this month?
"Ground commanders want to keep a large troop presence..." Really. All of them. Have they been canvassed? Formed an advocacy group?
The admin long ago abdicated its responsibility for laying out the objectives that the military's actions must facilitate and achieve. Instead, we've had years of actions driving objectives. That much hasn't changed since Rumsfeld's departure, and it's a forfeit of responsibility that Gates can't paper over.
War-fighting strategy is the purview of the civilian leadership. Were that they had one.
Just don't want to leave their comfort zone in which the latest celebrity four star tells them what needs to be done. But that's no surprise.
Who's driving the bus?
Neither the Pentagon nor the WH. Chew on that for awhile.
"Out the door, one cross each, line on the left."
ReplyDeleteIn honor of Good Friday, here is Eric Idle's Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. From the crucifixion scene in Life of Brian:
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (from Monty Python)
words and music by Eric Idle
Some things in life are bad
They can really make you mad
Other things just make you swear and curse.
When you're chewing on life's gristle
Don't grumble, give a whistle
And this'll help things turn out for the best...
And...always look on the bright side of life...
Always look on the light side of life...
If life seems jolly rotten
There's something you've forgotten
And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing.
When you're feeling in the dumps
Don't be silly chumps
Just purse your lips and whistle - that's the thing.
And...always look on the bright side of life...
Always look on the light side of life...
For life is quite absurd
And death's the final word
You must always face the curtain with a bow.
Forget about your sin - give the audience a grin
Enjoy it - it's your last chance anyhow.
So always look on the bright side of death
Just before you draw your terminal breath
Life's a piece of shit
When you look at it
Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true.
You'll see it's all a show
Keep 'em laughing as you go
Just remember that the last laugh is on you.
And always look on the bright side of life...
Always look on the right side of life...
(Come on guys, cheer up!)
Always look on the bright side of life...
Always look on the bright side of life...
(Worse things happen at sea, you know.)
Always look on the bright side of life...
(I mean - what have you got to lose?)
(You know, you come from nothing - you're going back to nothing.
What have you lost? Nothing!)
Always look on the right side of life...
Good Grief, is today Good Friday? It's still March.
ReplyDeleteIf today is Good Friday, that would mean Wednesday was Holy Wednesday, Thursday was Maundy Thursday, tomorrow is Holy Saturday, and Sunday is Easter! And I promised myself I would go to the sunrise service at the old church out in the country this year, but it's still cold here!
ReplyDeleteAnd I promised myself I would go to the sunrise service at the old church out in the country this year, but it's still cold here!
ReplyDeleteFri Mar 21, 02:43:00 PM EDT
Easter's ALWAYS nicer in the south, bob. The trees are in bloom, the baseball diamonds have been busy for a month of weeknights, the ladies are in chiffon, and little girls don't need an overcoat to wear to service with their shiny new white Mary Janes and gloves.
If that's not a reason to relocate, I don't know what is. Endless winter up north. Sucks.
"Turns out the "transformative power of liberty" always hits a rut in a Sharia-based society, but such a blip still doesn't show up on the presidential radar"
ReplyDeleteIronically Iraq was NOT a Sharia-based society UNTIL we invaded, occupited, and helped them put it in the constitution.
---
Mətušélaḥ said...
"My advocacy is simple. Invest the $500 billion a year currently spent on importing oil, in America, on clean renewable energy."
And Duece agrees. Tell me gentleman, how this is supposed to work? Shall we turn the gas stations into centers for folks to come (via foot I presume) to deposit their money in to the "clean renewable energy" fund? The developers of the "clean renewable energy" then pump the money into their coffers?
Elijah, Doug, the objection I have, and many others, over your views of right is the blatant and sheer hypocrisy of it. You expect Obama to repudiate to your satisfactions the views of another yet you run from the notion of applying the same standard to others - McCain on Hagee, Catholics on the Catholic culpability with pedophile priests, or even (to introduce a new one) Jews being tarnished by the actions of the radical jew. It is all guilt by association and it is foolish yet you persist in it. There is no real sense in doing this McCain... yet. Maybe liberals are too smart for their own good because they recognize the absurdity of it yet those on the right bray on and on and on thinking they have some deep insight into Obama and his hidden agenda.
Deuce, Chris Matthews says it's in Your DNA
ReplyDeleteRelax, you're not at fault, a man can't change some things.
Maybe I missed it but McCain didn't join unca Hagee's church(did he?) sit there for 20 years, be married by the guy and have his daughters baptised by the guy, and send them there for spiritual training.
ReplyDeleteBut you're right Ash, there is a lot of special pleading that goes on, always has been, and always will. I'm with Doug, we ought to bulldoze half the churches and all the mosques, I believe he said. Gotta run.
One thing that is not in Chris Mathews' DNA is, dancing. He is a real world-class stroker and sure did not run with the guys I knew in Philadelphia.
ReplyDeleteBut McCain did proudly seek and accept Hagee's endorsement. There are photographs of the two hugging. He may have attended some services as well. At what point does the threshold get crossed and your interactions are interpreted as being a whole hearted endorsement of everything he said? The simple answer is you never reach that point. Heck you voted for Bush twice, maybe even campaigned for the fellow, does that mean you accept everything he has done and said. Of course not.
ReplyDeleteAsh, do you think there is a difference between sleeping with a woman two or three times and perhaps marrying one for twenty years?
ReplyDelete"it is all guilt by - association - and it is foolish yet you persist in it."
