Say Anything Blog

Patricia Balsom: Diary of my final days

How one cancer patient suffered at the hands of the NHS

Like most people, Janet Street-Porter had read about the problems engulfing the National Health Service. But it wasn’t until her sister was diagnosed with terminal cancer that she came face to face with the stark reality of our debt-ridden hospitals. And it is all spelt out in the diary that Patricia Balsom has kept as she seeks the care she so desperately needs

Wednesday 25 October

It’s eight months since I collapsed and was taken to hospital, where I was diagnosed with lung and brain cancer. Because of my age - 57 - I was told that very little could be done for me, and that I had up to six months left to live. I then discovered that because of the cash crisis in the NHS, treatment is rationed to those who are most likely to recover, and if you suffer from more than one form of cancer, you don’t fall into that category. It’s particularly the case at the primary care trust that I come under - Hillingdon in west London - which has one of the biggest deficits in the country. Thanks to my sister, I was able to go private and received gamma knife treatment on my brain at the Cromwell Hospital in London at a cost of £15,000. It was after this that the NHS offered me a course of radiotherapy on my lungs, which I had in July. In September, an MRI scan showed that the cancer in my brain was in remission, and I was then offered a bone scan by the NHS to see if the lung cancer had spread further. Two weeks ago I had a pain under my ribs, and my oncologist thought I had either cracked a rib or that the cancer might have spread to one of my bones. I had an X-ray on 12 October but had to wait two weeks for the bone scan at Hillingdon Hospital even though I was in pain. I felt sick on the morning of the appointment, when Mick (my husband) took me to the hospital by car. Once inside the foyer I felt faint, but luckily an ambulance man put me in a wheelchair and took me to A&E where I was checked over and put in the observation ward. That evening I was transferred to a ward. I was breathing with the help of oxygen.

Friday 27 October

I was seen by doctors who slightly changed my medication and told me I could go home on Monday, once a specialist nurse had sorted out what I’d need at home - a hospital bed, a commode, and an oxygen machine. I was told that a carer from an agency would come in every day and help us. No one mentioned whether I would ever get a bone scan. No one explained what we could ask the carer to do and how long we could ask them to work for. The four-bedded wards at Hillingdon on my ward are mixed (men and women), and on Saturday night I was woken up twice by the man opposite. He was standing stark naked at the end of his bed masturbating.

Sunday 29 October

An elderly lady was placed in her bed next to a hot radiator to sleep, but as her bed only had one protective side on it, if she’d fallen out she would have burnt herself. When I mentioned this to a nurse they eventually moved her next to a wall. That evening at visiting time, Mick and I noticed that my left leg had became extremely swollen. We told a nurse, who telephoned for a doctor to come and see me at 8.30pm. At 2am I still hadn’t been seen. By now I was crying and extremely distressed. They had already told me I had blood clots on my lung and now I was worried they might be in my leg. A nurse tried to tell me that the doctor might have come while I was asleep. At 2.30am I was so upset that I called Mick at home. Eventually a doctor came to see me while he was visiting another patient, and said he thought the swelling was caused by a blood clot. I was really frightened.

From the London Evening Standard, as reported in the Gulf Times:

LONDON: Almost 200 drug-addicted convicts will share an astonishing compensation payout of almost £700,000 after the government caved in to claims that stopping their use of drugs breached their human rights. The settlement - worth a staggering £3,500 each - provoked fury.

Once legal fees are added to the payout, rubber-stamped at the High Court yesterday, the total bill to the taxpayer is likely to smash through the £1mn barrier.

The Home Office said it had “reluctantly” agreed to pay up to minimise costs to the public. If the case had reached court, the inmates could have been granted even more cash, officials said.

[...]

“Proper, effective and sustained rehabilitation programmes are vital to ensure that prisons have a purpose and can actually help prepare offenders for a life free of crime and the misery of drugs.

“If the government continues to fold in this way the drug situation will only deteriorate. The home secretary must explain to the public why he is prepared to waste so much taxpayers’ money and sacrifice such a worthy cause.”

The compensation scandal centres on 198 prisoners who were receiving treatment to help them kick hard drug addictions.

They had been receiving drugs such as methadone, paid for by the government. But a decision was taken by the prison service that - rather than continue to be given drugs - they should be made to go through “cold turkey” detox instead.

The criminals - funded by legal aid - argued this was unlawful under Labour’s Human Rights Act and should count as “torture” or “degrading treatment”.

