Iraq:

Let Freedom Rock, August 15, 2005
Some folks are upset that the Pentagon is planning a support-the-troops rally for the fourth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks - and are criticizing the Washington Post for co-sponsoring it. Which seems a bit over the top as the WaPo exists because of the First Amendment and the First Amendment still exists because the American military has been willing to risk all for freedom for more than two centuries. The headliner for the...

Kickin' Back in Iraq, August 10, 2005
Picture of 1LT Lance Frizzell, 278th Regimental Combat Team, TN National Guard, Diyala Province, Iraq. Picture taken at FOB Cobra which has National Guardsmen from Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin. You can't see 'em, but the base is surrounded by insurgents who are on the verge of victory. Yeah, right. Photo found at RushLimbaugh.com's "Club Gitmo" photo collection. I want a Club Gitmo t-shirt....

Dropping the Democracy Bomb, July 08, 2005
In the aftermath of the London bombings, it's worth asking again, what is the root cause of terrorism? Getting the answer right is important because if all our political, military and cultural efforts to combat Islamic terror are based on the wrong answer, they likely will fail. Harvard University researcher and professor Alberto Abadie has looked at the data and found that terrorism is bred by a lack of freedom. There is no data to...

"This We'll Defend", May 24, 2005
A lot of great stuff over at Lance Frizzell's blog, Lance in Iraq. Just click and scroll. If you're looking for another good military blog from Iraq, check out Major K's blog. Check out the May 22 post titled "This We'll Defend" to learn the connection between Harry Connick Jr. and a year in the sandbox. I found it via Randy Elrod's blog Ethos....

Reports from Iraq, May 01, 2005
Thunder 6 writes from Iraq about an IED attack that injured some of his comrades. Read the whole thing....

On A Clear Day, April 21, 2005
Lance Frizzell has a beautiful photograph of the view over Iraq. It's also a picture of the primary tool with which freedom is achieved and defended in this world....

Pulitizer for a Ghoul?, April 09, 2005
Thunder 6 reflects on a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph from Iraq.In my humble opinion the unnamed photographer who took the snapshot isn’t an keen eyed photojournalist. He isn’t a Pulitzer Prize winner. He isn’t a AP stringer. He isn’t even a man. He’s a ghoul. A wretched fool who makes his money chronicling the misery his insurgent contacts inflict on their countrymen. I wonder what the going price on a soul is these days? Maybe I...

Pictures of the Truth, April 02, 2005
8,989 different people saw 1Lt. Lance Frizzell's photos from Iraq that I posted here yesterday. That's 8,989 people who got a little different view of Iraq than that which the mainstream media doles out on a daily basis, thanks to Frizzell, who hails from Rutherford County, Tennessee, and is deployed with the Tennessee National Guard's 278th Armored Cavalry. Think about it - when is the last time you saw pictures of happy Iraqi children in...

The Story Behind The Pictures, April 01, 2005
After seeing some great photos of Iraqi kids, including inside an Iraqi school, at Lance Frizzell's blog yesterday, I emailed him for the story behind the pictures, and he sent an email that I've taken the liberty of editing here into a news report, accompanied by the pictures......

Hearts and Minds, March 31, 2005
Lance Frizzell has some great photographs from Iraq, including some great close-ups of young Iraqis demonstrating wildly at the presence of American troops....

Why the Press is Paying Less Attention to Iraq, March 29, 2005
Lance Frizzell wonders if declining press coverage of Iraq means the American media is beginning to realize just how well things are going there.My impression is that current war correspondents are disappointed by not getting their own Vietnam to cover so they express resentment by simply not reporting our success. Contrast that with WWII journalists who actually - get this - rooted for an American victory during the war.Frizzell, deployed to northern Iraq, also provides...

Happy New Year!, March 26, 2005
Lance Frizzell has pictures of angry young Iraqis demonstrating against the presence of American troops a Kurdish New Year's celebration. The war on terror looks to be going poorly......

