Missive Retaliation

Wiped out yesterday (with fatigue, not Roethlisbergerism). Many thanks to Jen for keeping the lights on. Likewise, am swamped today, and am being treated (with my own money) to a Mariners-Giants game tonight by my son for Father's Day, so time's short.

Here is what constitutes al Donka's three-pronged counterattack against the three big U.S. victories in Iraq over the past week (the newly-elected Iraqi government, the righteous detonation of "Emir" Zarqawi (man, but that name is difficult to type), and President Bush's triumphant trip to Baghdad.

1) Berate Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for being soft on terrorism, as Senator Chucky Schumer did yesterday:

It is just mind-boggling to believe that the Iraqi prime minister would decide that it would be okay to give amnesty to those who hurt Americans. What kind of ally is this? President Bush, you should call your friend, the prime minister, and get him to retract this evil statement immediately.

How can we ask American young men and women to risk their lives in Iraq if those who seek to shoot at them are then absolved of any blame? This is a statement that should really go down in infamy.

I hope and plead with the President to urge the Iraqi prime minister to withdraw the statement and figure out what consequences should follow if the prime minister refuses.

I could commend those sentiments if they came from anybody in their right mind. Coming from a member of a party that has been trying to sabotage our efforts in the GWOT practically since the conflict started, and particularly in Iraq, demanding that we cut & run and abandon the country to al Qaeda and Iran and Syria, it comes across as cynically opportunistic BS. And those in their right mind are of a soberly realistic mind about Prime Minister Maliki's decision.

What is it with Schumer this week, anyway? The other day he blows a gasket over the Karl Rove non-indictment, and now this. That guy needs to get laid badly if I'm any judge. Otherwise he'll develop a facial tick that'll give him whiplash.

2) Try to gin up "skepticism" about the treasure trove of al Qaeda intelligence seized in the Zarqawi operation:

[T]here's a skepticism that started to effervesce now in the Drive-By Media about the authenticity of the documents, al-AP suggesting: Ah, this doesn't sound like the Zarqawi we've seen on tape, on videotape. It's not the way he speaks - and a couple of other objections.

Never mind that the lamentations of the "insurgency"'s inexorable doom evident in these docs are reflected in past ones. Never mind that this intel led to successful raids and the capture of over seven hundred jihadis and the deaths of over a hundred more in over four hundred sweeps over the past few days. Never mind that the same Extreme Media hacks failed to exhibit any due professional "skepticism" about the Texas Air National Guard memos that were the supposed end of the Bush 2004 re-election effort. They have to grasp any disputatious straw they can on this because it lays waste to every aspect of the "anti-war" argument.

But I saved the best for last.

3) Ridicule President Bush as a "coward" for restricting himself to the Baghdad "green zone" instead of galavanting around the countryside unprotected:

News person Claire Shipman beat me to it on ABC's Good Morning America when she concluded her report on the President's surprise trip to Iraq: "There's a flip side of course; the fact that the President...had...to...sneak...into Baghdad [emphasis not added] hardly suggests a situation nearing stability there."

Back to you Robin Roberts at the anchor desk, for an endorsement: "Good point," Roberts seconded.

Tsk. I used to like Robin Roberts when she was on ESPN. Looks like she should have stuck to SportsCenter.

One might ask when any previous president ever visited a war zone. Or point out, for that matter, that no president ever ventures forth ANYwhere without an army of heavily armed security and mobile fortifications. Or that this isn't the first time that Bush has gone to Iraq, and the last time was over a year and a half ago when Baghdad was a lot less stable than it is now. Or that, if you'll recall, he had a hand grenade thrown at him in Georgia (the country) last year that blessedly turned out to be a dud. I don't recall Claire Shipman or her colleagues ever clucking about Georgian "instability."

Could we interpret this comment as an implicit desire to see the President assassinated in the very war they think he "misled the country" into? Sort of a "poetic justice" deathwish?

Don't rule it out, because after the past week's devastation of the liberal/Islamist cause, that's what it might take for al Donka to finally realize their seditious dream.

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg picks up my comments on Schumer (and a host of his al Donka comrades) and amplifies them tremendously:

What on Earth do these people think cutting and running from Iraq means? When hey say, “it’s not our fight” and “it’s a civil war,” how do they envision this non-American conflict to be resolved after we depart?

If America left Iraq tomorrow and then the Iraqi government granted amnesty the day after that, would these sanctimonious champions of military honor protest? I doubt it.

Do they really think that a negotiated peace to this civil war will involve every single Sunni insurgent being put on trial? Of course not. Indeed, if America bugged out and the factions came to just such an understanding on their own, John Murtha would jump up and down shouting “I told you so!” Nancy Pelosi would smirkingly gloat “See? America was a hindrance to peace!”

Look: Bugging out of Iraq is the greatest amnesty possible because it’s the only way the men who’ve shed American blood can not only get off scot-free but actually win the war. But that is precisely what Democrats want to do. These guys talk about how the sacrifices of American troops would be “devalued” by amnesty, but they see no devaluation of such sacrifice in surrender. They say they don’t want to “reward” those who spilled American blood through amnesty. But amnesty is the consolation prize. It is the set of steak knives and coupon to Chuck E. Cheese’s of rewards. Chasing the infidel American crusaders out of Iraq is the jackpot. And that is precisely what the Democrats are for.

This sanctimony is so dishonest it stews the bowels.

Sure it's dishonest sanctimony - they don't call it "demagoguery" for nothing. But what it really is is contrarianism run amok. Because we're still in Iraq, and we've made sufficient progress there that the country has a democratically-elected Prime Minister who would not be in office apart from the efforts and leadership of George W. Bush, whose hand Mr. Maliki grinningly shook in the other day's triumphant photo-op, the Democrats have to crap on him for something, even if it makes them sound like complete morons. They cannot support or even tolerate anything or anyone that is in any way connected to or the product of the Bush GWOT policy because they, by defintion, have to bitterly resist everything George W. Bush believes, proposes, does, and stands for. Even if it costs them yet another national election, and the nation itself the end of "life in these United States" as we have known it.

And the biggest laugh of all? The amnesty story was, reportedly, wrong, or premature, as the Iraqi government is not moving forward with the idea after all, at least for the time being.

Will al Donka praise Prime Minister Maliki for his hawkish courage, or willingness to "listen to reason"? Or will they assail him as a "thug" who is "provoking the Sunnis into another round of violence" on White House orders in order to "permanentize George Bush's illegal war"?

Yes, that is a rhetorical question.