Even though all the drugs the offenders were addicted to were illegal, they argued that the prison system had no right to make them stop, or to put them through detox programmes without their consent.

Read the whole thing.

This kind of crap is coming here soon, especially under Dem values.  Notice the bit about “torture”; wonder where they got that?

Noel Sheppard, in The American Thinker:

At roughly 11:00AM Eastern Time Wednesday, the National Ocean & Atmospheric Administration announced that for the second straight month, America saw below-average temperatures. As a result, regardless of how warm July was, it now appears unlikely that 2006 will surpass 1934 as the hottest year on record. Yet, a Google News search suggested that not one news agency bothered to report this announcement. Not one.

For those not in the media who might be interested (emphasis mine throughout):

  For the second consecutive month, temperatures across the continental United States were cooler-than-average, according to scientists at the NOAA National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. Drought conditions improved in some areas, but large parts of the nation remained in moderate to extreme drought. October ranked as the 12th wettest October when compared with historical precipitation records for the month.

The announcement continued:

  The October 2006 temperature for the contiguous United States (based on preliminary data) was 0.9 degrees F (0.5 degrees C) below the 20th century average of 54.8 degrees F (12.7 degrees C). After a record warm January through August period, this was the second consecutive month of below average temperatures.

  The combination of a cooler-than-average September and October dropped the year-to-date national temperature from record warmest to third warmest for the January through October 2006 period. The record warmest January through October occurred in 1934.

Hmmm. So, let me get this straight. The globe supposedly has been warming for decades as a result of man-made greenhouse gases. Yet, the warmest year on record is still 72 years ago. That doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, does it?

[...]

Alas, this shouldn’t surprise us, for it has always seemed obvious that the same people that buy into global warming are the ones that also believe the economy is just as bad today as during the Great Depression. What is it about radical liberalism that destroys a person’s math and science skills?

The NOAA report is here.

More “Y2K” global warmingist thinking:  When the facts don’t agree with your hypothesis, just ignore them and keep preaching your scareology.

Michael Rule, in NewsBusters:

On Tuesday’s “Imus in the Morning,” Newsweek editor Jon Meacham opined that George H.W. Bush, the 41st president, had been vindicated by history. He suggested that Newsweek runs stories based on partisan preferences, i.e. we helped defeat President Bush in 1992, but in hindsight, George H.W. Bush was right. Meacham also revealed that journalists often make hasty judgements and treat those judgements as “infallible.” In the same segment, Meacham admitted that journalists are wrong. Meacham offers as an example the coverage of President Bush 41 during the 1992 campaign and before:

  “What’s important is journalistically, one of the mistakes we make is we kick people in the shins and we tend to make instant judgements and act as though our judgment is infallible and absolute. It’s not. See ‘wimp factor,’ see the mistakes and the misperceptions of the first Bush at the time when everybody was saying he was out of touch and was no good. Now we see with hindsight that he’d done pretty well.”

[...]

  “I think that everything he did that got him beaten in 1992, that only got him 37% of the vote, only slightly more than you or I would have gotten that year, has been proven in the light of history to have been the right thing to do.”

In January 1992, Newsweek contributor Howard Fineman suggested that Bush 41 ought to run on a platform of higher taxes and of asking the American people to sacrifice. In the August 24, 1992 issue Fineman portrayed Bush as out of touch with the American public on domestic issues. A look at the Bush 41record suggests he was out of touch with conservative voters. Bush 41 raised taxes and the economy soured. Bush 41 refused to topple Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War, and let the problem fester for future administrations. And Bush 41 gave David Souter a seat on the Supreme Court, and he has turned out to be one of the most liberal justices. So by whose historic standards is Bush 41 vindicated? Apparently the standards of liberals.

Bush 41 was attacked by Newsweek in 1992 not because he was a conservative. He was attacked to elect Bill Clinton. An objective look at the Bush record show’s the Newsweek attacks to be politically motivated.

Read the whole thing.

Well, Duh!  After 14 years of this kind of crap, he admits one of his many mistakes.
Justice delayed is justice denied.