Photos from Iraq, March 25, 2005
Lance Frizzell has posted a nice photo essay from Iraq, showing American soldiers tending to an injured Iraqi. If I edited a daily newspaper, I'd be combing the blogosphere for photos like these taken by blogging soldiers who are from my newspaper's region, and for blog posts that tell the story of the war in the soldiers' own words, and then I'd be publishing a multi-page special section. And if I was a book publisher......

Winning the War on Terror One Wheelchair At A Time, March 23, 2005
Lance Frizzell offers a 3,000-word response to the comments made by anti-war protestors at a recent Nashville anti-war rally. But it's a quick read because instead of words, Lance provides three pictures that ought to embarass the anti-war crowd into the silence for their ignorance....

Mud-Level Diplomacy, March 22, 2005
Thunder 6 tells a moving story of "mud-level diplomacy" in Iraq:If you took a cursory glance at our reconstruction efforts in Iraq you would probably be blinded by the vast sums being invested in the hobbled infrastructure. It is a necessary step, the global version of the "you break it, you buy it" philosophy. But the future of Iraq doesn’t rest on these repairs alone. In fact if you were to focus on the "big...

Of War and Love, March 22, 2005
What was that mantra of the '60s hippies? Apparently, you can make both....

Thoughts on Palm Sunday in Iraq, March 21, 2005
Thunder 6 writes about faith and free will from the perspective of a Palm Sunday service in Iraq.I walked over to our chapel, a drab concrete building whose defining characteristic is an odd architectural feature that resembles a missile ready to puncture the sky, and entered its single room. As I took my seat I looked around and noticed that in addition to my Army brethren there were Marines, Bangladeshi contractors, Eastern European truck drivers,...

"Ah, the modern liberal mind on display.", March 21, 2005
Lance Frizzell has some more thoughts about the misplaced priorities of the misguided folks at the Nashville Peace & Justice Center's sparsely-attended weekend anti-war rally ....

1.1 Million Nashvillians Skip Anti-War Protest, March 20, 2005
An Iraqi blogger wrote the following on the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq: the following words:To may outsiders, like those who protested last year, who will protest today. This was a fools errand, it brought nothing but death and destruction. I am sheltered in Iraq, but I know how the world feels, how people have come to either love or hate Bush, as though he is the emobdiement of this war. As though this...

A Handy Reference, March 19, 2005
Lance Frizzell: This picture is a handy reference for those that say Saddam did not have WMDs...

Thunder 6, March 17, 2005
When the history books recount the Iraq war, they'll get it wrong if they rely on only the Big Media's coverage and ignore the great on-scene coverage coming from military members, civilians and Iraqis who are blogging the war. The photo above comes from a new mil-blog from Iraq, 365 And A Wake Up, written by "Thunder 6," a member of the California Army National Guard currently deployed to Iraq and stationed in Baghdad....

Photoblogging Iraq, March 13, 2005
Lance Frizzell has been posting a slew of photos from Iraq that show just how badly we're losing the war there. Just go here and start scrolling....

The Arab Street Erupts, March 11, 2005
Lance Frizzell in Iraq is pointing to a grim assessment of the state of the battle against the Iraqi insurgency. Lance also has posted a photo of Iraqis demonstrating after a U.S. military operation: The Arab street erupts. Lance had to get right in the faces of the demonstrators to take the photo, which takes a lot of courage when you're a member of the U.S. military. The kind of courage military guys have but...

Photoblogging the Battle in Iraq, March 11, 2005
Lance Frizzell photoblogs the distribution of school supplies to children in northern Iraq by the U.S. military, and says, "pity there were no journalists around." Ah, but there was a journalist there, Lance. You. With your digital camera. That's the beauty of the blogosphere - it allows anyone to be a journalist. And in the case of the War on Terror, it is allowing the truth in all its complexity and variety and detail about...

