Conservative Law and Politics

Check me out here with Lee Dryer speaking about liberal non-profit foundations.



 The article on Z Smith Reynolds is here and the one on WK Kellogg is here.

You Can Put Lipstick on a Liberal...

There is now a plethora of analysis about where Obama's health care plans went wrong, where his agenda went wrong, and why his popularity is dropping like a lead balloon. The best analysis came from Scott Rasmussen. Rasmussen said that support for health care reform was tanking because it is the culmination of a multitude of domestic policies the public doesn't like: the stimulus, cash for clunkers, the bailouts, etc. The public had finally gotten fed up and their pent up anger had reached its limits.

It's rather remarkable because those that opposed Obama most virulently proclaimed that his policies were liberal if not worse. Yet, throughout the campaign, then candidate Obama was able to so eloquently verbalize his vision that it seems the public was hypnotized by the rhetoric. Here's just one example. (this was said in a speech in the summer of 2008)

Here, in Nevada, we see how so many people are fighting for their American Dream. Because in so many ways, Felicitas and Francisco have lived the American Dream. Their story is not one of great wealth or privilege. Instead, it embodies the steady pursuit of simple dreams that has built this country from the bottom up

....Yet a predatory loan has turned this source of stability into an anchor of insecurity. Because a lender went for the easy buck, they are left struggling with ballooning interest rates and monthly mortgage payments. Because Washington has failed working people in this country, they are facing foreclosure, and the American Dream they sought for decades risks slipping away

....The foreclosure crisis has played out in painfully steady but predictable motion. While lenders were taking advantage of folks like Felicitas and Francisco, they were also spending hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying Washington to stay on the sidelines. For President Bush, the answer was to do nothing until the pain out on Main Street trickled up to Wall Street. Then, a few months ago, he rolled out a plan that was too little, too late. Instead of offering meaningful relief, he warned against doing too much. His main proposal for an economy that is leaving working people behind is to give more tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, even though they don’t need them and didn’t ask for them

....I do not accept an America where Washington’s only message to working people is: “you’re on your own.”

...To stabilize our housing market and to bring this crisis to an end, I’m a strong supporter of Chris Dodd and Barney Frank’s proposal to create a new FHA Housing Security Program. This will provide meaningful incentives for lenders to buy or refinance existing mortgages, and to convert them into stable 30-year fixed mortgages. This is not a windfall for borrowers – as they have to share any capital gain. It’s not a bailout for lenders or investors who gambled recklessly – as they will take losses. It asks both sides to sacrifice. It offers a responsible and fair way to help Americans who are facing foreclosure to keep their homes at rates they can afford.

Throughout the campaign, Obama was espousing very standard classic liberal policies. It worked because 1) Bush was very unpopular and 2) he's very eloquent. The policy he was describing in this speech turned out to be his loan modification program. That is one of many policies that has turned off the electorate to Obama. It is the subject of Rick Santelli's infamous rant, which helped to spawn the tea party movement.

So, if you think about it, during the campaign, Obama was putting lip stick on his liberalism. The standard boiler plate big government tax, borrow, and spend government programs were being dressed up by a great orator that was full of charisma. He gave everyone hope that there would be change. He did this by promising everyone everything. Here's another famous video during the campaign.


When you're campaigning, you can get away with making people believe you can give them everything. None of your promises have to be paid for YET. It turns out quite a lot of people believed that Obama would be able to provide them with everything and at no cost. For instance, during the campaign, Candidate Obama also famously said this.

I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.

It sounded great then. That's because he could put lipstick on his liberalism because he didn't have to have any specifics. That was during the campaign. Now, that it's time to govern, he can't dress up his classic liberal policies with eloquent speeches. He can't talk about a dawning of a new day (he can it just won't work) because the dawn of this new day is now filled with mountains of red ink.

That's the difference between campaigning and governing. During the campaign he could make every promise in the world. None of them had to be paid for yet. Obama introduced his first budget within two months of the new administration. That's when we first learned that under his vision our deficit would grow to nearly $2 trillion and stay higher than the worst deficit under Bush for the next ten years. There's no lipstick you can put on those numbers. They speak for themselves. Once we learned that in order to save Felicitas he would create a government program that would reward those that couldn't pay their current mortgages with rates that were better than rates for those with perfect credit, there was no putting lipstick on that classic liberal policy. Once we learned that in order so that the "rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal" we would try and implement a complicate scheme in which the government mandates which energy companies can an cannot use, you could no longer put lipstick on the liberalism. Once we learned that in order to "provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless" that this meant a $787 billion government spending boondoggle and 1000 page incomprehensible government take over of health care, there was again no putting lip stick on his liberalism.

