Michael J. Totten is on his way to Iraq, maybe: "In the meantime, the Lebanese Political Journal fisks a silly op-ed about Iran's nuclear weapons in the New York Times by Flint Leverett. Leverett gets everything wrong. It's hard to get everything wrong, but some people manage to find a way"

Lebop starts with a huge error (lie?) by Leverett:
1) Leverett argues Iran offered to assist in the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 "and establish a new political order in Afghanistan." In return, in 2002, Bush labelled Iran a member of the Axis of Evil in his State of the Union address.

He goes on from there...

AEI - Short Publications: "Out of a long, long list of irritants, two stand out as the most fateful moments in the weakening of Washington's once enthusiastic admiration for Paul Martin.

The first came in February 2005, when the Martin government announced that Canada would not after all join the US missile defence plan. At the Bush-Martin summit meeting in Ottawa in November 2004, Martin had led Bush to believe that Canada would join. The reversal startled and offended the Americans, and especially President Bush, who sets great store by the personal trustworthiness of international leaders. (He famously disliked Germany's Gerhard Schroeder much more than Jacques Chirac, because he felt that Chirac had always been straightforward about his opposition to the Iraq war, while Schroeder had violated a promise not to campaign against it.)"

normblog: "Iraqis and Afghans are [among the] most optimistic people in the world when it comes to their economic future, a new survey for the BBC suggests.
.....
Canadians are bullish not just about their own finances (64%), but also about the economic prospects of their country (63%).

They are joined in their optimism by the people of two countries devastated by war and civil conflict, Iraq and Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan, 70% say their own circumstances are improving, and 57% believe that the country overall is on the way up.

In Iraq, 65% believe their personal life is getting better, and 56% are upbeat about the country's economy.

The experts at polling firm Globescan, who conducted the survey, venture the guess that war may have created a 'year zero' experience of collectively starting again.

Here are two other suggestions: (1) Perhaps their recent past, before the experience of war, serves as a reference point for them, and they hope for a better life relative to their sufferings under the Taliban and the Baathist regime. (2) It may be that they allow themselves some optimism because their priorities are not the same as those of so much of the Western liberal-left.

The unhappiest people? Zimbabweans:"

La Shawn Barber’s Corner--March For Life: "Update II (1/24): It was amazing to be surrounded by so many pro-life people! As expected, I didn’t see many black people in the crowd. But no matter. I care more about their pro-life stance than whether they were represented at a rally.

I’ve never felt more like a “minority” than I did yesterday walking through the crowd. Some people did double-takes when they saw me, and as far as I know I didn’t have anything hanging out of my nose. I pulled their focus because, as I said, there weren’t many blacks there. I’m sure they wanted to ask me why, as if I’d know."

The white pro-life folk need to be more supportive of black pro-life folk. Not sure how to help either group.

neo-neocon Joan Baez likes Michael Moore: "Ah, Vietnam! Those were the days, my friend, we are determined that they'll never end. Here's Joan again:

'If they're honest with themselves, says Baez, veterans of the peace movement, of the war itself or of any great struggle for social change must admit that for all the woes they suffered, there is a terrible anticlimax when it ends. 'Afterwards looking back, it is inevitably the high point of your life. You know that from soldiers, who tell their story over and over. I've heard that even the Vietnamese were depressed.'

Even the Vietnamese were depressed. But maybe, just maybe, they--unlike you, Joan--were/are depressed not because the glory days are over, but because the Communists won."

The anti-war Left still thinks the Commies winning in Vietnam was Morally Superior than the US winning. No matter how many innocent civilian Vietnamese are murdered by the Genghis Khan type commies. Just ask any of the Left: how many Vietnamese would have to be murdered before you'd say it was a mistake for the US to leave?

The Belmont Club on Iran: "If American society really wanted the capability to covertly upend mentally disturbed dictators it would take the trouble to build up the mechanism to do it. Instead, General Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency recently had to explain before a hostile audience at the National Press Club why it was necessary to wiretap Al Qaeda. Nobody in that audience really cares that there are only 40 analysts and 200 operational officers deployed against Iran. Nobody is going to 'take CIA director Porter Goss aside and do a bang-for-the-buck audit of what Langley is doing against Iran' because there are politicians and journalists in abundance who would rather investigate him if he tried. The UN, the Europeans and the US each have a paradigm problem in attempting to confront the dysfunction in the Third World. The structures don't exist to provide the necessary solution, though in the end men like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may compel a belated and painful evolution."

The world needs a Democracy oriented Human Rights Enforcement Group.

Media Lies -NSA legal -: "GEN. HAYDEN: Let me talk for a few minutes also about what this program is not. It is not a driftnet over Dearborn or Lackawanna or Freemont grabbing conversations that we then sort out by these alleged keyword searches or data-mining tools or other devices that so-called experts keep talking about...........
.........So let me make this clear. When you're talking to your daughter at state college, this program cannot intercept your conversations. And when she takes a semester abroad to complete her Arabic studies, this program will not intercept your communications."

Anti-media is even more upset at MSM lying about this than I am! He's right, they're not telling the truth.