Photos From The Front Line, March 09, 2005
Lance Frizzell has several good photos of a humanitarian mission under way in northern Iraq, here and here. UPDATE: More photos here....

An Axe To Grind, March 08, 2005
Lance Frizzell, who is currently serving with the 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment in northern Iraq, hilariously fisks a hatchet job on the 278th written by David Axe, a writer for the hard-Left Village Voice who dropped in to northern Iraq for a few days, looked around, and wrote the factually disabled, condescending and anti-American piece he'd intended to write all along. Frizzell's piece is too good to excerpt - just go read the whole thing....

Hindsight is Not Always 20/20, March 07, 2005
South Knox Bubba thinks he's found proof that President Bush and his evil henchmen began planning for the Iraq war back in 1996, right after Bush got elected governor of Texas. Here's the link: http://www.southknoxbubba.net/skblog/archive_2005_03.php#4025. You'll probably have to cut and paste it into your browser address bar because SKB continues to divert visitors coming from HobbsOnline to the FreeRepublic site because he's not done acting like a two-year-old. In the piece, Bubba contents that...

The Transformational Power of Liberty, March 04, 2005
George Miller in London reflects on the growing anti-tyranny movement in the Middle East:We should not be insufferable about this, but neither should we be apologetic in pointing out that the geo-political earthquake we are witnessing in Arabia is the result of the fortitude of a crazy American administration led by a stupid president....

Lance On Teevee, February 14, 2005
Here's the text version of the WKRN story on Lance Frizzell and his Lance in Iraq blog that aired Saturday night. There's a link to the video on that page....

Lance Temporarily Not In Iraq, February 12, 2005
Lance Frizzell, home on a 15-day leave from Iraq, was featured in a story on WKRN Channel 2 tonight. Lance's blog was read by 20,000 different people in January. I'll link to the WKRN story if and when it's available online in text and/or video. A redesign of his blog, which I'm proud to host, is in the works....

The Blogosphere Bags Another Lying Slanderous Big Media Journalist, February 12, 2005
Eason Jordan, the head of CNN, has resigned amid the growing furor over his slandering the U.S. military with the unsupportable and outrageous claim that the military has a policy of assassinating journalists in Iraq. Details and links here. His resignation comes too late to undo the damage CNN did under his leadership by covering up stories of Saddam Hussein's atrocities in the 1990s. How many more Iraqis died because CNN's soft-pedaling of Hussein's tyranny...

Securing Iraq's Future, February 08, 2005
Do yourself a favor and take 10 minutes to read Kanan Makiya's article, The Shiite Obligation, today over at OpinionJournal.com....

Easongate Update, February 08, 2005
Hugh Hewitt has a must-read Easongate update today looking at CNN, "The most busted name in news." Also keeping on top of the scandal is Instapundit and the group blog Easongate Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post media columnist who also works for Eason Jordan and CNN, helped Jordan continue to whitewash and cover-up the slanderous accusations he leveled at the U.S. military while in Davos, Switzerland, last week. Kurtz is self-parodying portrait of the term...

Slam Dunked, February 04, 2005
I'm a fan of Dunkin' Donuts. Good donuts. Good coffee. Better than Krispy Kreme. But, man, are they on the verge of a PR debacle. Or possibly a PR coup....

Election Reflection, January 31, 2005
I listened to President Bush's second inaugural speech today as I drove in to work, thinking all the way of the millions of brave Iraqis who risked death to cast a vote in yesterday's election, and Bush's words were all the more stirring. Not since Reagan have we had a president who believed so strongly in the power of freedom to transform lives and nations. If you haven't already downloaded a copy of the inaugural...

"This voting card is a bullet in the heart of the terrorists.", January 31, 2005
Today's Tennessean has a nice wrap-up of the Iraq election voting . In the national media, I was amazed to hear the following broadcast on CNN last night during the Lou Dobbs Tonight programDOBBS: There was a huge turnout in many parts of the countries as voters defied terrorists and insurgents who launched a series of deadly suicide bomb attacks. Anderson Cooper reports now from Baghdad - Anderson. ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Lou, good evening....

