Republicans Submit Their Legislation

H/T to Jeff Emanuel for this timely update:

Rep Tom Price responds to Dem claims the #GOP has "no #healthcare solutions" by sending *40* GOP bills.

Here's a link to the pdf of the summaries.

30 pages worth of legislation, not all of which is perfect, but they certainly make more sense than the full-blown take-over by the leftists.

Redstate Jeff Emanuel Part 3

Author’s note: This is the third installment in a seven-part series analyzing the Obama administration’s strategy for the Afghan front in the War on Terror. The administration’s white paper can be seen here, and previous installments in this series can be seen here.

THE SMALL NUMBER OF TRAINED, reliable, and effective Afghan National security Forces presents a serious holdup in the effort to secure Afghanistan and to turn responsibility for that security over to domestic forces. President Obama’s Afghan strategy addresses this critical shortcoming. However, as currently laid out, it offers little to actually bring about that needed increase in trained, effective Afghans capable of defending their own tribal areas and of participating in the defense of the Afghan nation.
Obama’s plan is to accelerate the training of Afghan police and National Army members over the next three years in an effort to bring the former to a total of 82,000 and the latter to 134,000. The additional brigade of 4,000 trainers mentioned in the previous installment in this series will be a step in the right direction in growing the domestic security force. This ’surge’ in training team personnel has been desired for some time now by commanders on the ground in Afghanistan, and their deployment should do a great deal to multiply the raw numbers of Afghan Security Forces going through some sort of formal training before being asked to take on the dedicated terrorist threat to their tribes and their country.

Continued here

Part 2 Jeff Emanuel Redstate

Author’s note: This is the second installment in a seven-part series analyzing the Obama administration’s strategy for the Afghan front in the War on Terror. The administration’s white paper can be seen here, and part one of this series, “Examining Obama’s Afghan Plan: Introduction,” can be seen here.

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S IMPENDING ‘SURGE’ in the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan has been public knowledge for some time now. In fact, the roots of the plan can actually be found in the Bush administration, whose final days saw a greater emphasis placed on that eastern front in the War on Terror than had been since late 2002. The initial thought, as publicly announced by Defense Secretary Robert Gates last November, was to send approximately 30,000 additional troops to augment the 33,000 already operating in the expansive, mountainous country.

Shortly after taking office, Obama ordered that number cut nearly in half, to 17,000. Those troops – a combined force of soldiers and Marines – will be assigned to areas of the county along the border with Pakistan, where the coalition has the least control and terrorist forces are at their strongest, and will be tasked with “preventing a return of al Qadea and its allies” to the area and with providing space and security for the national government to expand its hegemony into this largely warlord- and Taliban-controlled region of Afghanistan.

In addition to this 17,000-troop counterinsurgency force, Obama has assigned 7,000 more troops to Afghanistan to perform other critically important tasks. In February, the just over 3,000 soldiers that make up the 10th Mountain Division’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team (BCT) deployed to two Afghan provinces near Kabul, where they are operating out of coalition outposts in an effort to tamp down the insurgency-riddled east-central portion of the country. An additional 4,000 soldiers are now awaiting deployment to the region to serve as embedded Afghan Security Force Training Teams.

There is no question that the coalition forces currently in Afghanistan, who are fewer than 30% in number than their counterparts assigned to Iraq, are in need of reinforcement. In fact, given that Afghanistan’s surface area is 120% that of Iraq, with exponentially more difficult terrain, a 24,000-troop ’surge’ is likely far too small to make any measurable difference in that country’s day-to-day development and security, even if they are employed correctly.

Further, the specialists being recruited for deployment to Afghanistan as part of Obama’s so-called ‘civilian surge’ – currently estimated at about 400 – are also likely far too small in number to accomplish what will be expected of them. If properly employed, this small number of specialists, who bring expertise in agriculture, law, and other areas to a region desperately in need of their assistance, could do a great deal of good in the few areas they can influence. However, like the so-called ’surge’ troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, these specialists will need to be pushed out of the national and regional levels and into the expansive state’s agrarian, tribal localities in order to be effective – something career bureaucrats and government employees are notorious for their reluctance to do (for evidence of this, witness the revolt by bureaucrats within the State Department when faced with the mere prospect of deployment to Iraq’s secure International Zone in 2007).

