I admire you … Ok, I revere your talent … and for once in your esteemed life, I believe you are grotesquely on the wrong side of history. This all involves your rant last week regarding voting choices of conservatives in the 2006 mid-term November elections. Friday, October 20th was a tipping point.

Mr. Limbaugh, you seem to want to divide the known universe between Republicans and Democrats, when in fact the political debate should be about Liberals in the Republican Party and Extreme Liberals in the Democratic Party. There are not five conservatives in all of Congress and only one libertarian. Left wing America is the Republican Party. Conservatives do not share their liberal ideology.

Mr. Limbaugh, I believe we jointly hold the view that the predominant orientation of politicians and the main stream media is wildly liberal. The left-wing bent that conservatives complain about not only encompasses federal and state governments, city councils, and primary and secondary school systems, but attorneys, court systems, doctors, police departments, even the leadership of the U.S. Armed Forces. Left-wing ideology pervades the CIA, FBI, and State Department through all grades of the Federal Civil Service.

Legislation at all levels of government reflects the multi-decade cultural shift in America - which conservatives view as a downhill slide from greatness on a trajectory resembling a gliding anvil. There are a number of symptoms. Just to mention a few, (1) political correctness, which by definition means that people cannot be honest and freedom of speech has been extinguished, (2) refusal by governmental entities to enforce existing laws, (3) a judicial system that seeks to punish the ‘person’ rather than the ‘crime’, assuming a crime occurred and prosecution isn’t simply to achieve an intended social or political outcome, (4) a judicial system that has become an insidious oligarchy, (5) institutionalized discrimination of one citizen over another, and (6), a secular rejection of all faith and an intense attempt to prohibit any visible or audible vestiges of the Christian or Jewish faith in public discourse. There are thousands more. These few make the point that conservatism is but a faint memory in America and that our disintegrating “culture” is what the November mid-term elections are all about.

The critical issue in American politics is a lack of conservatives in broad segments of society, particularly in coastal areas where income redistribution dominates. I have watched with a heavy heart as liberalism, a debilitating disease borne of ignorance and self-interest, has assimilated entire minority cultures in my lifetime.

You impress me as being too astute not to have figured it out. Assailed from every direction, you’re telling your daily radio audience how much worse it will be if we conservatives vote for an extreme liberal in the Democratic Party or intentionally fail to vote. History supports your thesis. We all know you’re right. There is not one conservative who disagrees with you – not one.

Where we profoundly differ is that you want conservatives, lifetime members of the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, to ‘settle for’ what we are being told is all we can expect, all we can achieve, lower our standards, expect less and to vote for corrupt liberal Congressmen who have dealt us this national travesty of a losing hand. We’re simply not going to do it. As a nation, we are better; we deserve better; and we will not quit until we receive better. No conservative is going to buy bologna sliced that thin. No real conservative is going to accept governmental redistribution knowing other Americans were skinned alive to provide it. Somebody in America has to be a patriot. The question is: Who will rise to the challenge and who will be but a lemming? Conservatives will not be lemmings; nor will conservatives agree with you that the king (Congress or the President) is wearing clothes. No conservative will vote for someone willfully doing harm to the United States of America.

Furthermore, the mere fact that our choices on the November ballet are between open-borders liberals in the Republican Party (Jon Kyl, * apprentice to John McCain) and god-forsaken extreme liberals in the Democratic Party is partially your fault.

That’s right; follow this closely please. If you had concentrated on conservatism, individualism and liberty instead of simply Republican vs. Democrat, and had focused the debate more on excellence, initiative and integrity, pointing out the inherent fallacy of choosing between a liberal and an extreme liberal, some of what is happening might not have gained traction. If you had been advocating self reliance instead of income redistribution, truth instead of political correctness, ethics and morality instead of corruption and sexual perversion, the outcome might have been somewhat different. Now, with your voting recommendations to conservatives, you give every indication of directly or indirectly endorsing liberal fascism espoused by President Bush and liberal Republicans in Congress.

“No,” you adamantly say, “It’s not my fault.” While absolutely true that it is not your fault, you are undeniably among the ruling media elite, even a Pied Piper. You know this to be a fact. You are ever so quick to take credit for reason, infallible logic and highly accurate judgment. Whether you care to admit it or not, you are partially responsible for having led us to where America is today - where “we” are today. Otherwise, if this location was not your intended destination, then you, as “The True Majarashii,” would have, could have, and should have led us in a different direction.

But fear not for us. Ultimately you will be proud of your conservative graduates. We are proud conservative Americans. We are not among the mindless, liberal, uneducated, media-indoctrinated, government-sustained, and consumed with self-interest politicians or rank and file. We are not content to accept liberal admonitions, from either Hillary Clinton or Karl Rove that we can never be expected to know or understand the inner workings and hidden mechanisms of that great sidereal movement called self-government. Most conservatives are the original boy scouts (trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent). It would be hard for anyone but liberals and the ACLU to demean that value system and even harder to find a better value system outside a church.