Wet Blankets, January 30, 2005
Democrats react to the stunningly positive Iraqi election. But no matter how much cold water they try to throw on it, the Iraqi election - the mere fact that it happened and the fact that millions of Iraqis risked terror attacks to vote - is a credit to President George W. Bush. UPDATE: On the ground in Iraq, Lance Frizzell says the election's big winner is the Iraqi people. And here's a headline from today's...

Read The Whole Thing, January 29, 2005
I don't have to blog about Iraq anymore because Mike Silverman has completely summed it up. From now on, all idiocy of the Left regarding Iraq can be answered by saying Read This. Read the Whole Thing....

Photos From Iraq, January 29, 2005
Nashville photographer Katherine Bomboy has an exhibition of photographs taken during a recent extended visit to northern Iraq, at the Belcourt Theatre now through the next several weeks. You can see a sample of her photographs, and hear an interview with here, at the website of the Nashville NPR affiliate WPLN....

A Religious War?, January 21, 2005
Donald Sensing says President Bush's inaugural speech yesterday "draws the battle lines even more sharply" between us and our "medieval" enemy, radical Islam......

The Faces of American Imperialism, January 19, 2005
Lance Frizzell has posted a disturbing photo essay regarding America's imperialist occupation of Iraq. Well, disturbing to leftwingnuts who think America is evil....

First day of Iraqi voter sign-ups goes smoothly, January 18, 2005
In Nashville.Mustafa Binavy, 37, had a satisfied smile on his face as he left the Fraternal Order of Police building on Welshwood Drive yesterday afternoon. "I am a registered voter," said Binavy, beaming. "We've been waiting for this day for a long time. I never believed we would be able to vote. This is a great achievement." Binavy, a resident of Nashville for 12 years who served as a translator in the recent Iraq war,...

Flying High, January 11, 2005
Lance Frizzell: "If you ever have the opportunity to ride low over Iraq with a door-gunner hanging out the window, do it. In a few years."...

Something Else You Might Not Know About Abu Ghraib, January 08, 2005
WIth Abu Ghraib back in the headlines, I recalled the other night this story about that town, which I blogged about back on April 29, 2003, but which most people likely have forgotten: Abu Ghraib, also spelled Abu Ghurayb, was the site of the first free election in Iraq's post-Saddam history....

Details, Details, January 07, 2005
, one of five U.S. cities where Iraqi expatriates will be able to vote in the upcoming Iraqi election, details are still up in the air just 10 days out, reports The Tennessean today....

Christmas Contentment, December 27, 2004
How did you spend Christmas? Opening gifts and eating a feast in the comfort of a warm home with family or friends around? Ted Leichner, father of six and formerly a successful physician in the Nashville area, spent it in Iraq, by choice, and calls his deployment to Iraq "a gift from God." Hear the incredible story in this MP3 audio file - it starts at 32:35. [Windows Media video file here, Windows Media Audio...

An Oasis in the Desert, December 23, 2004
The Washington Times, USA Today and a host of Tennessee teevee news stations and local newspapers have all mentioned Lance Frizzell's new blog, Lance in Iraq, hosted here at billhobbs.com. Scroll through the inspring comments to this post. I'm as pleased as I could be with the response Lance's blog has gotten - and how it has become an oasis of hope for family members of people serving in the 278th....

WSMV, December 21, 2004
WSMV Channel 4 News did an excellent story last night on Lance Frizzell's blog from northern Iraq, a blog hosted here at billhobbs.com. The AP version of the Knoxville News Sentinel's story from yesterday is on WSMV's website, where you'll also find a link to the video of the story that aired on the news. You should also log on to Lance's blog and read through the comments, where you'll find many messages from people...