So, there's many ways to analyze the rapid decline of the Obama presidency and agenda. One way to look at it is this. During the campaign, his eloquence and charisma allowed him to put lipstick on his liberalism. Now that he's governing, there's no more putting lipstick on his liberalism. His classic liberalism is on display and the country simply doesn't want a government of tax, borrow and spend liberalism.

The Obama Presidency and Liberalism

I think it's fair to say that the Obama presidency could be viewed as a controlled experiment on the worthiness of liberalism. With a very liberal president and overwhelming Democratic majorities, America is going to get a heavy dose of liberalism until at least 2010. (unless that is the President has a moderate epiphany as I suggested) Yet, if the president continues on his current path, he will also lead an imprint for history to judge liberalism in America.

So far, that judgment is incomplete but it's also near an incomplete failure. We first started with the stimulus. On the economy, the president famously said, "only government has the resources to jolt our economy back into life". He went on to say, "Tax cuts alone can't solve all of our economic problems" and so totally rejecting the conservative fiscal solution to an economic recession. Nothing could be more liberal than seeing the government as the driver of economic growth. So, he passed his $787 billion stimulus. Its results so far have been well documented. Our unemployment rate is inching toward ten percent. Our deficit is nearing two trillion dollars and we've only spent one tenth of it. Meanwhile, the president took over several banks, two auto companies, and an insurance company. One way or another, the outcome of all this government intervention will also be a historical judgment on liberalism as well.

In fact, though, the greatest judgment against liberalism so far has been the president's total inability to move his agenda going forward. In fact, despite overwhelming popularity, he barely got the stimulus through. Since then, he's been totally impotent. Things don't look to get any better. Cap and trade barely passed the House and the Senate has no plans to take it up anytime soon. Health care reform is in even worse shape. What sort of a judgment on liberalism is it if the liberal party has veto proof majorities in both chambers and still can't pass a liberal agenda? One might ask if liberalism can't pass now when will it pass.

Even lesser known policies like his $75 billion loan modification plan have been colossal failures. It's important to point out again that this judgment is still incomplete. The economy could have a stunning turnaround and by this time next year our unemployment might be in the 6's. GM and Chrysler might both be profitable by 2012 and the government will have sold its shares by then. In light of all of this, the president will then be able to pass sweeping health care, energy, and education reform. In 2012, we'll be a liberal nation and history's judgment on liberalism in America will be a glowing success. It's still early and so the judgment is incomplete.

There will also be those liberals that will claim that the Bush presidency was a failing referendum on conservatism. That is a popular and totally inaccurate argument. There are some liberals that claim the tax cuts caused the recession we are in now. That's just ludicrous. The tax cuts were enacted in 2001-2003. The recession didn't occur for five years. The two have nothing to do with each other. Others proclaim that deregulation caused the meltdown. Of course, it wasn't a lack of regulation but a lack of enforcement that lead to the crisis. It isn't a conservative policy to look the other way on mass fraud, but a bad policy. In fact, most of Bush's biggest problems came from embracing liberal ideas, big budget deficits, bloated government programs and bailouts. In fact, history's judgment on conservatism should already be written with the wildly successful Reagan presidency. Yet, those with an agenda attempt to cloud the issue. Our economy came out of a recession because government shrank, regulations were slashed, and taxes were cut. Yet, some cloud the issue and leave that debate open still.

Make no mistake, by November 2010, and certainly November 2012, history will be ready to judge liberalism as well. While its currently incomplete, the judgment so far is a total failure.

Habeas Corpus and Gun Control: More Hypocrisy from the Far Left

Smart aleck liberals sometimes ask me why I am a conservative. I tell them that I believe in smaller government, lower taxes and traditional values over secular progressivism. Furthermore, when government shrinks it focuses on its main duty, protecting its citizenry. As far as protecting its citizenry, the government should be as large as it needs to be to get the job done. This is the philosophy I take with most political issues, and I usually come to my conclusions based on those principles.