Yes, Rush, I genuinely hold you personally responsible. It is my opinion that somewhere along the way you may have lost sight of what is precious in America (clue: liberty). Your own experiences in Florida should have opened your eyes to see what is being done to all Americans in countless different ways and in innumerable jurisdictions. But your concern was your own ox because it was the one being gored. Do you think you are somehow unique except in God-given talent? Like a 2x4 across your skull, your experiences with the NFL should have given you a clue, a hint to help you realize that everyday people are being hammered for politically correct motives if for no other reason than to extend liberal control.

Yet you refuse stubbornly to look out of one eye or see out of the other. Is it unfair to speculate or to ask if you've been tactically outmaneuvered in your efforts to prevent Congress from metastasizing even further to the left?

Last week you began chiding American conservatives to vote for liberal Republicans as we approach the November 2006 mid-term elections. In doing so, you have now asked conservatives to accept mediocrity, abject dependency and socialism - because you obviously think we deserve no better. You must be the only one who doesn't understand that conservatives are not going to vote to continue the policies of liberal, socially and fiscally irresponsible Republicans and Democrats in Congress, and conservatives will not support the one-world-order, borderless America of the Democratic Party and President George W. Bush.

You cannot even begin to imagine the contempt conservatives hold for national leaders in the current Administration and this liberal Congress who would start a war, any war, without the will to win. Why would Congress start a war without the will to win!? Liberals may not like the battle methods, girlie men that they are, and that’s too bad, but winning decisively always saves lives, both American and non-combatant lives. Winning decisively happens in months, not years. You may quote me: Win decisively, or lose inevitably and live in infamy. And, if I understand you correctly, you now ask us to vote for liberal Republicans who are more consumed with self-interest than winning a war in which Americans are dying? May God have mercy on us all, because Islam, the Democratic Party and their brand of socialism will not!

Conservatives seem to me to be America’s political incarnation of the few, the proud and the brave, and we will not surrender, not to liberalism, not to socialism, not to Islam, not to defeatism, not to appeasement, and not to the Democratic Socialist Party of America. Conservatives will never submit to 20-30 million illegal aliens marching in the streets dictating the terms of surrender and politicians who refuse to do anything about it.

Unquestionably, the Democratic Party has given new meaning to the term “evil,” both in Congress and America’s judicial venues. However, many citizens from both sides of the aisle view Republicans in general as a national disgrace. Republicans (faux conservatives) have given new meaning to the characterization of “irresponsible incompetence,” which some see as the predictable end result of “compassionate conservatism.”

Mr. Limbaugh, you simply have no idea how badly you have underestimated conservative America. You seem to think conservative disaffection in the November election is solely the by-product of media distortion of the state of the economy to influence votes, or the certified cut and run cowardice of liberals in both parties, or inflation rates, unemployment, absence of terrorist attacks, the Patriot Act and civil liberties, and other equally important but irrelevant national issues. In one word, the November elections swing on the American "culture," and conservative American’s are angry.

Generally speaking, the sum total of today's judicial activism and Congressional legislation creates tomorrow's national culture, always in less than ten years. Conservatives, when they go to their polling places in November, will do nothing less than repudiate the culture forcibly imposed upon them by Congress (Democrats and liberal Republicans) and by the judicial system.

Yes, the issues include illegal immigration, in-state tuition, illegal voting, identification not required to vote, refusal to enforce both national and state laws, welfare fraud, drugs and violent crime, human smuggling, document fraud, sanctuary cities, chain migration, anchor babies, free medical care, and on and on. Yes, conservatives are fed up with institutionalized discrimination in education and the workplace. Conservatives are angry over ever-growing irresponsible taxation and income redistribution. If all Americans were truly born “equal,” why are so many still on welfare?

Yes, one of the issues is the abysmal state of education in the United States since the federal government unconstitutionally seized the education system. With absolute certainty, the issues include the loss of free speech, loss of domestic corporate manufacturing and millions of associated jobs, political correctness, Pledge of Allegiance, Ten Commandments, Medicare reform legislation, earmarks, reluctance to abolish the estate tax or adopt some form of flat or consumption tax, refusal to abolish the 16th Amendment, and unwillingness to reform Social Security (Americans be damned).

Without a doubt, the issues include eminent domain, TSA absurdities, attempts to seize, regulate and tax the internet, unwillingness to safeguard classified material, willingness to sell national secrets and WMD technology for campaign funding, willingness to sell American harbors, airports, and highways to foreign interests, socialized medicine, trade agreements that sacrifice United States sovereignty and permit United States citizens to be sued by foreign interests, voting to construct the border wall only under the most intense public pressure and then refusing to fund it, and finally abdicating the entire border wall project to the whims of the pro-illegal alien Bush Administration. The end result is that United States national security is orbiting in ever decreasing concentric circles until someday it will fly up its own terrorist attack. What will Congressional and Gubernatorial liberals have traded for the lives of those who will die? How many votes will make it worth it?