By Jerry Kronenberg

Jesus doll’s not for Tots, charity says

Toys for Tots is taking the Christ doll out of Christmas.
    The charity has rejected a California toymaker’s gift of 4,000 talking Jesus dolls, arguing that the 12-inch action figures would offend non-Christian recipients.
    The decision has local pro-Christmas activists fuming.
  “This is just more proof that there’s a war on Christmas and Christianity in this country,” said Robert Marley of the Coalition to Save Christmas in Massachusetts.
  Toys for Tots, which is run by the Marine Corps Reserves, already bans toy guns and other gifts it believes promote violence.

  But the group has also decided to take a pass on Jesus dolls from Beverly Hills Teddy Bear Co.
  “We can’t take a chance on sending a talking Jesus doll to a Jewish family or a Muslim family,” said Bill Grein of Toys for Tots, which gives poor kids of all faiths gifts for Christmas and other winter holidays.
  The dolls - which normally cost $20 - come complete with beards, long hair and hand-sewn cloth robes and sandals. They recite New Testament passages such as, “No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”
  The decision doesn’t directly affect the Bay State, as each Toys for Tots chapter collects its own gifts.
  But Marine Sgt. Paul McCawley, who heads the charity in western Massachusetts, said his chapter would have “regretfully declined the offer” had it occurred here.
  Why? “Basically, political correctness,” McCawley said. “We can’t go out and give a Muslim child a Jesus doll. It’d be like giving a boy a makeup kit.”
    Toys for Tots’ move drew mixed local reactions yesterday.
  Bennie Becker of the Jewish War Veterans’ Braintree Post called the decision “a good thing.”
  An Air Force veteran who once had an offer to serve in Saudi Arabia withdrawn because he’s Jewish, Becker said he opposes mixing religion with the military.
  But Bilal Kaleem of the Muslim American Society’s Boston chapter said he had no objection to giving Jesus dolls to Christian kids. “There are many Christian children in need,” he said.

Every time they get away with this kind of discrimination, the anti-Christian lefties get bolder.  PC must go!

From ABC News, Brian Ross and Rhonda Schwartz Report:

Convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff is scheduled to report to federal prison tomorrow, over the objections of federal prosecutors who say they still need his help to pursue leads on officials he allegedly bribed.

Sources close to the investigation say Abramoff has provided information on his dealings with and campaign contributions and gifts to “dozens of members of Congress and staff,” including what Abramoff has reportedly described as “six to eight seriously corrupt Democratic senators.”

Read the whole thing.

Wonder what the coverage of this will look like?

From CERA:

In contrast to a widely discussed theory that world oil production will soon reach a peak and go into sharp decline, a new analysis of the subject by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) finds that the remaining global oil resource base is actually 3.74 trillion barrels—three times as large as the 1.2 trillion barrels estimated by the theory’s proponents—and that the “peak oil” argument is based on faulty analysis which could, if accepted, distort critical policy and investment decisions and cloud the debate over the energy future.

Complete Press Release

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., November 14, 2006 – In contrast to a widely discussed theory that world oil production will soon reach a peak and go into sharp decline, a new analysis of the subject by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) finds that the remaining global oil resource base is actually 3.74 trillion barrels—three times as large as the 1.2 trillion barrels estimated by the theory’s proponents—and that the “peak oil” argument is based on faulty analysis which could, if accepted, distort critical policy and investment decisions and cloud the debate over the energy future.

Read the whole thing.

As usual, the actual facts refute the leftie environmentalist scareology.

Just two days after retaking the House and promising to end the “culture of corruption,” Rep. Charles Rangel and a dozen other congressmen rubbed elbows with business leaders in sunny Panama.

They attended a conference in Panama City’s luxurious $190-per-night Caesar Park hotel - which has a sauna, pool and 24-hour casino “all set in a lush tropical setting more like a resort than a business hotel,” according to its Web site.

While some members say they paid their own way, the conference had big-bucks corporate sponsors, including Pfizer, Citibank, AT&T, American Airlines and Time Warner.

Conservatives are suicidally polite. We feel bound to act nice, and so we go along with whatever euphemism the Left chooses for itself. On their side, Democrats loudly argue for truth in advertising for baldness cures—- but not in the marketplace of political ideas, where telling the truth is a lot more important. That is why the Left constantly seeks new PR labels to disguise itself.

Using the word “socialism” is taboo in American politics, but today the Democratic Party is socialist at heart. Even “liberal” isn’t accurate any more, because today’s Democrats are hardly the party of Cold War liberals like John F. Kennedy and Harry S Truman. Instead, they have fallen back on fuzzy, wishful Marxism. It’s where they feel most comfortable.