Sometimes, I wonder what philosophy drives certain ideologues because often times their belief systems have no consistency. I have already highlighted the inconsistent position that some liberals take toward abortion and gun control here. In much the same way, the far left's dual position on gun control and habeas rights for terrorists is equally hypocritical and inconsistent.

The far left was up in arms over the revelation that the Bush administration dared to hold terrorists at GITMO without giving them habeas rights. (in other words without charging them) When that program was overturned they cheered. Here is an example.

The Boumediene opinion that was published ten days ago, as you might imagine, has been a step back onto the road of Restoring Our Constitution. Much has been written about what Boumediene has to say about habeas corpus, and the geographical reach of Constitutional rights, and whether aspects of the ersatz system set up within the Executive Branch to respect those rights passes Constitutional muster.

In other words, folks on the far left see habeas corpus a fundamental CONSTITUTIONAL right. So much so they see it that they believe even terrorists deserve such rights. (Now, I am of the opinion that habeas is a right given to criminals not enemies in war but let's leave that for a minute.) In fact, in the mind of the far left, habeas is so fundamental that they would be willing to threaten national security in order to maintain it.

So, how do many of the same folks on the far left see the 2nd amendment? Here is an example.

A true originalist approach might look to the weapons preferred by the Founding generation to determine what is protected. That's not what the Court did, perhaps fearing the logical consequence that a handgun ban might be permitted in light of the Founding generation's preference for the more reliable and accurate long gun.

So what is protected and what is not protected? That is where the Second Amendment rubber hits the road. The real meaning of the Second Amendment is in what the Court reads that Amendment to prohibit or allow. But here the opinion does not provide tremendous guidance, failing to articulate a standard of review to help the lower courts soon to face numerous Second Amendment suits. More importantly, the guidance it does give is not grounded in original meaning at all.

The Court says that it is not calling into question longstanding prohibitions on possession by felons and the mentally incompetent, bans on guns in sensitive places, and restrictions on sales and purchase. In another passage, the Court suggests that "dangerous and unusual" weapons and concealed weapons can be banned. Why doesn't the Second Amendment call those laws into question?

The Court provides no answer other than that they are "longstanding." But this is not the same as "part of the original public meaning" of the Second Amendment. Indeed, many of these types of laws are modern inventions and - while reasonable and appropriate - had no analogy in the Founding era. The Founders didn't require background checks, require sellers to be licensed, or ban guns in schools. Mental incompetence was not even something recognized in the law until the 19th century. Meanwhile, the types of gun control laws the Framers did have would be unacceptable: requirements that all able-bodied men turn up for mandatory musters or that all gun owners take an oath of loyalty to the state.

Here is how kooky far left commentator sees the issue of habeas corpus and other anti terror measures...

They were seeking out terrorists, which is what they called the people in South Africa who actually lived there, who were the majority. The blacks in South Africa, who were trying to fight for their own civil rights, were called terrorists and the government was allowed to arrest them at will and interrogate them, no matter what they did, just on the suspicion. Very similar today to what we have in the United States, thanks to the Patriot Act."

...

What they did–what they did that was similar was, they threw out due process. They threw out the right to attorney."

O’Donnell: "Habeas corpus."

Robbins: "And they allowed the, the government and actually required people like this guy I play to torture people. And I’m, so, so what it does to the individual is it, it puts an incredible moral burden on the agent of the government, the, the soldier or the policeman–"

So, of course, one would expect Rosie to be totally behind the 2nd amendment because after all it is a Constitutional right. Wrong...

I think the horror of imagining six to thirteen-year-old girls handcuffed together and shot execution style, one by one, is perhaps enough to awaken the nation that maybe we need some stricter gun control laws."

To some folks, some rights are just more important than others.

So, many of the same folks that find habeas so sacrosanct that it even applies to terrorists themselves, see the 2nd amendment as something "evolving". In other words, there should plenty of limits placed on the second amendment even though it is right there in the Constitution. After all, in their view, guns are dangerous and thus that freedom ought to be curbed. Never mind that this freedom is right out of the Constitution. If Americans might be killed by guns, then we must curb that freedom.

So, on the one hand, habeas is a concept so sancrosanct it can never be curbed even if it threatens Americans' lives. On the other hand, guns are dangerous so even if their ownership is protected by the second amendment we should disregard it in the name of safety. How's that for consistency? As for me, I believe that Americans deserve both and terrorists neither. That's consistency.