Most egregious was not Congress’ voting to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, but trying to deceitfully shift the responsibility for their own decisions to the Administration and intelligence agencies; and after voting nearly unanimously to go to war, undermining the Commander-in-Chief at every turn. Most Democrats and liberal Republicans do not want to be seen as weak and unwilling to defend the United States of America. But the fact is, liberals don't believe in war of any kind for any motive, even self-defense, and Congress would unilaterally disarm both the military and all citizens if given the chance. The reality is: liberals voted for something very abhorrent to them and did so only in political self-interest. Predictably, ever since, Congressional liberals have evaded any responsibility for their votes in a manner similar to their unwillingness to accept responsibility for anything else in history.

'Despicable' is the word that best describes Congress’ refusing to give judicial appointments an up or down vote, the McCain/Feingold legislation, tobacco litigation, refusal to permit school choice, refusal to permit importation of prescription drugs, wholesale usurping of state’s rights by the federal government and administrative agencies, unrelenting judicial activism without permitting a democratic vote, domestic and foreign abortion at U.S. taxpayer expense, embryonic stem cell research at taxpayer expense, Social Security benefits for illegal aliens, prohibition of public prayer and displays of faith, ignoring constitutional limitations of power and jurisdiction, and on and on and on for another ten single-spaced pages.

What has Congress done to stop it? NAFT, except to gleefully enable our continued cultural demise, as each Congressman individually accumulates personal wealth by selling votes and influence for campaign contributions.

The aforementioned constitutes nothing less than national socialist insanity to a conservative, a cultural meltdown, and Mr. Limbaugh, you want conservatives to vote for more of the same? Anyone who would ask conservatives to vote for their own cultural demise brings back memories of atrocities from the last century in foreign lands. No conservative will ever accept dhimmis status, whether imposed by American liberals in this Congress, by black liberation theology, or as will be imposed someday by Islam. There appears to be very little difference in reality – if any, between the Democratic Party and Islam when it comes to their tolerance of divergent faiths, their tactics toward political opponents, or the issues of social inequality, oppressive taxation, protection of children, and reverence for life.

I lament. If only you were still one of us and less of an advocate of egalitarian ideals. Hopefully, you’ve only strayed due to distraction or fatigue. It is important that when you look, that you are able to see. Mr. Limbaugh, would you please let me clean your glasses? With this letter, I am respectfully trying to do just that, and no more.

You currently face the biggest questions of your professional life. The first question is: “Are you going to be an entertainer or a leader?” To be a leader would require some personal sacrifice on your part which is the hallmark of all great Americans and every active duty and retired member of the United States Armed Forces and National Guard. My family and I sacrificed for this nation for almost a century, multiple lifetimes spent serving and preserving our American birthright – at the daily risk of our mortal existence. Now, for all that is precious in America, it’s your turn. The second question is: “Is it too late?”

This isn’t an election. November begins a cultural and economic tsunami. The outcome may not be to my liking or to yours, but I voted democratically, and legally, and only once, and I will live by the decisions of my fellow American citizens, even if I don’t deserve it – which every liberal throughout American history has refused to do – i.e., accept the will of the people. But be very, very careful however, because conservatives were not bred to carry water and will not serve others for long, particularly the self-anointed.

Mr. Limbaugh, when you get a chance and if you have the opportunity, please extend to me the personal kindness of forwarding this letter and my strong sentiments to another well-intentioned public figure, Mr. John O’Neill, author of “Unfit For Command.” I sincerely hope he can find where he misplaced his conservative philosophy and American citizenship.

John O'Neill: Don't Repeat The Mistake of 1974
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=17635

Red State Patriot

* See archives of www.redstatepatriot.com, “Jon Kyl is an Open-Borders Advocate”

The esteemed historian Samuel Eliot Morrison, in his The Oxford History of the American People, has written of December 7, 1941:

"At the end of this sad and bloody day, 7 December 1941, the 'day that shall live in infamy,' as President Roosevelt said of it, 2403 American sailors, soldiers, marines, and civilians had been killed, and 1178 more wounded."

In Hawaii, nearly 150 planes had been destroyed on the ground; at least six battleships had been sunk or rendered non-operational.

Soon, American air assets in Manila would be destroyed. The Japanese would roll over the Malay Peninsula and take Singapore. Guam and other islands in the Pacific would fall. Hong Kong would be taken. The fate of Bataan and Corregidor would be told by the Death March and hellish prison camps. And more. Much more.

Morrison, again, about December 8, 1941:

"To millions of Americans, whether at breakfast in Hawaii, or reading the Sunday paper in the West, or sitting down to dinner in the East, this news of disaster after disaster, seemed fantastic, incredible. As the awful details poured in, hour after hour, incredulity turned to anger and an implacable determination to avenge these unprovoked and dastardly attacks. On 8 December, Congress with but one dissenting vote declared a state of war with Japan . . . . President Roosevelt, in his war message . . . declared, 'Never before has there been a greater challenge to life, liberty and civilization'."

Yes, on December 7th and September 11th there were sneak attacks. Yes, each day was one of infamy. Yes, there were considerable losses of American (and other) lives. Yes, substantial symbols of American power, the Pacific Fleet, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, were destroyed. Yes, Americans fought back at Pearl Harbor and on United 93. Yes, the news on those days was fantastic, incredible.

