[Edmund Onward James]

Do I Hear Cheers for George Bush? — R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.

WASHINGTON -- I in my innocence was, in the aftermath of SEAL Team Six's disruption of Osama bin Laden's bucolic life in posh Abbottabad, reading editorial comment by the great newspapers of this republic. As always the Wall Street Journal was superb, pausing to congratulate President Barack Obama for "ordering a special forces mission rather than settling for another attack with drones or stand-off weapons from afar." The Washington Post was, likewise, informative and appreciative of the President's prudent decision to let SEAL Team Six do its thing, skirting the laws of a sovereign nation and acting unilaterally to put a bullet hole in Osama's head.

Then I turned to our nation's newspaper of record, the New York Times. Not once but twice the Times' editorialists departed from heaving confetti to remind us all of George W. Bush, the war criminal. They could have maintained a gentlemanly forbearance. They could have stifled their urge to again vent their hatred of this man and instead join in our national celebration. Rather, they allowed that little creep that lurks in the back of their minds and serves as a conscience to squeal. All fellow ritualistic Liberals have one. It is what lowers every political moment in America, every historic occasion in recent years, to the level of juvenilia. What cads they are!

Now, of course, we know, that Osama was caught precisely because of those much reviled "enhanced interrogation techniques," including the dreaded "waterboarding" of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and several other barbarians. Such actions led to the identification of the courier who traveled the dusty byroads of Afghanistan and Pakistan to deliver Osama's many bulls and fatwas to his agents. We also know that the CIA interrogators, whom the Democrats and Liberals at the Times wanted to prosecute, spent several years sifting through the information, some reliable some not, to find the one place in this world where the dog Osama was hiding. Doubtless over these many years they have been wrong. But this time they were right, so in the event that some had their careers set back and others destroyed, can we now return these intelligence officers to favor? They performed brilliantly. Maybe we can all get a respite from Hollywood's portrayals of American heroes as brutes.

We also know that our intelligence community resorted to intercepted communications to identify Osama's agents. Some of these communications were probably routed through America. This at some point involved the "domestic wiretapping" that the Times exposed some years ago. Very few complained, for the Times was securing our civil liberties and those of foreign agents. In fact there was general celebration among the Liberals at the Times' heroics. Did that make it all the more difficult to get Osama? Oh, well, Obama got him. As one Jimmy Fallon joked on NBC's "Late Night," "Bin Laden is dead! Just like the Republicans' chances in 2012."

Yet, to answer Mr. Fallon, there is no bump for Obama. Rasmussen reports a one-point bump. Thirty-seven percent of the American people strongly disapprove of our President's behavior. Twenty-four present strongly approve. Over the next few weeks the White House will continue to make a hash of things, changing its stories, reversing itself on what pictures of the deceased to publish, committing as yet unimagined pratfalls. An incompetent president will continue to be incompetent. The White House is a hell of a place to learn on the job.

One story reported in the news after the operation in Abbottabad suggests the antics we shall be savoring in the weeks ahead. It took Obama 16 hours to make up his mind about the SEALs going in. While around the world the heads of the SEALs' vastly complicated project were on pins and needles, the President went off to sleep on his decision. What would he decide when he awakened? Reportedly he informed a national security meeting, "I'm not going to tell you what my decision is now -- I'm going to go back and think about it some more." And then he went off to "sleep on it." The next morning he said, "It's a go."

Yet maybe the next time there will be no go. Many of the techniques used by our military and intelligence people have been outlawed. They were Bush's tactics and they have been discredited, no?

http://spectator.org/archives/.....-george-bu

R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. is founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator. His new book, After the Hangover: The Conservatives' Road to Recovery, was published on April 20 by Thomas Nelson. His previous books include the New York Times bestseller Boy Clinton: the Political Biography; The Impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton; The Liberal Crack-Up; The Conservative Crack-Up; Public Nuisances; The Future that Doesn't Work: Social Democracy's Failure in Britain; Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House; and The Clinton Crack-Up.

[Edmund Onward James]

Time for Muslims to expunge bin Laden - Salim Mansur, Sun Media

Nine days after al-Qaida terrorists attacked the United States, then-U.S. president George W. Bush addressed a special session of Congress and made a solemn promise to his people.

“Our grief has turned to anger and anger to resolution,” Bush said on Sept. 20, 2001, “Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.”

His administration devised policies to make the country safe from any such future terrorist attacks, and to defeat the enemy that had declared war on America.

It was those policies that helped track Osama bin Laden into his Pakistani hideout, and bring justice to the man who unleashed the beast of terror in the name of Islam against the U.S. and her allies and friends around the world.

In these times of rampant political opportunism and fickle memory, it needs to be said without equivocation that the much-maligned Bush — America’s 43rd president — was vindicated when U.S. President Barack Obama stepped forth in the late hours of Sunday night to announce that bin Laden had been found and swiftly dispatched to the underworld.

Bin Laden presumptively took upon himself the mantle of a holy warrior. Inherited wealth eased the claim, and the circumstances of his involvement on the margins of the Afghan war against Soviet occupation during the 1980s lent him an aura of a freedom fighter.

In the fall of 1996, bin Laden declared war against the U.S. as the head of a modern crusader alliance against Islam and Muslims. In a lengthy epistle, he pulled together the grievances of the Muslim world against the West as justification of the jihad he proclaimed.

Thereafter, the network of al-Qaida terrorists, which bin Laden helped organize as the emir (leader) based in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, took the war against America’s interests and assets found in Africa and the Middle East. On 9/11 this war arrived on America’s shore.