Zero to 60 in 2.4 Seconds, December 20, 2004
Lance Frizzell's blog from Iraq is off and running thanks to an Instapundit link in its first week and, now, a nice sendoff from Michael Silence, a reporter for the Knoxville News-Sentinel, in a front-page report in today's paper. Frizzell, a Tennessee National Guardsman, is blogging from Iraq on a blog I host here at BillHobbs.com. Excerpt:Second Lt. Lance Frizzell is with the Knoxville-based 278th Regimental Combat Team and is a medical platoon leader. "My...

Lance In Iraq, December 16, 2004
Lance Frizzell has started blogging from Iraq. He's with the 278th Regimental Combat Team, Tennessee National Guard, and has some thoughts about "hillbilly armor" and what the fallout might be from the flap over armor for Humvees. I am proud to host Lance's new blog, and invite you to read it often, and also to pray for Lance's safety (and all Americans in Iraq)....

HobbsOnline Announces: New Blog From Iraq, December 13, 2004
Lance Frizzell, a longtime friend of this blog, has recently deployed to Iraq and will soon be blogging at a separate blog hosted here at BillHobbs.com....

HobbsOnline Announces: New Blog From Iraq, December 12, 2004
Lance Frizzell, a longtime friend of this blog, has recently deployed to Iraq and will soon be blogging at a separate blog hosted here at BillHobbs.com. Frizzell, until he was called up, was press secretary for the House Republican Caucus in the Tennessee state legislature. Now he is with the 3rd Squadron, 278th Regimental Combat Team, Tennessee National Guard. The 278th was most recently in the news for the flap over the shortage of armor...

Fallujah Update, December 03, 2004
Here are two good articles on the battle for Fallujah and its impact on the war on terror in Iraq....

A Call For Help, November 23, 2004
I'm looking for weblogs debunking or rebutting an anti-Bush, anti-Iraq War documentary titled Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War, by Robert Greenwald. Any ideas? The gist of the film is that Bush and his team willfully misled about WMD and the Saddam ties to al Qaeda, combined with the assumption that these WERE the justifications for the war. A reader says he has been unable to find a good source of information rebutting...

Retaking Fallujah, November 08, 2004
The battle for Fallujah has begun. If you're interested in following that developing story, a good place to start is Command Post's Iraq index....

My Presidential Endorsement, November 01, 2004
This will surprise exactly none of you but I'm voting for George W. Bush tomorrow....

Osama Tape Mistranslated - And an Iraqi Blogger
Explains Why Bush Victory is Crucial, November 01, 2004
The Middle East Media Research Institute says al Jazeera mistranslated a portion of the Osama bin Laden video, and says the terrorist leader's message has been misrepresented to the American people on the eve of the election. MEMRI says bin Laden essentially offers a truce to states that vote for Kerry, but promises more attacks on those states that vote for Bush tomorrow....

Proof of WMD, October 29, 2004
It's worth noting in all the debate over the missing explosives in Iraq that one of the three kinds of explosives at the center of the debate is HMX. Why is that important? As former weapons inspector David Kay, who later lead the Iraq Survey Group's hunt for WMD in post-liberation Iraq, explained to CNN's Aaron Brown in a recent televised interview, HMX is a key component of nuclear bombs. Siad Kay, "HMX is in...

Boom, October 28, 2004
Did Russia help Saddam hide those missing explosives? Perhaps. The Pentagon is reportedly declassifying satellite photos showing heavy truck activity around the arms depot before the U.S. invasion. It's rather clear now that John Kerry's attack on President Bush concerning the missing explosives is non-factual. It's also rather clear that the New York Times ran with the non-factual story in an effort to harm Bush's re-election prospects. John Hinderaker has a good related post over...

Boom, October 26, 2004
Another attempt by a member of the elite Big Media to smear President Bush has already been undone by both the blogosphere - and by another member of the elite Big Media. The short version: The New York Times published this report Monday accusing the Bush administration, essentially, of letting 377 tons of high-explosives fall into the hands of the enemy by failing to secure a weapons depot from looters after the fall of Iraq....