And yes, then, as now, “Never before has there been a greater challenge to life, liberty and civilization.”

And yes, on December 8th and September 12th there was among our people, an “implacable determination to avenge these unprovoked and dastardly attacks.”

But with these comparisons, the picture changes.

In 1941, and for nearly four year after, we saw full mobilization of our great nation’s resources: military, economic, social, spiritual, and political. Every sector of our society was engaged.

Men and women volunteered for the armed services.

Women went into factories.

Rationing was imposed.

Religious leaders prayed, and went into combat with their flocks.

Politicians joined hands, giving FDR what he needed to fight ruthless enemies.

Civilians willingly endured shortages and blackouts.

Kids (like me) collected newspapers, tin cans, used fat and grease - all for the war effort.

The radio, newspapers, and magazines supported the war effort, and exercised disciplined self-restraint about what they published.

Celebrities, who hadn’t enlisted, sold War Bonds and entertained the troops.

Images kept patriotic spirits high: Joe Rosenthal’s photo of the Iwo Jima flag raising; MacArthur wading ashore in the Philippines; repatriation of emaciated POWs from Japanese prison camps; Patton, with his pearl-handle revolvers; the London blitz; the liberation of Paris. VE-Day. Then, VJ-Day. Times Square overflowing with joy.

And the man-in-the-street, and his wife, and his children, and all other Americans, knew that we were fighting Germany and Japan (and Italy) because, as FDR said, they posed a grave threat to "life, liberty and civilization.”

As do the radical Islamists who on 9/11 showed us a preview of their nihilism-driven corrupt religion’s vision for mankind, and who, before and since, have maimed and murdered thousands of innocent men, women, and children throughout the world.

But after President Bush’s rousing post-9/11 speech to Congress and the American people, after flags flew everywhere for a few months, after passage of some useful but inadequate legislation, do we see within our country Morrison’s “implacable determination to avenge these unprovoked and dastardly attacks”?

Sadly, we do not.

Indeed, we see the opposite.

We see a narrow Supreme Court majority, infatuated with the romance of international law at the expense of American sovereignty, giving due process rights to terrorists, ignoring established precedent to nullify military tribunals, and treating irregular enemy combatants as if they were mere burglars to be dealt with by our domestic criminal law system.

We see international busybody organizations inspecting our detainee facility at Guantanamo, and solemnly pronouncing a verdict on our treatment of Islamic murderers who would make American citizens their next victims.

We see those murderers coddled, uninterrupted sleep, prayer time, outside recreation, nutritious food, health care by a soft administration bent on mollifying these international busybodies and their domestic crybaby cousins.

We see America-hating organizations such as the ACLU, the National Lawyers Guild, and the Center for Constitutional Rights enlisting thousands of lawyers whose task is to monkey-wrench the terrorist adjudicatory system, as if they were representing O.J. Simpson in a Los Angeles courtroom.

We see leading newspapers disclosing top secret defense information, surveillance, money tracing, secret interrogation facilities, not only with impunity, but to the cheers of America’s left and those in the world who would destroy us.

We see a mostly partisan Democrat Party in Congress and at the National Committee playing politics with laws essential to our national security.

We see a weakened Republican president proffering legislation for military tribunals that provides for terrorists process at once unnecessary and dangerous, only to be trumped by the likes of grandstanding Republican Senators McCain, Warner, and Graham, who, not content to provide Islamic murderers with all the due process enjoyed by domestic criminal defendants, want to provide them, as well, with classified information about sources and methods. We see this senatorial quartet also determined to prohibit the time-tested “good cop/bad cop ‘technique of interrogation, sleep deprivation, loud music, dietary manipulations’ apparently believing that our military and CIA are dealing with some Chicago street gang, not savages out to destroy us and our way of life.

We see public officials acquiescing to the demands of homegrown Muslim organizations, in an effort not to offend, blinding themselves to that religion’s core belief in jihad, martyrdom, and its ultimate triumph.

We see in America, according to a nationwide Scripps Survey Research poll, that more than one-third of our countrymen suspect the government “assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East. Worse, if that be possible, is that sixteen percent of those polled attribute collapse of the World Trade Center towers not to the jet planes hijacked by Islamic terrorists, but to agents of George W. Bush who somehow, clandestinely, blew up the buildings.

We see in our colleges and universities an inbred corps of fanatic intellectuals whose life’s purpose is to brainwash the young minds entrusted to their care into believing that the enlightenment, Western values, and the political philosophy that created and sustained our nation are all malevolent, and that Islam, the religion of nihilism and murder, is mankind’s true aspiration.

We, who at the Battle of the Bulge shot captured German troops wearing American uniforms and on Guadalcanal incinerated Japanese defenders with flame throwers, we who firebombed Dresden and Tokyo, we who dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, now send Senators to Washington who fight the president over “harsh” interrogation of terrorists who often have information that can save American lives.

We see the recruitment of radical Islamists in our prisons, aided and abetted by radical Islamic clergy— paid for by the American taxpayer.