Bush, again from Sept. 20, 2001, said “al-Qaida is to terror what the Mafia is to crime.” As al-Qaida’s emir, bin Laden became the public face of the evil of Islamist terrorism.

The Muslim world is not a monolith with an uncontested centre of religious and political authority, nor Islam provided with one authoritative interpretation fixed for all time.

But there is in the hearts of Muslims an acute sense of something awfully wrong with their recent history, and from this comes an irresistible yearning for justice. Yet missing in this is an understanding that the crippled state of the Muslim world is an effect of the nature of Muslim politics and culture being dysfunctional in the modern world.

Bin Laden perversely, yet brilliantly, exploited Muslim grievances in launching his jihad to drive the U.S. from the Middle East. He precipitated an indiscriminate war of terror to deepen the sense of Muslim victimhood and, because of him, Muslims fell in greater numbers as casualties of Muslim-on-Muslim violence.

Bin Laden’s remains might well have fed the fishes, but the evil he conjured lives after him and, like a beast, stalks civilization.

If Muslims are ever to repair their world successfully, they need to proceed by repudiating everything Osama bin Laden represented.

http://www.torontosun.com/2011.....-bin-laden

[Edmund Onward James]

Bush got some credit on this poll... but the military received the most as it should. Obama's first few TV etc reports was about HIM. I did ordered it. I... I... I... but in the past few days he has given credit to thoses who truly deserve it.

But I have'nt heard or read anything about the previous administration. Oh well... the public knows.

Americans about the removal of bin Ldenhttp://awesome.good.is/transparency/web/1105/osama-bin-laden/transparency.jpg

[DFP]

The previous administration had its chance and passed on it within the two or three months following the attacks, they refused to deal with this issue as a law enforcement issue and instead decided to wage war in an undefined theater of operation spanning the globe. If he had been tactful he could have captured him by christmas, instead the war persists, people continue to die, the schism between east and west grows and the means to an end is unknowable. That's what happens when a dilettante who's lived a life of luxury starts making strategic decisions.

Bush can go on and rot for all I care, though he'll likely just continue trying to set a new personal best for biking or jogging or other some such frivolous pursuit that is careless type aspire to.

[Edmund Onward James]

The gant knows because he or she hugs trees in some ridiculous community of like kinds.

George W, I bet, has a higher IQ than you. He was a governor. Then he became President. Without entering the theatres of Afghanistan and Iraq there still would be major threats and attempts; but now that has dwindled to wannabe Saldins except for al Zawahiri and the independent idiots.

You leftist turd, you have the gall to state Bush should rot. If anybody should rot it is you. What have you done with your life that is worth anything and please stop with the bullshit. When have you even been close to a decision that required intense decision that could cost more than your useless time and money, something that was more than just a reputation, something that would cost lives?

Charles Krauthammer: Bin Laden shooting vindicates Bush policies
http://fullcomment.nationalpos.....-policies/

[Toronto Centre]

Play the ball not the player

[Edmund Onward James]

Look who just jumped in to make his asinine comment. I'll leave it at that because there is no debate. I still wait for T.C to write something original even post something that he thinks is profound.

It seems to quite easy for TC to criticize like the gnat, but what has he done in his life that comes a smidgen close to George W? How about nothing.

[Toronto Centre]

Most of my post was concerning your info on Bush, with a sidebar on juvenile behaviour.

Perhaps some sort of rebuttal on Bush could be forthcoming from you ?

You know, something to counter the fact that GW was not very bright, failed miserably at b usiness .....you know , that kind of thing.

Its true that I cannot hold a candle too, nor have I done what GW has done, such as
-3 failed Oil companies and getting bailed out by my dad
-SEC insider trading violations ---why the SEC has never even called me!
-drunk driving charges
-ran the deficit through the roof
-sat at the helm while the biggest business scandels unfolded in front of me...

....yeah I guess I have not done enough.

So, what points would you like to debate or would you rather just attack the person?

[Bugs]

[Toronto Centre]

[Edmund Onward James]

TC as I stated before you do not debate, you have no idea how to debate. Bugs will take the time, a decent forum member.

I cannot tolerate phonies or those who think they are that knowledgeable, not just to criticize, but to insult. Mind you I have seriously criticized Obama's tactics and Marxist-Leninist influence. So I shall grant you that, the luxury to impugn.

And TC you should be so lucky in your next life to have a father like George Bush Senior.

[Bugs]

[Toronto Centre]

So your idea as to debate is....

[Toronto Centre]

[Bugs]

Not a very satisfying reply.

The fact is that George W. Bush outperformed Kerry and Gore both in politics. He was governor of Texas, after all ... while all Kerry did was marry well. Gore is just too vile to discuss, but if there ever was a 'made' kid, it was Al Gore Jr. He grew up more in the Watergate Hotel than he did in Tennessee.

You don't respond to the fact that Gore's roots go right back into the most fetid and rank part of American racial politics. Al Gore is no better than daddy. He used to package himself as a 'family values' guy, pro-life to the max, and was into censoring record lyrics. Then he got the nod from Clinton, and became veep ... and dropped all that shit like a hot potato, to become a blue-ribbon Liberal.

Then, after conceding his defeat in the Presidential race, he withdrew his concession! No class whatever.

And Kerry's great achievement was not getting a deferment of his army call-up, on the basis of being a spoiled brat. Instead, he went through it, like a regular enlistee. Isn't that special? And he's been dining out on that ever since.

Bush doesn't have to blush in company like that. Which one of them is so bright? Bush, al least, had the gumption to stop drinking, and straighten himself up. What have the others done?

My suspicion is that you think Bush is the stupid one of these three spoiled rich brats ... only because he's a Republican. That simple.

Can you think of another reason?