Continued here

Jeff Emanuel Examines Big O's Afghan Strategy

AMERICA’S GOAL IN THE REGION, according to Obama, is “to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future.” In pursuit of this nebulous goal, which can be categorically filed under “Would take far more time and dedication than Obama (and, unfortunately, the American population) would ever willingly put into it,” the president laid out several points of emphasis.

These points, each of which will be addressed in an installment over the next week, can be grouped into the following five goals:

Implementing a ’surge’ of forces in Afghanistan (and augmenting that with a so-called “civilian surge”);

Growing the Afghan Security Forces, both police and army, by such numbers and with such speed that they will be able to assume responsibility securing large portions of the country in a very short time;

Attempting to achieve reconciliation with less-hardline Taliban militants and promoting an open, honest, and effective Afghan national government;

Expanding international support for the Afghan mission and convincing both NATO and regional players to take a more active role in combating terror and shaping the Afghan state; and, perhaps most importantly,

Eliminating Taliban and al Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan, while simultaneously promoting democratic order within that fractured Islamic state.

Unfortunately, as the next five installments on this topic will demonstrate, President Obama’s strategy as currently laid out will do little to make a difference on any of these fronts.
Coming next: Examining Obama’s Afghan Plan: A ‘Surge’ in Soldiers and Civilians

Victory is Certain

“The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive the Veterans of earlier wars to be treated and appreciated by their nation.”—George Washington.

The armed forces of the United States, with cooperation from Coalition Forces, have achieved victory in Iraq.

The American flag has been raised over our Embassy in Baghdad. We have turned over control of the Green Zone and 13 of 18 provinces, including al-Anbar, to the Iraqi Government. The Baghdad airport is open for commercial air travel. Coalition combat-related casualties are at their lowest levels since 2003.

It is time to heed the advice from our first President. Our future warriors need to see how much we appreciate the sacrifices of our current warriors. It is time to tell our young warriors they won this one. They completed their mission. They did what we asked. They did a good job.

They won.

Someone has to say it; they damn sure deserve to hear it.

A coalition of pro-troop organizations has been formed and together we intend to hold a Victory in Iraq Celebration in Washington DC on April 4, 2009. We will acknowledge and honor the sacrifices made by the members of the US military and their families to achieve this victory. We will publicly acknowledge the veterans in attendance for their efforts in achieving this victory and thank them. The members of our coalition include Move America Forward, EaglesUp, Gathering of Eagles, Band of Mothers and one of the top-rated military weblogs, (milblog), Blackfive.net. We have the support and backing of the milblog community as a whole.

We have arranged for a screening of “Warriors; The Film”, based on the book “Warriors”. The director and several Marines who took part in the film will be guests and will participate in a Q&A after the screening.

Scheduled speakers include Melanie Morgan from Move America Forward, Captain Jerry Coffee, longest held Viet Nam POW and motivational speaker, Jeff Emanuel, a combat journalist with first-hand knowledge and experience with the successes made in Iraq; Nikki Mendicino, George Mason University student, POW/MIA activist, and “every veterans’ kid sister”, and Navy OIF veteran Coby Dillard. Tentatively scheduled speakers include former SSgt David Bellavia, Iraq veteran, Silver Star recipient, MOH nominee, and author of “House to House” a first hand account of the second battle for Fallujah who has returned to Iraq several times as a journalist.

We are seeking endorsements and sponsors to help fund this event. All sponsors will have prominent displays of their logos at the event using their banners and flags. We will provide links to your site from our member websites during the 2 month promotional period. (February to April). Posts to websites used to update event information will mention specific sponsors by name with admonitions to the readers to “go thank each one”.

The event is scheduled to last 10 hours and we anticipate the number of attendees to exceed 75,000. Events of this size and scope are televised live via CSPAN, and we expect significant media coverage during the event. We anticipate web-cast capabilities with live chat and live streaming over the internet to deployed troops.

The event will attract a cross-section of people, primarily blue-collar and military, (veteran and active-duty, and families), and will also attract a large portion of the normal springtime tourist traffic which usually increases in April.

Donations are deductible as charitible contributions. (Note:this link will open a pdf document from the IRS). Click the "Donate" link on the leftside of the page and put "V-I Day" in the message box. Any amount will help.

President Bush fulfilled his pledge to U.S.

via Twitter

H/T to Jeff Emanuel.

Regardless of your opinions on whether we should have gone into Iraq or not, one thing is for certain:
We have not been attacked on our soil in the past 7 1/2 years.
Thank You President Bush for keeping us safe.
Thank You Troops for keeping us safe.