We see politicians willing to turn over America’s national security, and perhaps the ultimate survival of our civilization, to unelected judges, responsible to no one, many of whom have been cloistered for so long that they lack an adequate understanding of the real world.

We see the much heralded publication of the Army Field Manual, providing Geneva Conventions protection barring outrages against personal dignity, like ‘hooding,’ forced nudity, and duct-taping eyes, to Islamic terrorists who behead, dismember, and disembowel captured Americans.

We see, in short, an utter, indeed a frightening, lack of understanding of the principles that animated our creation as the freest most successful nation ever to exist on this earth, principles that carried us through revolution, civil war, world wars, and a cold war.

We see that too many Americans have become ignorant and complacent, and thus broken the faith with those who fought at Yorktown, died at Gettysburg, survived the trenches, landed at Normandy, froze at Chosin, and were imprisoned in Hanoi.

We see our country in thrall to pernicious ideas that have sucked from us the understanding of what we face and the will to face it.

And time is running out.

Unless America wakes up fast, parents, clergy, intellectuals, workers, educators, veterans, celebrities, students, one day, perhaps sooner than later, we will look up and no longer see Ronald Reagan’s “shining city on a hill.”

We will see a Mosque.

Henry Mark Holzer, professor emeritus at Brooklyn Law School.

Hat tip: Richard Doubek

Every regional expert or even those with a passing interest in the Middle East knew the likely outcome of the removal of Saddam's tyranny. This region would return to its historical pattern of internecine violence between the Sunni's and the Shiites. This greater conflict would be further factionalized among various tribes, regions, and even families. It is this fractiousness, compounded by Islam, that has kept the whole region poverty stricken and ungovernable for centuries, if not millennia. Unless we wish to become a colonial power, and maintain Iraq as an occupied colony indefinitely, we need to define clear, obtainable objectives, and extricate ourselves once those objectives have been met. It is my belief that those objectives were known, and clearly identified at the beginning of this conflict, however I suspect that diplomacy and rhetoric have overtaken the original goals, and we are now suffering classic "mission creep".

In the debate prior to the conflict the Neo-Cons (myself included) were advocating the greater use of American military force in the world, to solve problems that had proven intractable to both diplomatic, political, and economic pressures. The events of September 11th 2001 served as a graphic, bloody, illustration of the point that problems cannot be left to fester indefinitely, simply because the necessary actions to alleviate them were unpalatable. It is through this juncture that Iraq is inextricably linked with Terrorism and the War on Terror. A number of States in the middle east were sponsors of Islamic terror, in its various forms, guises, and pseudonyms. While Saddam was harboring a number of well known international terrorists in Baghdad, he was presenting oversize checks for $25,000 in ceremonies to the families of suicide bombers from Israel and the territories. His regime supplied weapons, refuge, and training to virtually all of the alphabet soup of Islamic terror groups dating back to the inception of his regime. In this, he was like his nearby states of Iran, Syria, Libya, Oman, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Lebanon, as well as arguably Egypt and Saudi Arabia (although the support from those two states tended to be less direct and take the form of gifts from influential individuals rather than official state sponsorship).

Since at least the 1970's the United States had been attempting to use various means to halt this state sponsorship of terror groups, and curtail the promulgation of the Anti-Western Jihadist movement. Both Democrat and Republican administrations from Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, through Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, most methods had been exhausted. The US had tried to establish better cooperation with friendly governments, economic sanctions, foreign aid to buy them off, or even pitting opposing movements against one another and supplying both sides with armaments. Following the end of the Cold War, there was a belief that perhaps it would be best to just keep the US out of the region as much as possible, since our presence seemed to be a catalyst around which the Islamists could organize and focus their animus. We treated the problem as a "police/criminal" issue and used only prosecutorial powers to pursue immediate, specific, identifiable threats. These were handled individually as criminal conspiracies, rather than as part of a global ideological conflict. However, the long period of abandoning the field allowed for the development and deployment of those organizations which brought us 9/11/01.

The Bush administration was faced with the dilemma which had bedeviled each administration since the early 1970's, only they faced it with such inescapable clarity, that a new direction had to be taken. The Neo-Cons pointed out that post WWII terror groups had proven unable to function without some level of state sponsorship, or at the very least, state approval. The leftist terror groups of the 60's and early 70's (Red Brigade, Baader Meinhoff, Carlos the Jackal, etc.) had largely ceased to exist as soon as the communist sponsorship of the Soviet's, East German's, and Bulgarians had dried up. It was argued that likewise, Islamic terror groups thrived because they were the agents of a proxy war against the West and Western Civilization by the Islamic States.

The Iranian takeover of the US embassy, and Jimmy Carters timid, ineffective responses, emboldened the Muslim world to believe that the United States was a "paper tiger". They felt they were again in a position to challenge the Great Powers of the Western (Judeo/Christian) world. Enjoying a newfound petroleum wealth, the Islamic world was rejuvenating it's long war against the Judeo-Christian world (how little has changed can be easily noted in Joshua London's "Victory at Tripoli", recounting the Jefferson and Madison administrations' ineffective struggles with these same regions, then called the "Barbary Pirate States"). It was felt that the only way to deal a crippling blow to "Islamic Terror" was to create a hostile operational environment for them, as had happened for the older groups when their supporting states collapsed.