The Left is now pushing for yet a new PR label, “progressive,” which gently rings the old Marxist chimes for those in the know. If you call yourself a progressive, everybody who doesn’t agree must be a Neanderthal. But words mean things, and “socialist” is simply more accurate than either “liberal” or “progressive.”

On Iraq the key to Democrat thinking is that they are internationalists—they despise nationalism of all kinds, seeing it as the cause of wars. But the old Communist anthem was of course “The Internationale.” Internationalism is a defining feature of socialism, going back to the 19th century.

[...]

Conservatives see American patriotism as a saving grace. A widespread faith in the goodness of our country brought us through the dangers of the 20th century. Sure we made mistakes, being human, and politics being what it is. But for conservatives, the United States is still the last, best hope of mankind. The anti-American media therefore constantly tries to undermine pro-American feelings. Instead, they look to socialist Europe and the socialist UN; against a century of facts, they would place our safety in the hands of strangers.

That is presumably what Senator Hillary Clinton had in mind last week, when she called for more “internationalism” in American policy.

We stand at a point in time where we are now in the process of redefining both American internationalism and American interests. ... It is essential that we win this war against these borderless terrorists, but it is, I believe, critical that we once again recommit ourselves to that American internationalism that I mentioned in the beginning.

But “American internationalism” Is an oxymoron; it contradicts itself. After 9/11 we know perfectly well what “American Internationalism” really means. It means that we pay for NATO and the UN, protect Europe with a nuclear umbrella for sixty years, and then, when terrorists cause mass civilian deaths in New York City and Washington, DC, the Europeans will scream and yell at us when we try to preempt further attacks.

For socialists, internationalism comes first and America a very distant second. We have no true allies in Europe, except for Britain, and Tony Blair is now losing his job over faithfully sticking by our alliance. Senator Clinton’s “American internationalism” is a slogan for milking Uncle Sam and screwing him at the same time. If you doubt it, consider this story from the Washington Post by Thomas Edsall, June 28, 1998, in the happy days before 9/11.

President Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are seeking to take advantage of the unprecedented number of Western governments controlled by center-left parties to turn their “third way” political strategies in the United States and Great Britain into an international movement.

Third Way Socialism means piggy-backing Labour socialism on top of Maggie Thatcher’s capitalism: Taxing the free market just enough to support the socialist state. Today, the free market in Britain is being taxed to sink British sovereignty into the greedy arms of the EU, utterly corrupt and anti-democratic. The people of Britain have now been so deeply indoctrinated that they hardly notice it any more.

[...]

If and when American conservatives decide to call a socialist a socialist, the Left will scream that it’s is a McCarthyite smear. But is the word “socialism” defamatory or just the plain truth? In their hearts the Left believes, it believes fervently (in private), in caucusing with the Elect.

Socialism is a coherent political philosophy, painting a rosy future of peace and equality forever, if only the really good people achieve total power; in reality, the socialist fantasy just keeps slamming into a wall of failures, disasters, tyrannies, massacres and miseries wherever it’s tried.

But conservatives can’t even point to the Left’s endless record of failure if we don’t dare to use the word “socialism.” We have to find the courage to say the s-word.

[...]

Writes Mr. Kelly,

I’m a Socialist who believes in equality, peace and the redistribution of wealth, I oppose Racism, Sexism, Sectarianism, Nationalism and any kind of discrimination. Best wishes for a Socialist future.

There. He said it. It’s just the plain truth. Less than 20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the horrific past of Stalin and starvation is flushed down the memory hole. Socialists have not changed even one little bit. Reality has had no impact, because they are a millenarian sect that always has its eyes on an imaginary future. Yet peace and love are hard to find in Mr. Kelly’s high-whine rantings. Councillor Kerry passionately hates America, Israel and Republican “thugs.” His fidelity to “tolerance” does not include tolerance for the ideas of other people. These are the folks who control Europe, and who greeted the Democratic win last week with loud Hosannas.

George Orwell is always relevant. A former socialist himself, he became a passionate advocate of truth-telling. Remember this:

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

Perhaps conservatives should think of themselves as truth-telling revolutionaries in a time of wall-to-wall deceit. Using the s-word is a step in the right direction.

From the ever-insightful Ann Coulter:

In Franklin D. Roosevelt’s sixth year in 1938, Democrats lost 71 seats in the House and six in the Senate.

