Toby's Ironman-In-Training Blog

Here’s a stunning bit of information you’re not likely to see played out too much in the mainstream media. A recent public opinion poll found that by a margin of two to one, most Iraqis are still optimistic about their future and prefer life under the current government to life under Saddam:

One in four Iraqis has had a family member murdered… in Baghdad, the capital, one in four has had a relative kidnapped…. But when asked whether they preferred life under Saddam, the dictator who was executed last December, or under Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, most replied that things were better for them today.

Amazing. This poll was conducted by Opinion Research Business (ORB), a “respected British market research company that funded its own survey of 5,019 Iraqis over the age of 18.”

“We’ve been polling in Iraq since 2005 and the finding that most surprised us was how many Iraqis expressed support for the present government,” said Johnny Heald, managing director of ORB. “Given the level of violence in Iraq, it shows an unexpected level of optimism.”

Just as the media disproportionately portray the progress we have made in most of Iraq, so too do they slant their reporting on the parents of soldiers who have been killed in battle. If you just listened to the major media outlets, you might think that anti-war zealots who are quick to turn their sons’ sacrifice into whatever media attention they can grab typify that group.

Here is a story about a different group of parents that I doubt you’ll be hearing much about in the news. After their son Justin was killed in Sadr City, Iraq, Jan and Joe Johnson decided to make a perilous trip to Iraq to bring some closure to their son’s death, to find out why he died and what purpose his sacrifice served.

They traveled with several other parents to Iraq as guests of the Kurdish government. Everywhere they went, they were treated as heroes and thanked for their sacrifice.

One mother, Debra Bastian, who handed out wallet-sized photos of her son was brought to tears when she handed the photo to an Iraqi woman whose two sons and husband were killed during Saddam’s rule. The woman took the photo, tucket it into a framed picture of her husband and sons, and said "now your son is my son."

Bastian said of the trip, "I needed to make that trip. All of us were very, very disappointed in the media coverage over the war. I had so many avenues that were telling me different, that there were good things happening in Iraq, that they were just reporting the bomb of the day."

Apparently it is possible for a party to win an election without having a plan. What yet remains to be seen is whether Nancy Pelosi is actually Speaker material… her first bungled attempt to instill her pal John Murtha as Majority Leader certainly doesn’t look good for her. Not only does it display a surprising amount of political naiveté (why on earth would she make such a high-profile gambit without first ensuring that her pick was at least within striking distance? Really… 149-86?) but, regardless of what she and Hoyer say, this will damage her ability to effectively rally her troops for quite a while.

What was surprising to me was how much the national anti-Republican mood hurt us locally at the county level. I know I’m biased, but for the first time in the history of Clark County, the Republican party had a slate full of good, quality, experienced candidates, and every one of us were way better than what the Democrats offered. And we did everything right, from door-to-door events all year long to phone calls to holding the local Democrats’ flagrant disregard of election law to the minimum amount possible.

By any measure, we should have won some county-wide seats this year. Every Republican and Democrat I spoke with leading up to the election talked about how this was the beginning of the end of Democrat control on this county. Looking at the numbers, if this were a usual non-presidential election year, we would have indeed had a great showing. But, this was no normal election year.

I can’t say that the punishment of the national Republican party was undeserved. We certainly got away from our core values of fiscal conservatism and small government. And it looks like the Democrats have picked it up and are running with it for all it’s worth. Hopefully Republicans across the country take this as a much needed wake-up call to get back to what brought us to power in the first place.

Today President Bush visited Clark County! It was the first time a sitting President has visited this district in over 40 years. As if that weren’t exciting enough, I was picked to drive one of the rental vans for the press corps in the motorcade!

That’s right, I got to drive 50 yards behind the leader of the free world, going 70 MPH down city streets, running red lights and stop signs while riding on the tail of the cop in front of me! It was certainly the experience of a lifetime. I’ve got some photos posted to my gallery.