George Bush referred to this in a speech as "getting rid of the rats by draining the swamp". If the US wanted these Islamic states to stop helping the terrorists, it would have to convince them that it was actually perilous to them to keep it up. Since these states were usually despotism's, where a single individual, his family, and friends ran the country, it would not be possible to pressure them in the ordinary sense. Economic sanctions, diplomatic embarrassment, or trade embargo's would have little impact, since the controlling powers did not depend on the well being or approval of their constituents to remain in power. Even in the worst of times a despot can live a lavish life in splendor, regardless of the suffering of his people. Therefore, the only way to convince them to stop sponsoring terror and spreading the ideology that underlies the terrorist activities, was to directly threaten the despots and their families.

We needed to make an example of one of them. We needed to prove that we were willing and able to personally remove any one of them from power, as well as put an end to their dynasty. We picked Saddam.

The reasons for picking Saddam are apparent. He was in violation of a number of UN Security Council resolutions, any one of which technically gave us Causus Belli. In addition, we had been enforcing a "No Fly Zone" since Gulf 1, and so we had extensive knowledge of the theater of operations as well as his air defense systems, since he kept shooting at our planes for nine years. Further, he was not very popular even amongst the Arab leaders, so we expected diplomatic resistance to be half-hearted at best. Saddam was the low hanging fruit. Despite any allegations of WMD's, the need to free the Iraqi people from Tyranny, or some pabulum about "spreading democracy", the real reason for the Iraq invasion could not be openly stated, it had to be implied; "Muslim despots beware, either you shape up and turn your back on the terrorists, or Uncle Sam will come and depose you, impoverish you, hunt down your family, and arrest your friends. We aren't playing your game anymore". Any other protestations were mere "Public Relations".

The Islamic world got the message loud and clear, even if the American electorate did not. This is why the diplomatic circles have been so upset about "regime change." They pulled out all the stops and deployed every means at their disposal to prevent the US from doing this. They knew that if the US proved capable of doing this, the jig was up. They bought off every diplomat they could find with cash. They offered irresistible oil deals to every country willing to throw up diplomatic roadblocks. They contributed money to domestic politicians campaigns in various countries. They offered exclusive stories and special access to media outlets in exchange for the opportunity to push stories negative to the US campaign. They offered lucrative building and business contracts to influential businesses in countries that would be reluctant to lose these contracts with any regime change in Iraq.

They did everything they could to prevent our action, yet we acted anyway. We showed them we were willing and able to act decisively and unilaterally to unseat any one of them, if we so chose. They were crushed. We had delivered our message, and achieved our primary objective after almost a year to finally catch Saddam.

Then we went on to swallow our own Public Relations line, and "expanded" the mission to include unobtainable goals.

Our current reason for remaining in Iraq, if the Administration's spokespeople are to be believed, is to establish a stable, democratic government in Iraq. Students of the region's culture and history have long agreed that this is unlikely to be an attainable goal. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the nature of democracy and its relationship to economic and cultural institutions that must be pre-established for the success of a democracy, but this may be summarized in the statement that we can't do it for them; they must establish a stable, representative government on their own.

As Colin Powell aptly put it, we broke Saddam's Iraq. However, to achieve our true objective, we don't have to buy it. This is a false dichotomy, foisted upon us by those who sought to preclude our taking any action, by requiring we also take on an unwinable action as in indivisible part of the first action. Our objective was achievable when we captured Saddam, and our interests probably would have been best served had we turned him over to the Kuwaitis for trial and execution. A withdrawal from the country following that would have led to complaints and recrimination, but it is hard to stir up hatred with so much crying about, "You left too soon", "we wanted you to stay", or possibly "please come back, it was so much better when you were here".

We will soon be approaching a juncture where we will have a second opportunity to make our point, and score a propaganda victory across the Muslim world, as well as extricate ourselves from the fruitless exercise of "nation building."

At some point in the near future Saddam Hussein will be found guilty of Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, and a host of other offenses. We should begin a rapid withdrawal from the vast majority of Iraq as soon as he is put to death. The purpose of this withdrawal is far greater than just "taking an excuse to pull out". Across the Arab world, there was a tacit, though unhappy, understanding that this conflict was about vendetta. This is something that makes sense to the Arab mind. Saddam was stupid, he intentionally antagonized a great power. You can only do this for so long before that power will make you answer for your actions with your life. The current intelligence analysis that Iraq is serving as a catalyst for Jihad, and serves as a recruiting tool for Jihad around the world is true only to the extent that they believe the US is acting as a colonial power, having seized Iraq for the purpose of controlling the territory and it's oil. If, however, the US draws down its presence, largely removing ourselves from Iraq following Hussein's death, the other argument in the Islamic world will be proven true and hold sway, namely that the US went into Iraq to kill Saddam, and end his dynasty. It will show we have no interest in conquest, but rather that we are a very dangerous power, not to be idly taunted or baited. The Jihadi's do understand there are times when Christendom is too powerful to be defeated.