In Dwight Eisenhower’s sixth year in 1958, Republicans lost 47 House seats, 13 in the Senate.

In John F. Kennedy/Lyndon Johnson’s sixth year, Democrats lost 47 seats in the House and three in the Senate.

In Richard Nixon/Gerald Ford’s sixth year in office in 1974, Republicans lost 43 House seats and three Senate seats.

Even America’s greatest president, Ronald Reagan, lost five House seats and eight Senate seats in his sixth year in office.

But in the middle of what the media tell us is a massively unpopular war, the Democrats picked up about 30 House seats and five to six Senate seats in a sixth-year election, with lots of seats still too close to call. Only for half-brights with absolutely no concept of yesterday is this a “tsunami” — as MSNBC calls it — rather than the death throes of a dying party.

During eight years of Clinton — the man Democrats tell us was the greatest campaigner ever, a political genius, a heartthrob, Elvis! — Republicans picked up a total of 49 House seats and nine Senate seats in two midterm elections. Also, when Clinton won the presidency in 1992, his party actually lost 10 seats in the House — only the second time in the 20th century that a party won the White House but lost seats in the House.

Meanwhile, the Democrats’ epic victory this week, about which songs will be sung for generations, means that in two midterm elections Democrats were only able to pick up about 30 seats in the House and four seats in the Senate — and that’s assuming they pick up every seat that is currently too close to call. (The Democrats’ total gain is less than this week’s gain because Bush won six House and two Senate seats in the first midterm election.)

So however you cut it, this midterm proves that the Iraq war is at least more popular than Bill Clinton was.

In addition, consider this when you hear in the MSM about this Dem “landslide victory” and the Dems “mandate”:

The new Dem majority in the House is about the same as the previous Republican majority in the House, which was never characterized as either a “landslide” or a “mandate”. 

The new Dem majority in the Senate is now one seat, which is one-fifth of the previous Republican majority in the Senate.  Once again, the previous Republican majority was never called a “mandate” by the MSM.  Why is that?

What ever happened to patriotic reporters?

We are told by careful pollsters that half of the American people believe that American troops should be brought home from Iraq immediately. This news discourages supporters of our efforts there. Not me, though: I am relieved. Given press coverage of our efforts in Iraq, I am surprised that 90% of the public do not want us out right now.

Between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30, 2005, nearly 1,400 stories appeared on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening news. More than half focused on the costs and problems of the war, four times as many as those that discussed the successes. About 40% of the stories reported terrorist attacks; scarcely any reported the triumphs of American soldiers and Marines. The few positive stories about progress in Iraq were just a small fraction of all the broadcasts.

When the Center for Media and Public Affairs made a nonpartisan evaluation of network news broadcasts, it found that during the active war against Saddam Hussein, 51% of the reports about the conflict were negative. Six months after the land battle ended, 77% were negative; in the 2004 general election, 89% were negative; by the spring of 2006, 94% were negative. This decline in media support was much faster than during Korea or Vietnam.

Naturally, some of the hostile commentary reflects the nature of reporting. When every news outlet struggles to grab and hold an audience, no one should be surprised that this competition leads journalists to emphasize bloody events. To some degree, the press covers Iraq in much the same way that it covers America: it highlights conflict, shootings, bombings, hurricanes, tornadoes, and corruption.

But the war coverage does not reflect merely an interest in conflict. People who oppose the entire war on terror run much of the national press, and they go to great lengths to make waging it difficult. Thus the New York Times ran a front-page story about President Bush’s allowing, without court warrants, electronic monitoring of phone calls between overseas terrorists and people inside the U.S. On the heels of this, the Times reported that the FBI had been conducting a top-secret program to monitor radiation levels around U.S. Muslim sites, including mosques. And then both the New York Times and Los Angeles Times ran stories about America’s effort to monitor foreign banking transactions in order to frustrate terrorist plans. The revelation of this secret effort followed five years after the New York Times urged, in an editorial, that precisely such a program be started.

[...]

The changes came to a head in January 1968, when Communist forces during the Tet holiday launched a major attack on South Vietnamese cities. According to virtually every competent observer, these forces met a sharp defeat, but American press accounts described Tet instead as a major communist victory. Washington Post reporter Peter Braestrup later published a book in which he explained the failure of the press to report the Tet offensive accurately. His summary: “Rarely has contemporary crisis-journalism turned out, in retrospect, to have veered so widely from reality.”