The far left on the other hand...this is the sort of lack of consistency and hypocrisy that makes me wonder if these folks have a political philosophy.

Demonizing Joe Lieberman

Jonathon Chait has a piece scorching every Conservative's favorite non Republican, Joe Lieberman, in today's The New Republic. Lieberman's main sacrilege is that he not only dared to go against the grain of his party on foreign policy, but worse than that, he wasn't shy about it.

Watching Joe Lieberman go around the bend over the last couple years is one of the strangest things I've ever seen in politics. Lieberman was always a foreign policy hawk and a capital gains tax cutter, and he generally took enormous pleasure in staying in the right's good graces. But it is also these very qualities--his ideological moderation, his aversion to conflict, his timorous demeanor--that have made his recent apoplexy so weird.

It isn't so much that he is a foreign policy hawk. That even Chait admits has been Lieberman's M.O. his whole entire political career. What really bothers Chait is that Lieberman isn't shy about voicing his disagreement. It seems that Chait believes that Lieberman has always been so accommodating to his opponents...disagreeing without being disagreeable if you will. Now, Lieberman is taking his foreign policy opponents head on.

Lieberman says that Democrats, who were once "unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders," now "minimize the seriousness of the threat from Islamic extremism." Lieberman prefers them to use morally confident language like this:

Chait follows by quoting this passage...

The terrorists are at war with us. The threat is from violent extremists who are a small minority of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims, but the threat is real. They distort Islam. They kill man, woman, and child; Christian and Hindu, Jew and Muslim. They seek to create a repressive caliphate. To defeat this enemy, we must understand who we are fighting against, and what we are fighting for.

This is a passage from a speech by Barack Obama, and in the view of Chait, this speech should be enough for Lieberman to view the Democrats as plenty hawkish enough.

Obviously, Chait doesn't actually understand Lieberman's position at all. Lieberman is not so much concerned with just how much tough sounding language a candidate or politician puts into a speech. What Lieberman is concerned with is the body of action a politician or party will create in fighting the GWOT. Lieberman believes that victory in Iraq is vital. He believes that meeting with despots and tyrants is useless unless we have leverage. Furthermore, he believes that the aggressive GWOT policies of the Bush administration have worked for the most part. As an extension, he sees the Democrat's entire GWOT platform as weak and dangerous, no matter how much tough language a candidate puts into a speech.

Furthermore, Lieberman believes that in the age of terror, the right GWOT policy is more important than any other issue. As such, he supports John McCain because while they may disagree more than they agree they do agree on the one issue that matters to him right now.

This really burns up Chait. He just can't stand a former Democrat that had an overwhelmingly liberal record sticking it back in the eyes of Democrats. Chait would likely applaud folks like Scott McClellan and Chuck Hagel as courageous, but Lieberman must be a cook. This is standard issue propaganda techniques. Demonize those that disagree with you in order to marginalize them. Lieberman must be losing it because his behavior has suddenly turned aggressive even though he is always mild mannered. That's the narrative of someone like Chait. Democrats need not worry about Lieberman's aggressive criticism because he is losing it. Of course, Chait mistakes passion and principle for confrontation. It is the same kind of passion and principle that he would likely applaud in Hagel and McClellan.

Finally, Chait has the chutzpah to finish his piece like this...

There's hardly any sense in which Lieberman is an independent figure. He's become a cog in the Republican message machine. He may be independent from liberal bloggers, but the conservative equivalent--partisan shouters like Sean Hannity--are his treasured pals. Lieberman even continues to embrace lunatic preacher John Hagee--whose many daft ideas include his belief that the Holocaust fulfilled God's will--even after John McCain repudiated him.

Lieberman explains that he calls himself an "independent Democrat" because the Democratic Party's foreign policy ideals "exist in me today independent of the current Democratic Party, which has rejected them." This is a wildly egocentric interpretation. Democrats started questioning the war because the war was going badly, while Lieberman remained--to borrow a phrase--in a spider hole of denial. Most supported him in his 2006 primary fight but then endorsed the party nominee when he lost, because that's what political parties do.

Keep in mind that in the last three years, Lieberman has caucused with the Democrats. He has supported John McCain for President. He has gotten together with John Warner on a fairly liberal climate control bill. He joined the gang of fourteen, and he voted against both Sam Alito and John Roberts.