There is a valid argument to be made that our withdrawal following Saddam's demise would leave Iraq in a state of civil war, and possibly allow it to be taken over by Iran. These are both distinct possibilities, however I suspect that this will occur whenever we pull out, be that two years from now, or 20 years from now. I also suspect that either of those eventualities would in the end play into our hands and achieve long term benefits to our interests, but that is the subject of another essay.

It is sufficient to note that we need not "buy" all of Iraq's problems. If the US were to begin a major withdrawal following Saddam's execution, both our international friends and enemies would no longer have use of the argument that we are attempting to become a colonial power, or that we are acting for selfish interests. We would demonstrate that we have virtually no interest in what the Iraqi people choose to do with themselves, their territory, or their oil wealth. Should a regime come to power in Iraq that continues to behave in a manner we find unacceptable, by sponsoring terror or taunting us in other arena's, we can reinforce our message by militarily decapitating that regime as well. We should not shy away from "repeated visitations,",as they will serve to reinforce the message that the US is not to be trifled with. At some point, a Darwinian process will take hold throughout the world, and regimes will realize that the most certain way to lose power is to antagonize the U.S. hegemon. When we have convinced them to fear us and leave us alone, we will have achieved our objective, and at that point it will be "Mission Accomplished."

By David Roth

11. Banning Machine Gun Parts or parts which can be used in a Machine gun.
12. Banning the carrying a firearm anywhere but home or target range or in transit from one to the other.
13. Banning replacement parts (manufacturing, sale, possession, transfer, installation) except barrel, trigger group.
14. Elimination of the Curio Relic list.
15. Control of Ammunition belonging to Certain Surplus Firearms. (7.62x54R and .303).
16. Eventual Ban of Handgun Possession..
17. Banning of Any ammo that fits military guns (post 1945).
18. Banning of any quantity of smokeless powder or black powder which would constitute more than the equivalent of 100 rounds of ammunition.
19. Ban the possession of explosive powders of more than 1 kg. at any one time.
20. Banning of High Powered Ammo or Wounding ammo.
21. A National License for Ammunition.
22. Banning or strict licensing of all re-loading components.
23. National Registration of ammunition or ammo buyers.
24. Requirements of special storage safe for ammunition and licensing.
25. Restricting Gun Ranges to counties with populations less than 200,000.
26. Special Licensing of ranges.
27. Special Range Tax to visitors. ($85.00 per visit per person).
28. Waiting period for rentals on pistol ranges.
29. Banning Gun Shows.
30. Banning of military reenactments.

PLUS:
Ban of all clips holding over 6 bullets.
Elimination of the Dept. of Civilian Marksmanship.
Ban on all realistic replica and toy guns (including "air soft" and paintball).

PLUS:
The right of gun-violence victims to sue, with financial assistance from government programs, the gun manufacturers.
Taxes on ammo, dealers, guns, licenses to offset medical costs to society.
The eventual ban on all semi-automatics regardless of when made or caliber.

While it’s true Republicans haven’t done very much to defend your gun rights (OK, they have done a little) in six years of control, they offer little support for the anti-rights disarm-the-public plans the left wing will impose on you if they gain power in the next election. It’s your choice. Do you stay home and evaporate your rights, or go out and defend them at the ballot box? Tell your friends.

Easy to forget after six years of Republican rule

If you took the bait and voted early, instead of rising up as a whole and voting on election day like you’re supposed to, this message is too late and you got screwed.

Thanks for reading.
Permission to circulate this message gladly granted.
Alan Korwin, Author
Gun Laws of America

Link to an excellent website and the original article:
http://www.gunlaws.com/index.htm

Red State Patriot commentary:

The liberal gun control lobby just won’t quit, any more than the homosexual, anti-Christian, cut and run, income redistribution for votes, amnesty for illegal aliens, anti-military, anti-national defense, socialized medicine, wildly progressive taxation, dumbing down of Americans, politically correct, attempts to concentrate power in the hands of liberals will quit.

As a retired Arizona police officer, after having faced illegal immigration and rampant crime for what feels like a lifetime, I can unequivocally tell you gun violence studies of the past two decades have been based on blatantly flawed methodology cynically knowing the populace wouldn’t know the difference. The few remaining studies were unduly influenced by arrogant liberal political agendas. The predictable study outcomes were biased conclusions incapable of statistical or medical substantiation. Democrats in particular and liberals in general arrogantly think we are too stupid to know the difference. You should be intellectually offended - but hopefully because you are reading this that begs the question.

Even the Medical Sentinel, the official Journal of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, argued in 2001 that many of those individuals and groups who conducted these “gun” studies decided in advance what they wanted to prove, and then began their study "prejudiced" by their goal. The studies were not objective, either intuitively or scientifically. Here are a few examples of widely accepted claims based on tainted studies promoted by anti-gun special-interest groups that attempt to turn public perception of daylight into darkness:

• Women are in more danger if they own or carry guns. The truth is: women, in particular, are NOT in more danger if they carry or own guns.
• The ease of access to or availability of guns is the cause of crime. The truth is: access to or availability of guns is NOT the cause of crime.
• Mass killings could be avoided if guns were not available. The truth is: mass killings will be avoided more often if guns are available.
• Gun violence is the leading accidental cause of death of children. The truth is: only someone deaf, dumb, blind and brain dead at birth would believes assertions that are statistically the opposite of the truth. It would appear only conservatives recognize or care about the truth.