Hostage Saved By A Google Search, October 19, 2004
Man, if they Googled me and found HobbsOnline, I'd be beheaded instantly....

Swords Into Plowshares, October 11, 2004
Shiite insurgents are turning in their weapons in Sadr City, the vast Shiite slum in Baghdad, after a peace deal between forces loyal to rebel cleric Muqtada al Sadr and the Iraqi government which will have the militia turn in its weaponry and the government begin a mammoth rebuilding project in Sadr City.Militia fighters started arriving in larger numbers once officials turned up with cash to pay them. Rates ranged from $5 for a hand...

Kerry: I Was For The First Gulf War After I Voted Against It, September 27, 2004
John Kerry's "Christmas in Cambodia" story is a lie about something that happened did not happen nearly 36 years ago. But more recently Kerry claimed, falsely, to have been at the signing of the truce at Safwan, Iraq, at the end of Gulf War I. Ed Morrissey has the details as the blogosphere smokes out the proof that Kerry lied. [Hat tip: Michael Williams]. Short version: Kerry, in a televised interview in 2001, said, "I...

Tangible Progress, September 27, 2004
General David H. Petraeus reports from Iraq on the "tangible progress" being made in rebuilding Iraq's police and security forces to better battle and defeat the terrorists there....

Bet on Iraq, August 16, 2004
Here's a bit of good news from Iraq. It's the kind of thing that the terrorists are desperate to undo, the hate-Bush-brigades refuse to acknowledge, the mainstream media refuse to cover, lefty bloggers refuse to blog, and John Kerry hopes, fervently, you won't read....

Who Will Be The Last Person to Die For Kerry's Mistake?, August 16, 2004
John Kerry's promise that, if he is elected, he'll bring large numbers of American troops home from Iraq within six months, is cause for concern. Much as he did more than three decades ago, Kerry's political statements are helping the enemy, and President Bush was right to call him on it during a campaign event in New Mexico last week:President Bush on Wednesday attacked John Kerry's pledge to bring large numbers of troops home from...

More on Najaf , August 11, 2004
John Manley has a long analysis of the situation in and strategy at play in Najaf in light of the transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi transitional government at the end of June.The designation of Iraqis as the highest and final authority on all questions, including and particularly the continued maintenance of security and stabilization by coalition forces, has changed the dynamic in Iraq in a fashion that has given both the Iraqi government and...

Iraq in Pictures, August 11, 2004
I was browsing the PBASE.com photo galleries and collected links on several Iraq war photo galleries. Here are 11 links, with no commentary. Just offering you the opportunity to view the war in Iraq through the eyes of the brave Americans and British soldiers who are fighting it. If a picture is worth a thousand words, here's several books worth of news from Iraq unlike most of what Big Media provides. Iraq 1 Iraq 2...

Heroes, August 11, 2004
The San Diego Union Tribune has done America a service with the publication of this article....

"There is no cost-free future for the United States...", July 30, 2004
George Miller, my London correspondent until he started his own blog, has posted a couple of essays about John Kerry, one written before Kerry's speech last night and the other written after. Both are very good reads, but it's the latter I've chosen to excerpt for you. Miller writes about America and the war on terror through fairly unique eyes - those of a 40-year-old American who has lived in London since the age of...

Bet On Iraq, July 23, 2004
HobbsOnline welcomes its newest advertiser, BetOnIraq.com, which is offering you the opportunity to speculate on Iraqi currency for as little as $19. The Iraqi dinar is worth little today but, if Iraq becomes more peaceful and prosperous in the months and years ahead, that could change. It's an extremely speculative investment, but at $19, what have you got to lose? Speaking of advertising on this blog, the top three ads in the top left-side ad...

Another Link in the Web of Terror, July 19, 2004
Via Steven Forrest:Iraq's country code top-level domain, .iq, remains in limbo and now the Dallas Morning News is reporting that it was registered by a Dallas business with terrorist ties.Ties to the Holy Land Foundation (considered a fund-raising front for the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas), and contacts with the regime of Saddam Hussein. Hamas isn't al Qaeda, but it IS an Islamofascist terror group, and this story is one more bit of evidence showing ties...