I suppose that in the mind of Chait that isn't independent and I am sure that he finds Barack Obama to be independent. Like I said, pure chutzpah.

Liberal Lies, Misunderstandings, and Misconceptions About Iraq

Over the weekend, I wrote this piece about common liberal misconceptions about some of the most controversial GWOT techniques. Since that was received relatively well, I have decided to do a follow up about similar misconceptions that liberals have specifically toward Iraq.

1) No one knows what victory is so we can't tell if we are doing well because we won't know if we ever win.

This is a misconception on many levels. First, as long as violence is down and the trajectory on violence continues downward we are winning. In other words as long as everyday brings less and less violence that means we are winning. Furthermore, the reduction in violence has been combined with significant political progress. This progress has not only been seen in many of the so called benchmarks (slowly more than half have been reached), but it also includes significant progress locally in many parts of the country. Locals in places like Ramadi have taken the bull by the horn. They have turned on AQI and other militias and they have restored order mainly on their own. Folks that used to be allied with the enemy are now allied with us and they are now patrolling local streets as part of newly minted police forces.

Furthermore, victory has always been defined as an Iraq, at peace with itself and its neighbors, a stable, self functioning government, capable of defending itself, and an ally in the GWOT. While this maybe a broad and vague form of victory, and one that was demeaned as impossible as late as last year, it is one that is now very close to being achieved. The simple fact of the matter is that the central government has recently not only taken on AQI but the Sadr militias. Maliki's government has shown leadership in taking on the terrorist elements within its borders, furthermore it has begun to function in every way as a representative government of all the people of Iraq.

2) Sunnis and Shias have been fighting for more than a millennial and we are only getting in the middle centuries of bad blood. When things were at their darkest in the war in Iraq, this certainly seemed to be the case. In fact, in the last year and a half this simply is not true. For the most part, Iraqis have chosen peace. We have simply not seen the sort of retribution that we used to see for ethnic cleansing. Furthermore, the central government has begun to function as a coalition of all factions. The military and the police have all begun to function professionally with mixes of each sect.

The reality is that liberals simply saw the Iraqis, and Middle Easterners in general, as some sort of savages that had no understanding of humanity. They saw these folks not as human beings, but as blood thirsty savages that only want to kill and torture those that they view as different. They saw Iraq as some sort of a place where the only motivation for most is the bloodthirsty revenge of prior wrongs perpetrated upon their brethren. That's the way my liberal friend described the situation last August as violence was just beginning to subside and the continued decrease in violence has proven him, and everyone else that holds this opinion, WRONG.

3) Violence has only subsided because we have more troops on the ground. We can't keep those troops there forever and as soon as we reduce our troop levels we will see violence spike again.

First, we have already begun troop withdrawals and violence has continued to drop despite the troop withdrawal. Second, and much more importantly, this view totally misunderstands the counter insurgency strategy employed by General David Petraeus. The clear, hold and build strategy is about a lot more than an increase in troops. It is a totally new way to fight the insurgency. It wasn't merely an increase in 30,000 troops that lowered violence dramatically, but much more, the new way in which we fought the insurgency. Rather than spending most of their time in forward operating bases and taking on search and destroy missions, the military spent the majority of their time out and about among the population. They effectively took the fight to the insurgents. After the insurgents were cleared, there was enough forces left locally to maintain law and order. This doesn't necessarily require an extra 30,000 troops. It was a whole new way of thinking.

4) The terrorists wear no uniforms, they look like everyone else, and thus we will never know who they are.

This is of course only said by those with absolutely no military training. Of course, the terrorists are fighting an asymmetrical war. Of course, they make it more difficult by trying to blend in. Of course, they fight and live among civilians again making it more difficult to defeat them. All of this is true, however they aren't the first to use such techniques, and they can be defeated if countered effectively. Combinations of house to house searches, good intelligence from the locals, and effective interrogation techniques can, and much more HAVE, identified the terrorists. As I told my liberal friend when he asked exactly this question,

if you ask a terrorist if they are a terrorist you either find out right away or are lied to

Either way, effective interrogators can figure out if someone is a terrorist.

5)Iraq is a diversion. There were no terrorists there until we got there, and the sooner we get out of there the sooner we can move onto focusing on the real GWOT.

