Now, I haven’t seen the movie Charlie Wilson’s War, and to be honest it looks entertaining, but I have recently read a few articles expressing some angst about some rather large omissions and one specific fallacy noted in the movie.

This piece seems to sum it all up pretty well, but the gist is that many observers have noticed President Reagan, despite his tremendous leadership on the issue, is not given even one iota of credit in the movie for winning the Cold War. Sure, Congressman Charlie Wilson played a role, but Reagan was the one forging the path ahead. In fact, in contrast to the apparent plot in the movie, Charlie Wilson and his CIA buddy needed quite a bit of prodding from conservative Republicans before they were convinced it was worth it to send Stinger missiles to the rebels in Afghanistan.

On top of this glaring oversight is the vexing inclusion of a myth that the US funded Osama bin Laden and the al Qaida terror network against the Soviets. This simply isn’t true, as bin Laden never received any funding from the United States and didn’t begin his little holy war until well after we had left the country.

So says Secretary of Defense Robert Gates:

“We will again face the risk of running out of money,” Gates said at a Pentagon news conference. He said the uncertainly of funding requires the Defense Department to make “short-term plans and short-term decisions.”

You see, the Democrats in Washington, D.C. continue to put everything our troops have sacrificed for over the last year at risk by playing political games with the money needed to win the war in Iraq. Instead of fully supporting our troops and their courageous battle (not to mention recognizing the extraordinary turnaround we’ve seen recently in Iraq), the Democrats in Congress continue to pander to the left-wing, anti-war, lose-at-all-costs wing of their party.

As the article puts it:

Paying for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in fits and starts undermines military planning and risks gains made by U.S. troops over the past year, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday.

It’s a great thing that people want to make the earth’s environment cleaner, more accessible, and make sure it stays that way for our children. Whatever you might think about global warming, I think everyone can agree that clean forests, jungles, oceans, and national parks are in all of our interests.

The question really to me is how do we go about doing this in an effective way that does not complete destroy businesses and the economy. The Kyoto Protocol that has been shoved in our face for over a decade now, is obviously not the right answer. One only has to look at the results to see what I mean:

Emissions worldwide increased 18.0%.
Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21.1%.
Emissions from non-signers increased 10.0%.
Emissions from the U.S. increased 6.6%.

Those numbers are from a report, summarized here, pointing to the very problem that I am talking about. Despite the heavy-handed policies imposed by the Kyoto Protocols, levels of carbon dioxide have risen sharply in an overwhelming majority of nations that signed it.

Of course, the Left’s answer would be that Kyoto simply did not got far enough, and that we should implement even more severe standards to fix the problem. This strangle ignores the fact that:

…emissions from the U.S. grew slower than those of over 75% of the countries that signed Kyoto

Here’s all I’m saying: If you believe in global warming, wouldn’t you at least want to find a solution to the problem not based on blind leftist ideology, but maybe one that actual produces results?

By the way, here are some numbers on other countries rise in emissions from 1997-2004 (the US was at 6.6%):

Maldives, 252%.
Sudan, 142%.
China, 55%.
Luxembourg, 43%
Iran, 39%.
Iceland, 29%.
Norway, 24%.
Russia, 16%.
Italy, 16%.
Finland, 15%.
Mexico, 11%.
Japan, 11%.
Canada, 8.8%.

Remember that whole flip-flop matra?

Well, it’s taken on a new tone. “Get it right the first time!”

Poor John Edwards just gets nailed here…but then again, it’s sorta his own fault…

CRs have a new Facebook profile, become a fan here.

Well, they said it couldn’t work.

They said the war was “lost”.

They said our soldiers were committing attrocities, and their mere presence in Iraq was stiring up terrorism.

They said we must leave Iraq NOW because we had lost the war and our soldiers and their commanders were wrong.

Of course, the “they” were Democrats, and many have since changed their mind yet again on how we should be prosecuting this war on terror by recently admitting noted improvements in Iraq, albeit grudgingly.

How far, do you think, will they go to begin pandering on this one?

“I feel we are back in ‘03 and early ‘04. Frankly I was here then, and the environment is about the same in terms of security in my opinion,” [Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno] said. “What is different from then is that the Iraqi security forces are significantly more mature.”

Lt. Gen. Odierno is the second-in-command in Iraq, or as the artcile puts it “the man responsible for the ground campaign in Iraq”.

The article goes on:

The past six months, however, had seen some of the lowest levels of violence since the conflict began, Odierno said, attributing the change to an increase in both American troops and better-trained Iraqi forces.

And these comments were made when?

…Sunday as Iraqi forces formally took control of security across half the country.

Ohhhh. Sorta like they’re standing up as we stand down, huh?

The whole AP article is short and good. Read it all.

While I was stumbling around on my daily blogroll, I noticed that the GOP Blog has a new look…and along with it, so does the rest of their website. Of course, we all got a preview of this at the Board Meeting in Memphis…

The site is a much needed improvement over what hey had before. It will be very interesting to see how they use it in the coming months with tools like their SMS Mobile Updates.

…isn’t even her. Not that surprising really.
That’s right - Hillary Clinton’s biggest reason to vote for her…is Bill with 26%. He just beats out “experience” with 23%. Whose experience, exactly, they don’t bother to delve into.

At least so says the New York Times/CBS News Poll released on Monday.

Also funny in the analysis is that Obama’s big debut of Oprah Winfrey might have actually hurt him with voters. One 1% of Dems say they would vote for someone because she has endorsed them, compared to 14% who break the other way.

Wait, I thought we were losing…we were being wiped out around the country…it was only a matter of time before Republicans in traditionally safe districts would be running for the hills with angry hordes of voters lead by the Democrats on their heels.

Hmm, it seems not. Both in Virginia and Ohio, the GOP scored wins in congressional special elections. In Virginia, now Congressman Wittman won with a higher percentage than Bush did in 2004. In Ohio, now Congressman Latta held strong despite attacks from the DCCC and captured the seat with a convincing win.

I believe after some huge wins in Louisiana, Mississippi, and now Ohio and Virginia this is something you might call turning the corner…

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