Making The Case for War, July 15, 2004
George Miller over at London Calling, has a fantastic piece on Tony Blair and the ongoing political tussle over the intel surrounding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction - and the moral implications in focusing on Blair's pre-war statements rather than on the greater evil of Islamist terror. How good is it? I was trying to find a small bit to excerpt and found I was about to excerpt the whole thing. So I excerpted the...

Joe Wilson Lied. His Credibility Died., July 11, 2004
Joe Wilson, the former ambassador who claimed he'd proven that Saddam hadn't tried to buy uranium from Africa, is now proven to be lying on several counts. Oh, and there was plenty of American and British and French intel to back up the president's much-criticized claim in his State of the Union address in 2003 that Iraq sought uranium from Africa....

WMD Update: Iraq Nearly Became WMD Marketplace, July 02, 2004
Iraq was poised to become the "Grand Central Station" of a global illicit trade in weapons of mass destruction before the war, according to a forthcoming report from the Senate Intelligence Committee....

Dancing Saddam, June 30, 2004
Iraq is going to do just fine. And I very much want one of these for myself. Some Iraqi blogger probably could make a fortune buying and reselling them via his blog....

We're Getting Better At This, June 29, 2004
Chuck Simmins compares post-war Iraq with post-WW2 Germany and finds that we're making progress faster in Iraq than we did in Germany. Imagine that....

Iraqi Bloggers React to Sovreignty, June 29, 2004
The Dallas Morning News provides a round-up of Iraqi bloggers' reaction to the transfer of power to an interim Iraqi government. The reaction is mostly positive. They certainly seem happier than Democrats....

Links, June 25, 2004
New York Times admits: Saddam reached out to al Qaeda. Now let's think about this for a moment. Saddam: hated America, worked on developing weapons of mass destruction, used WMD against the Kurds. Al Qaeda: hated America, used whatever weapons it could get to attack America, actively and openly desired WMD. And Saddam reached out to al Qaeda. And some people still think it was stupid to remove Saddam before he developed more WMD and...

The Real Baghdad, June 22, 2004
Looking for a good book to read about the war in Iraq? Check out Karl Zinsmeister's Dawn Over Baghdad. The publisher's description calls is "a completely fresh, close-up look at the guerilla struggle in Iraq" that "shows exactly how young American soldiers are quietly but inexorably choking off a terrorist insurrection and planting the seeds (sometimes at great personal cost) of a dramatically different Middle East." Order your copy today. Zinsmeister, editor in chief of...

Because I Could, June 21, 2004
I've taken the liberty of reproducing Maureen Dowd's latest New York Times column here, and adding a few helpful hyperlinks to help Ms. Dowd make her points more effectively....

9/11 Commission Chairman: Media lied about Saddam/Al Qaeda link, June 21, 2004
Read all about it here. I had a long post on it here last Friday. Also on the must-read list on this subject: William Safire's column today in the New York Times. You might also want to read this story from UPI about documentary evidence found in Iraq suggesting a senior officer in an elite unit of Saddam's "Fedayeen" security service was also a member of al Qaeda (unless, of course, you already read that...

A Report from Iraq, June 21, 2004
Here's the latest from Spirit of America, as SoA's Jim Hake files a report from Iraq including visits to Baghdad, Ramadi and Fallujah. Read. The. Whole. Thing. You won't find it in your daily paper....

Poll: More Americans Think Bush Right on Iraq, June 18, 2004
New data from The Pew Research Center shows that the percentage of American adults who think things are going well in Iraq has risen sharply since dropping to 46 percent in May. Anti-bush sentiment is subsiding, Americans are paying less attention to news from Iraq - but an increasing majority believe the war was necessary. The poll contains a fair amount of bad news for John Kerry....