A great quote from an article on Nancy Pelosi’s chances of becoming Speaker Of The House this November:

“Pelosi has done little to embolden Democrats with a winning agenda beyond the rhetoric of direct mail attacks on Republicans, leaving party candidates on their own to say anything relevant to the millions of nonpartisan voters who will decide control of Congress,” Craig Crawford, Congressional Quarterly columnist and author of “Attack the Messenger: How Politicians Turn You Against the Media,” wrote in June.

“Pelosi might be a skilled backroom operator, but compared to Newt Gingrich’s fiery crusade to GOP victory in 1994 — well, there is no comparison,” Crawford added. “It is as difficult to imagine Pelosi as speaker of the House as it is to envision (comedian) Adam Sandler as Superman.”

It’s no secret that the conditions are right for the Democrats to take control of the House this fall. If only they followed the GOP playbook from 2004, it would be theirs for the taking. Unfortunately for them, they are incapable of delivering a coherent agenda that they can all agree upon and which resonates with the American electorate, particularly moderates and independents, the way the Contract With America did in 2004.

There’s not a single issue which is important to Americans on which the Democrats can even come to a consensus, much less offer leadership. And in politics, in order for a challenger to win, it’s necessary to give the electorate a reason to fire the incumbent. The Democrats continue to fail to do so.

Six months ago, I was sure that by this point in the campaign season, the House Dems and their allies challenging GOP incumbents would have come up with such a plan by now and that it would spell certain doom for the GOP’s chances of keeping the House. Every time over the past decade when the Dems have suffered yet another humiliating defeat, they have vowed to come together as a party, reach out to moderates, and define a clear vision for the future. That has yet to happen, and it’s looking more and more like 2006 won’t be the year that it does.

I’m beginning to think that this will be yet another year when the Dems manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Senate Minority Leader Henry Reid put it best* in a recent article in The Onion when he said:

“We are entirely capable of bungling this opportunity to regain control of the House and Senate and the trust of the American people,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said to scattered applause. “It will take some doing, but we’re in this for the long and pointless haul.”

“We can lose this,” Reid added. “All it takes is a little lack of backbone.”

* A disclaimer on the (hopefully) obvious: Reid didn’t really say this. This quote was invented by The Onion, a satirical newspaper.

Michael Berg, the father of U.S. Contractor Nicholas Berg, who was beheaded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2004, says that al-Zarqawi’s death is a double tragedy and calls President Bush the “real terrorist”.

Now, it’s one thing for the parents of soldiers killed in battle to take their anger out on the President. Although I find it rather despicable that anyone would use someone’s death for their political agenda, I can at least feel for a soldier’s parent because even though their son or daughter volunteered for duty in the first place, it’s the commander in chief who sent them to war. Not that I agree with that line of reasoning, but at least I can forgive their misplaced contempt and anger.

However, Mr. Berg, your son specifically chose to go to Iraq. I don’t know the reason why he made that decision, but I would assume that the very high tax-free salary he earned while there probably had something to do with it. Regardless, he knew the risks involved when he went. If he didn’t want to go, he wasn’t legally compelled to (as military servicemembers are).

Using his death as a means to spout your own personal agenda, while calling the death of his murderer a tragedy, is simply beyond comprehension, and I’m sure he would be as appalled at your twisted logic as I am.

I think Bush is doing exactly the right thing with his new border security plan. Regardless of where one stands on the issue of what’s to be done with the millions of illegal immigrants already in the country, it’s difficult to argue against the need for tighter control of our borders. This is not an immigration issue; it’s a national security issue.

As usual, there has been quite a bit of knee-jerk reaction to this plan.

There are those who believe that this is not an appropriate use of the National Guard. Senator Chuck Hagel says, “That’s not the role of our military. That’s not the role of our National Guard. . . . That’s a short-term fix, and I’m not sure that’s a very wise fix.” What part of the term National Guard is unclear here?