The “health establishment's” stated and unambiguous objective in 1979 was "total eradication of handguns in the United States." Nothing in that Democratic Party agenda has changed and gun-control ideologues are not taking prisoners. Every officially-sanctioned follow-up study since 1979 has been influenced by the “eradication” objective. Extrapolating, so will future gun-control studies by similar groups of agenda-driven social engineers who seek power and want to be unafraid of citizen rebellion.

Almost predictably, scientific corruption is once again solely of liberal orientation. Gun control is no different than any other form of social engineering. By promulgating preordained research that claims an inverse correlation between the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms and national public safety, liberals hold true to tradition and belief that the end justifies the means. The truth is that the Democratic Party’s pre-ordained gun control agenda is absent not only facts and a basis in reality, but Constitutional justification – assuming the U.S. Constitution still means anything to anybody but a conservative.

What you need to know is that much of the information you receive from the liberal ideological research and media reporting regarding gun control is intentionally tainted, result-oriented, and based on what can only be characterized as inaccurate data, predetermined outcomes and poor science. Calling it science is a huge stretch of sanity. You would best serve your own interests to visit Alan Corbin’s website on a regular basis.

Red State Patriot

What's more, in a late-night concession to win over wavering Republicans, GOP congressional leaders pledged in writing that Native American tribes, members of Congress, governors and local leaders would get a say in "the exact placement" of any structure, and that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff would have the flexibility to use alternatives "when fencing is ineffective or impractical."

The loopholes leave the Bush administration with authority to decide where, when and how long a fence will be built, except for small stretches east of San Diego and in western Arizona. Homeland Security officials have proposed a fence half as long, lawmakers said.

"It's one thing to authorize. It's another thing to actually appropriate the money and do it," said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.). The fine-print distinction between what Congress says it will do and what it actually pays for is a time-honored result of the checks and balances between lawmakers who oversee agencies and those who hold their purse strings.

Political calculations In this case, it also reflects political calculations by GOP strategists that voters do not mind the details, and that key players -- including the administration, local leaders and the Mexican government -- oppose a fence-only approach, analysts said.

President Bush signed the $34.8 billion homeland security budget bill Wednesday in Scottsdale, Ariz., without referring to the 700-mile barrier. Instead, he highlighted the $1.2 billion that Congress provided for an unspecified blend of fencing, vehicle barriers, lighting and technology such as ground-based radar, cameras and sensors.

"That's what the people of this country want," the president said. "They want to know that we're modernizing the border so we can better secure the border."

Bush and Chertoff have said repeatedly that enforcement alone will not work and that they want limited dollars spent elsewhere, such as on a temporary-worker program to ease pressure on the border. At an estimated $3 million to $10 million per mile, the double-layered barrier will cost considerably more than $1.2 billion.

Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), who chairs the Senate subcommittee that funds the Department of Homeland Security, said that before the legislation was approved, the department had planned to build 320 miles of fencing, secure 500 miles of hard-to-traverse areas by blocking roads and monitor electronically the rest of the 2,000-mile-long southern
frontier.

"I think there'll be fencing where the department feels that it makes sense," Gregg said, estimating that "at least 300 to 400 miles" will be built.

Congress withheld $950 million of the $1.2 billion, pending a breakdown by Chertoff of how he plans to spend the money. It is due in early December, after the midterm elections.

'Virtual fence'
Asked whether Homeland Security would build 700 miles of fence, department spokesman Russ Knocke would not say. Instead, he noted that department leaders announced last month that they will spend $67 million to test a remote-sensing "virtual fence" concept on a 28-mile, high-traffic stretch of border south of Tucson over eight months, and then adjust their plans.

"We plan to build a little and test a little. . . . Stay tuned," Knocke said. "We're optimistic that Congress is going to provide the department with flexibility."

The split between GOP leaders hungry for a sound-bite-friendly accomplishment targeting immigration and others who support a more comprehensive approach also means that the fence bill will be watered down when lawmakers return for a lame-duck session in November, according to congressional aides and lobbyists.

The office of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) yesterday released a letter from House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) promising to ensure that Chertoff has discretion over whether to build a fence or choose other options. Homeland Security officials must also consult with U.S., state and local representatives on where structures are placed.

The letter was inserted in the Congressional Record on Friday night because Congress ran out of time to reach a final deal, aides said.

"State and local officials in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas should not be excluded from decisions about how to best protect our borders with their varying topography, population and geography," Hutchison said in a statement added to the record.

Congress also hedged on when a fence would be completed. The law mandating it said Homeland Security officials should gain "operational control" of the border in 18 months. But the law funding it envisions five years. Chertoff has set a goal of two to three years, but only after completion of an immigration overhaul.

Staff writer Peter Baker contributed to this report.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15149231/

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