Whether or not Abu Musab Al Zarqawi was or was NOT in Iraq prior to our invasion is still an open debate. It is NOT debate that Saddam Hussein supported terrorists of all stripes from all sorts of terrorist groups. Furthermore, Iraq formed a nexus, along with Iran and Syria, of three terrorist enabling countries side by side. We simply weren't going to win the GWOT with those three countries standing side by side in their previous form.

More than that, whatever the prior make up of Iraq before the war, it is of little relevance now. Only those that hate Bush actually think it matters. Whether or not we drew terrorists to Iraq or they came on their own, they are there now. Leaving gives them a victory, a place to launch attacks from, and a new sphere of influence. Furthermore, it will increase the power of Iran and Syria as well. If this is not vital to the GWOT, what exactly is?

6) Bush lied and people died.

Not only has there never been any reputable proof that this is true, the statement belies all logic and usually it is totally disingenuous. First, if Bush lied, then so did hundreds of politicians that said the same thing. That means that Tony Blair lied. It means Bill Clinton lied. Frankly, it means that much of Congress lied. Not only is this simply impossible, but those claiming it are totally disingenuous. They either give a pass to every other politician that said the same thing, or they make up some sort of cryptic Machiavellian reason for why they were duped.

7) Iraq is putting a strain on our troops and for the health of the military troops must be pulled out immediately.

During any period of prolonged war the troops are strained. They were strained during the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. Despite all those repeated strains on the military ours is still far and away the best military in the world. The thing that strains the military more than anything is losing. If anyone wants to really strain the military, then what they should do is pull them out before they get a chance to win.

8)Our military has done all it can. It has performed fabulously and it is time for us to pull out and let the Iraqis decide their own future.

This is one that you will hear from Barack Obama a lot. This is the most obscenely theoretical argument you will ever hear. The military has not done all it can. Violence is down but it needs to be dropped much further. The Iraqi military and police have shown great progress but they aren't ready to function totally on their own. The government and their society are all showing great promise and they all have come a long way. That is entirely because they continue to maintain the support of the U.S. If we pull out then chaos ensues. The reason that we are succeeding is because if detailed and well thought out plans of military personnell that have each spent significant time on the ground in Iraq. None of them believe that pulling out is proper. The only folks that say that are politicians and pundits that make these statements from the comforts of places far from Iraq.

9) If you are in favor of this war go fight, and if you aren't you are just a chickenhawk.

This is a very common argument. It will come out of the mouth of any liberal at any moment. Of course, this is nonsense. If the only people that can speak out on military matters are those that served, then no one could voice their opinion on anything unless they were in the field. Only teachers could make education policy. Only doctors could make policy in health care, etc. Of course, the world doesn't work that way. You don't have to go to war to support the war with legitimacy.

10)Saddam acted as a counter to Iran, and all the Iraq war has done is strengthened the Iranians hands. The new government will wind up being a puppet to the Iranians.

Some of this is incredibly naive and others incredibly simplistic. It is just unbelievably naive to think that we could allow to equally evil, though in rivalry, regimes counter balance each other and somehow make that work in the long term. Yes, Saddam hated the Iranians, and yes, his presence weakened their presence. Talk about unintended consequences. Are liberals really saying that we could afford to, in the long term, allow to equally evil regimes next to each other without having that blow up.

Second, Iran's hand is only strengthened if we lose in Iraq. If Iraq is transformed into the democracy we are now building then that weakens Iran's hands. The last thing a totalitarian government wants is a democracy as a neighbor.

Finally, Iraqi politics and society is far too sophisticated and complex for a puppet government to emerge for any long period of time as long as the democracy continues. While Iraq is 60% Shia, not all Shias want a strong alliance with Iran. The secular Shias, about 20-30% of all Shias, don't want any such thing, and of course no other group wants it either. No government would maintain any popular support for more than one election if they were seen as in bed with the Iranians.

11) Things are going so well that we can then pull them out.

Once liberals are through with every other excuse and explanation for why we should pull out of Iraq, they leave the absolute most disingenuous for last. They admit everything you are saying is correct and then use that as the basis of their argument, pull out. This is total nonsense. Things are going very well, however they are not going anywhere near well enough to pull out. Whether liberals like it or not, in order to succeed, their will be some sort of military presence in Iraq for a long time. I have already explained why it is vital to succeed. In order to succeed, the only thing that we can do is continue to support the strategy that has been so effective for over a year.