Even as the facts became clearer, the press did not correct its false report that the North Vietnamese had won. When NBC News producer Robert Northshield was asked at the end of 1968 whether the network should put on a news show indicating that American and South Vietnamese troops had won, he rejected the idea, because Tet was already “established in the public’s mind as a defeat, and therefore it was an American defeat.”

In the opinion of Mr. Braestrup, the news failure resulted not from ideology but from economic and managerial constraints on the press--and in his view it had no material effect on American public opinion.

Others do not share his view. When Douglas Kinnard questioned more than 100 American generals who served in Vietnam, 92% said that newspaper coverage was often irresponsible or disruptive, and 96% said that television coverage on balance lacked context and was sensational or counterproductive.

An analysis of CBS’s Vietnam coverage in 1972 and 1973 supports their views. The Institute for American Strategy found that, of about 800 references to American policy and behavior, 81% were critical. Of 164 references to North Vietnamese policy and behavior, 57% were supportive. Another study, by a scholar skeptical about the extent of media influence, showed that televised editorial comments before Tet were favorable to our presence by a ratio of 4 to 1; after Tet, they were 2 to 1 against the American government’s policy.

Opinion polls taken in 1968 suggest that before the press reports on the Tet offensive, 28% of the public identified themselves as doves; by March, after the offensive was over, 42% said they were doves.

[...]

Mr. Wilson, formerly a professor at Harvard and at UCLA, now lectures at Pepperdine University. Among his recent books are The Moral Sense and The Marriage Problem. This article, adapted from a Manhattan Institute lecture, appears in the Autumn issue of City Journal.

I Was Also Wondering

Exhausted from covering J-Lo, T.O., Foley-o, and other uh-ohs, will the media ever find time for minor matters?

Such as that 8,000 Iraqi soldiers and police – volunteers all – have died in just two years, with 16,000 more wounded.

That Iraqi recruits still sign up to defend their country despite threats to their families.

[...]

That more Americans are murdered in New York and LA than US troops die in Iraq in a year, 43 times as many commit suicide, 21 times as many die in drunk-driving crashes.

That less than ½ of 1% of American troops serving in Iraq have been killed and 97% haven’t been injured at all.

That American troops by the thousands volunteer to re-enlist and return to Iraq, while tens of thousands new recruits sign up year after year.

That Iraq went from tyranny to new constitution seven times faster than America did.

[...]

Though wearied from pursuing Paris Hilton, the media might ask why land mines were barbaric when Princess Di spoke but IEDs – causing half of American deaths – are no worse than Gangsta rap?

Since World War II’s the standard for some, they might ask if Baghdad should have been nuked, 16 million U.S. soldiers have served, 400,000 die in combat, 700,000 others be wounded? They could ask who was left to resist in Germany and Japan and with what?

They could probe why the NFL is more serious about steroids than the UN is about WMD. Players have to prove they’re clean, the NFL doesn’t have to prove they’re not.

Then why did the press say it was up to the US to prove Saddam had WMD when the UN decreed he had to prove he didn’t?

UN inspectors proved he produced WMDs. They proved he had been developing even more. Saddam couldn’t prove he’d destroyed them. He lied repeatedly. Take his word? Saddam?

But the UN only barked. Saddam could wait, keep scientists and technologies with zero sanctions, billions from Oil for Food, continue killing more people than have died in Darfur, and have Uday and Qusay waiting in the wings.

[...]

Didn’t the press notice the Senate Intelligence Committee lied about what the UN found? That Senators Levin, Rockefeller, and Durbin doctored intelligence documents?

Why didn’t it stress that the UN refused U.S. security in Iraq, saw its ambassador killed, accused the U.S., then belatedly confessed the disaster was its fault?

The ambassador had cited Iraq’s “broadly representative” Governing Council as a “significant step” towards democracy, called it “an achievement to be recognized, applauded and nurtured,” “urged all Iraq’s neighbors to play their supportive role to the full, to embrace the Governing Council and provide it with whatever assistance it may request,” sought to “help facilitate and build consensus among Iraqis, and between Iraqis and the CPA,” discussed with Iraqis “the process of de-Baathification” and “the dissolution of the Iraqi army.”

Then Al Qaeda attacked. The UN ran.