Earl Harrison

Guest Columnist

Sunday, January 11, 2009

The main burr under everyone’s saddle is the Iraq War.

In this respect, I challenge you to read the book “Dereliction of Duty” by Lt. Col. Robert “Buzz” Patterson. In this book, the basic planning of 9/11 was fermented in the Clinton administration.

When the 9/11 calamities struck our nation, President Bush pledged to the American people that he would do everything possible through the powers of his office to prevent another occurrence of such calamity from striking our nation again. He also pledged to hunt down the terrorists responsible for 9/11 and destroy them. President Bush had to challenge Congress to give him the “power of office” to check phone calls and other means to detect and apprehend anyone with tendencies toward terrorism.

He had to bang heads of the FBI and CIA to work together and apprehend undesirable people in our effort to prevent terrorist acts.

The world governments knew that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). His army used them on a segment of his nation. Hussein gassed thousands of people. It was common knowledge by many nations that Hussein was in cohorts with the terrorists. He paid homage to the families of the suicide bombers that were killing the Israeli people. He supported training camps for terrorists located in Iraq. Although it was determined that Hussein did not direct the 9/11 terrorist acts.

The United Nations gave a number of directives to Hussein; that he acknowledge having WMDs and dispose of them. Obviously, Hussein ignored all the referendums. The final referendum warned Hussein to comply with the directives or suffer the
consequences. At this point, President Bush implied that the consequences would be an invasion of Iraq to destroy the WMDs and the terrorists. President Bush concluded that it would be better to fight the terrorists on their streets than have to fight them on our streets. Hence, the invasion of Iraq. In addition, he wanted to make sure that the terrorists would not acquire any WMDs and use them in an attack on our nation.

President Bush sought approval and assistance from the United Nations, but they refused, and because of the danger from WMDs to the world, President Bush pledged that we would do it alone. In spite of the protesters, he stayed the course of his commitment.

On the invasion of Iraq, the military determined that Hussein had removed the WMDs from Iraq, but the military found large caches of military equipment designed for gas warfare. This was proof enough of his possession of WMDs.

The Iraq conflict has been prolonged by the invasion of terrorist elements from the neighboring countries. President Bush has permitted the military to conduct the operations. In contrast, civilian Washington micromanaged the Vietnam operation, which proved much more disastrous than Iraq.

I thank President Bush for trying to fulfill his pledge to the United States of America.

More on the Wanat Ambush

Jeff Emanuel has a bit of insight you should check out.
The title link will take you to my post on the lazy media, the Tankerbabe link will take you to the article.

HUGE H/T to my buddy Tankerbabe for posting this.

"A multi-pronged militant assault on a small, remote U.S. base killed nine American soldiers Sunday in one of the deadliest attacks on U.S. troops since the 2001 invasion," crowed the Associated Press. "Militants fired machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars from homes and a mosque in the village of Wanat in the northeastern province of Kunar, a mountainous region that borders Pakistan."

Three days before the attack, 45 U.S. paratroopers from the 173d Airborne, accompanied by 25 Afghan soldiers, made their way to Kunar Province, a remote area in the northeastern Afghanistan-Pakistan border area, and established the beginnings of a small Combat Outpost (COP). Their movement into the area was noticed, and their tiny numbers and incomplete fortifications were quickly taken advantage of.

A combined force of up to 500 Taliban and al Qaeda fighters quickly moved into the nearby village of Wanat and prepared for their assault by evicting unallied residents and according to an anonymous senior Afghan defense ministry official, "us[ing] their houses to attack us."Extremist activity is clearly thriving in Kunar, as Sunday morning's assault on the tiny, unfinished Combat Outpost demonstrated.

Perhaps the most important takeaway from that encounter, though, is the one that the mainstream media couldn't be bothered to pay attention long enough to learn: that, not for the first time, a contingent of American soldiers that was outnumbered by up to a twenty-to-one ratio soundly and completely repulsed a complex, pre-planned assault by those dedicated enough to their cause to kill themselves in its
pursuit.

That kind of heroism and against-all-odds success is and has been a hallmark of America's fighting men and women, and it is one that is worthy of all attention we can possibly give it.

The difference between OUR warriors and the enemy's

The enemy straps bombs to themselves and blows themselves up to kill others.

Our warriors throw themselves on top of bombs to save others.