ReplyDelete..............................
sorry ash, you are just being dishonest.
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
” I FOUND A SOLACE IN NURSING A PERVASIVE SENSE OF GRIEVANCE AND ANIMOSITY AGAINST MY MOTHER’S RACE"
“The emotion between the races could never be pure, even love was tarnished by the desire to find in the other some element that was missing in ourselves. Whether we sought out our demons or salvation, the other race would always remain just that: menacing, alien, and apart.”
“That hate hadn’t gone away,” he wrote, BLAMING “WHITE PEOPLE — some CRUEL, some IGNORANT, sometimes a single face, sometimes just a faceless image of a system claiming power over our lives.”
“It remained necessary to prove which side you were on,to show your LOYALTY TO THE BLACK MASSES, TO STRIKE OUT and name names
in The Audacity of Hope Mr. Obama writes that the Black Value System is a "sensible and heartfelt list"
Who do you think the captors are ash in concept 8 of that value system?
and to this day, Mr. Obama defends the minister and the church
It is and always will be about the oppressed and oppressors with you ash.
That's why you hate America and can not repudiate those who sound a good bit like Mr. Hagee
what is a typical white person BTW, or a typical Black, Asian, or Latino for that matter
i do appreciate the discussion but am bored with it all
but we'll revisit it later
check please
Lordy, elijah, you are obsessed with trying to draw people in to defending others views by getting them to explicate "who the oppressors" are. It is you who is being dishonest, disingeneous and whom talks through your hat.
ReplyDeleteWrights views are his own, as are Obama's. Obama, in that last speech, actually spoke to the nation as if they were adults capable of understanding some nuance yet many insist on trying to get him to do a wholesale renunciation of Wright, and since he hasn't, the insist on tar and feathering him with all of Wrights words.
"actually spoke to the nation as if they were adults capable of understanding some nuance "
ReplyDelete---
OTOH, Obama had no qualms about exposing his CHILDREN, to anti-USA Hatred, lies, and vitriol.
Why?
Deuce,
ReplyDeleteTwo or three times, you might escape w/o PTSD.
At the risk of falling farther behind in my work...I don’t even care so much about the political aspects of the good Reverend’s act (and it is probably an act, considering he felt no compunction about visiting the Clintons at the White House about 10 years ago). Short list: US of KKKA? US governmented invented the AIDs virus? Chickens coming home to rooooooooooooost!
ReplyDeleteFrankly, I can hear much of the same thing and its permutations elsewhere, like the local college campus, Daily Kos, or on a particularly brave day, from you Ash.
Something more brazen to someone like me, however, is the basic fact he actively sought out, joined, and then promoted, a black-nationalist (racist) church. You see, I actually am “post-racial” and have no problem judging individuals as individuals. No special brownie points for skin color, whatever it is. In that respect, I don’t need a race-obsessed hypocrite lecturing me, because he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. There’s nothing fundamentally different between a black-nationalist and white-nationalist church. They operate under the same premises.
No youthful indiscretion and not even born into it. He didn't try to change it from the inside. 20 years going and he’s still a proud member. The only good thing is that it presents another opportunity to watch “nuanced people” explain why associating/dedicating yourself to the black David Duke for 20 years really isn’t that wrong, because in this case it’s “right” people who by the way, can’t be expected to show self-responsibility.
Then again, it is not like it hasn’t been done before. Leading lights, after all, spent years apologizing for a race-obsessed, militarist, and murderous group such as the Black Panthers (the new version of which, of course, had its endorsement of Obama displayed on his website yesterday, until it was quickly taken down). 30 years later, my mother was shocked to find out who she, as a naive college kid, had been giving moral support to (“Eldridge Cleaver? Wasn’t he a civil rights leader?”).
Good luck with that pretzel show. Unfortunately, I fear the cognitive dissonance will be a killer – well, to a greater extent than it already has been.
Now all we need is someone to not only apologize for Wright, but out and out agree with him. Can I get a "The white race is a cancer on human history," anyone?
Cutler,
ReplyDeleteHaving his kids go to that hate-filled Hellhole is simply evil,
pure and simple.
Imported Treats of the Year from the Chicoms:
ReplyDeleteThomas the tank simulated toxic Train Wreck.
Seafood Roulette
Doggie Death Bowl Special.
Injectable Infection!
Plastic Easter Eggs, featuring lead poisoning for the little foragers in the bushes.
---
It's all good, Kids, esp for those New Chi-com Buy America Ventures.
Mad Fiddler said...
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link to American Thinker, Doug.
---
It really is an astounding treatise.
I have to stop reading for a while; I can't take the roller coaster of flickering soul-bursting hope followed so closely by dark despair.
That is, hope from one writer's clarity and insight, followed by gut-wrenching disappointment at the brain-smashing pretzel logic of the next.
I must drink a bottle of gin, or play my fiddle, or shoot down some Zeros in 8-bit color.
Chip said...
ReplyDeleteWe used to do this kind of thing, in the days before Political Correctness: Der Fuhrer's Face
MOSCOW — Russia's parliament on Friday urged the Kremlin to consider recognizing the independence of two separatist regions in neighboring Georgia, stepping up Moscow's campaign to keep the former Soviet republic out of NATO.
ReplyDeleteThe State Duma, which overwhelmingly adopted the non-binding declaration, is dominated by President Vladimir Putin's United Russia party and would not have passed the measure if the Kremlin opposed it.