Kofi Annan had said – before the bombing – that his ambassador was “working very closely with the Iraqis and Mr. Bremer to ensure that we do have this smooth transition from the Coalition to the establishment and creation of an Iraqi government down the line. And we are working very well together.”

Nice words.

Pooped from Martha Stewart reporting, the press also couldn’t emphasize that Ayatollah Al Sistani refused even to meet with Ambassador Bremer to rebuild Iraq and reconcile factions.

Bremer still sought Iraqi ideas, formed a Governing Council, wrote,

“The coalition wants them to exercise real power and will thrust authority at them,”

and asked in a broadcast address,

“What things are not working? What can we do better?”

Silence. From Sistani. From his followers.

How many fewer would have died if he hadn’t shut Bremer out? Would Sadr have surged, the domed mosque been bombed, oil fields attacked, electrical grids destroyed if Sistani – supreme leader to the Shia majority – had told Bremer, “These are our demands”?

But why worry about any of that?

We have all the news that’s fit to print.

Since this is an open letter, I am submitting it in its entirety.  From The American Thinker:

We received the following open letter to President Bush from Diego Sevi of Augustra, Georgia, and thought it worth passing along:

  Dear Mr. President,

  The one Glowing and Noble Achievement of the Iraq War is with the Kurds. That is where the foothold of democracy is planted and where [M]uslims know we aren’t there to conquer them.

  Think about it. The only place where a Democratic Islamic Republic exists in the middle east is with the Kurds. We seem to have forgotten that the Kurds really are our Friends. The Kurds built themselves a democracy long before the Iraq war & all we did was keep Saddam off their back.

  Regardless of what you say, I fear you are gearing up to ‘cut n run’ from Iraq and it appears America will leave the Kurds just like we did the MONTAIGNARDS in Vietnam. Need I remind you of the aftermath of abandoning Vietnam.

  It is time to get real close to our friends. The Kurds are our friends. Their very lives depend on America. We can’t just look for a save your face way out of Iraq and abandon the Kurds. Without American support I fear they will ultimately end up worse off than ever. We already have the blood of thousands of Kurds on our hands killed by Saddam in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War.

  This must not happen again. If we can support Israel against the world we can do the same for the Kurds. Please don’t abandon them. The Kurds are the example of American Righteousness.

  Respectfully,

  Diego Sevi, Augusta, Georgia

 

As a result of this letter, I am changing my opinion that Israel is our only ally in the ME.  In the process of trying to throw America and Israel under the bus in order to grab political power, the Dems/MSM is also doing it to the Kurds.  Shame on them!

Mark Levin:

Convenient Times

So, the New York Times reports on its front page today that Saddam Hussein had the necessary information and expertise to build nuclear weapons as far back as pre-1991, and that the information is so damning even now that posting it on a public website fifteen years later could assist other regimes, including Iran, in building such weapons.

The Times has just confirmed two things: 1.  President Bush was right when he said that Hussein was a threat to the world because, among other things, he would continue to pursue weapons of mass destruction; and 2. congressional Republicans were right in demanding a more aggressive and thorough effort by the Pentagon to interpret the enormous number of documents captured from the Iraqi regime.

[...] 

Thanks to the New York Times for disclosing this important information four days before a crucial election.  Your November surprise has just backfired.

Read the whole thing.

I guess those of us who think this revelation will damage the Dems aren’t alone.

Amir Taheri

Getting Serious About Iran:

For Regime Change

What to do about Iran? The question has haunted successive administrations in Washington since the raid on the U.S. embassy in Tehran and the seizure of its diplomats in November 1979.

In that instance, the initial response of the Carter White House was to treat the newly installed Islamic Republic as a rebellious adolescent who, given sympathy and support, would eventually mend his ways. It took 444 days of captivity before the ordeal of the hostages ended, and then only in the face of a more muscular American approach signaled by the victory of Ronald Reagan in the November 1980 presidential election.

A few months later, however, the Khomeini regime ordered the capture of new American hostages, this time in Beirut, and in the following years pursued its virulently anti-American campaign by organizing suicide attacks on the U.S. embassy compound in that city and at a U.S. military base close by; a total of 300 Americans, including 241 Marines, were killed. Entering into secret talks with Tehran, the allegedly bellicose Reagan eventually agreed to supply weapons to the mullahs in exchange for the release of some of the hostages.

The mullahs saw all this as a confirmation of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s notorious dictum: “America cannot do a damn thing!” Emboldened, they next tried to disrupt the flow of Arab oil through the Persian Gulf by firing at Kuwaiti oil tankers in 1987. With that, the Reagan administration finally moved onto the offensive. Kuwaiti tankers were put under American flag, and a naval task force was dispatched to deal with the Iranian threat. At the next round of probing attacks, the American task force sank nearly half of the Islamic Republic’s navy and dismantled over $1 billion worth of Iranian offshore oil installations. Promptly ordering a halt to his offensive, Khomeini also announced his acceptance of a United Nations Security Council resolution ending Iran’s eight-year war with Iraq.

Khomeini’s pattern of advance and retreat suggested a dynamic for change in Iran, but one that the first Bush administration failed to understand, let alone exploit. By 1990, the Islamic Republic had revived its strategy of countering and, where possible, rolling back U.S. influence throughout the so-called “arc of crisis” spanning the region from the Indian sub-continent to North Africa. Even as it created and strengthened branches of the Hizballah (“Party of God”) movement in seventeen countries, most notably in Lebanon, Tehran backed older radical Islamist groups in Central Asia, the Transcaucasus, Afghanistan, and the Arabian Peninsula.

Next came the Clinton administration, which, at first adopting a policy of benign neglect vis-à-vis the mullahs, was shocked out of its torpor by the attack on the U.S. base at Khobar, Saudi Arabia, in which nineteen American servicemen were killed in an operation designed by Iran and carried out by Lebanese and Saudi Shiite militants. Still, President Clinton chose to play the engagement card. After more than two years of secret diplomacy, the contours of a “grand bargain” (as the mullahs saw it) began to take shape. By 1998, President Muhammad Khatami, widely regarded in the West as a “moderate,” was even talking about a “mini-Yalta accord” that would demarcate respective “zones of influence.” In an advance payment for this putative bargain, Clinton and his Secretary of State Madeleine Albright apologized publicly to the Islamic Republic for past American misdeeds, and the administration lifted some of the sanctions imposed on Iranian imports into the United States.

The “grand bargain” was not to be, however. Scheduled to be unveiled during the millennium summit at the United Nations in New York with an “accidental” encounter and handshake between Clinton and Khatami, it was scrapped at the last minute by the Islamic Republic’s “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei, who had decided there was no point in striking a bargain with a U.S. President on the point of leaving office. Clinton was left pacing the corridors of the UN, waiting in vain for his “accidental” meeting.
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Initially, the administration of President George W. Bush was inclined to ignore the Islamic Republic—a creature that, if touched, would bring only grief. But the attacks of 9/11, followed by the U.S. campaign to liberate first Afghanistan and then Iraq, inevitably moved the Islamic Republic closer to the center of White House attention. By an accident of history, the mullahs actually shared Bush’s objectives in Afghanistan and Iraq, since both the Taliban and the Baath movement were sworn enemies of the Islamic Republic. For a few months, Tehran and Washington conducted bilateral talks and, in Afghanistan, even cooperated on the ground. Soon, however, it became clear that they held diametrically opposed visions of the future of the Middle East.

Bush had concluded that the terrorist attacks on the U.S. had flowed out of six decades of American support for a Middle East status quo dominated by reactionary and often despotic regimes. To ensure its own safety, America now had to help democratize the region. The Islamic Republic, by contrast, saw the elimination of its two principal regional enemies as a “gift from Allah,” and an opportunity to advance its own, contrary vision of the Middle East as the emergent core of a radical Islamist superpower under Iranian leadership.

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There can be little doubt that Ahmadinejad, Meshkini, and the others have been encouraged in their belligerence by Western statesmen and pundits who insist that no realistic alternative exists to “dialogue” with the Islamic Republic, even if this appears to play into the hands of the regime. As we have seen, however, “talking to the mullahs” is a strategy thoroughly tested over the last quarter-century and repeatedly found wanting. Every U.S. administration has maintained some level of communication, often behind the scenes, with the leadership in Tehran. None of it has succeeded in influencing its fundamental tenor or curbing its radical ambitions.

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Amir Taheri was the executive editor of Khayan, Iran’s largest daily newspaper, from 1972 to 1979. The author of ten books, he is a frequent contributor to publications in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. His article, “The Real Iraq,” appeared in our June issue.

A very long article, rich with facts; a worthwhile read.

Having been an advocate of regime change in Iran for some time, I find this article very encouraging.