Protecting our borders from foreign threats is exactly the type of role the National Guard was designed for. The heritage of the National Guard dates back to colonial days when groups of citizen-soldiers would form militias in order to protect their homes from outside attacks. This is another case of a regular-army veteran such as Senator Hagel who doesn’t truly understand the dual role of the National Guard (not to denigrate the admirable service of Sen. Hagel or the regular Army of course).

The anti-war crowd was also quick to claim that the National Guard is stretched too thin to assume this additional duty. Not true — the vast majority of these troops will be used during their regular two- or three-week annual training period, with only a small “continuity force” to ensure the smooth transition of forces in and out.

When I was an Infantry officer in the National Guard, I would have loved to have a “real-world” mission such as this instead of the usual Annual Training period where exercises were still centered around Vietnam-era “walk through the woods and find the bad guys” missions which are becoming increasingly less relevant in today’s military. A real-world mission such as this is a great way to provide officers, NCOs, and soldiers with the type of experience and practice they need in planning and executing a mission.

There are also those who would like us to believe that 6,000 trigger-happy cowboys are going to be released to the border to start shooting border crossers on sight. Again, an emotional claim not based on the truth. These troops will be used for “surveillance and reconnaissance, engineering support, transportation support, logistics support, vehicle dismantling, medical support,” construction of barriers, roads and other infrastructure, and language support.

In other words, they will be used to free up the Border Patrol from some of the behind-the-scenes and support roles in order to more effectively perform their job. And as the Border Patrol builds up its force by 2008, the National Guard presence will gradually decrease. Also, those troops will remain under the control of the governors from whose states they are pulled, although federal money will be used to support the program. In other words, there will be no “federalization” of most troops who participate in this program, as occurs (for example) when soldiers are mobilized for duty in Iraq or Afghanistan.

So in summary, I’m having a really hard time trying to find any negatives to this plan. Regardless of what eventually is done about the millions of illegals in our country, it is of critical importance that we tighten our southern border and that we do it now.

Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war protestor who has set up camp outside President Bush’s ranch in Texas, asks the following of the President and Operation Iraqi Freedom: “If it’s such a noble cause, why aren’t his daughters over there?”

I hear this rhetorical question a lot from the anti-war crowd. Michael Moore tried to ask the same of Bill O’Reiley while on his program — if O’Reiley thinks the war is worthwhile, would he sacrifice his own kid for it?

Well, Sheehans of the world, here’s your answer: because the United States has what we refer to as an "all-volunteer army". That means that no one in the armed forces joined against their will. They were all made aware of the consequences of their enlistment or commission before they ever signed on that dotted line.

So regardless of how heart-moving or thought-provoking you think that question is, the answer is just as simple. That’s just not the way it works. And just as Bush can’t "send his daughters to war", your son also knew full well the consequences of his actions when he joined.

The organization which governs much of how the Internet works recently approved a new “top-level domain” for adult-oriented content. Websites ending with .xxx will belong to this new domain, and a company was chosen to administer the domain based on a specific set of criteria and operating guidelines.

As far as I’m concerned, this seems like a great idea for everyone involved. Responsible adult websites can set up shop in this domain without fear that they will be accused of trying to lure underage or unsuspecting visitors. Parents who wish to prevent their children from viewing such content can easily set up a firewall to block it (assuming, of course, that they know enough about computers to keep their kids from bypassing the firewall). Libraries and other organizations which are under fire for being too lax in blocking this content will have a much easier time.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration and certain self-righteous religious groups are now raising objections to this domain. The “Family Research Council” made the following incredibly ignorant statement: “pornographers will be given even more opportunities to flood our homes, libraries and society with pornography through the .xxx domain.”

As big a supporter of President Bush that I am, it always annoys me to see him give in so easily to the religious right and other “family” groups. Cancelling Kid Rock from appearing at an inauguration event hosted by his daughters is a great example of this. If you don’t like Kid Rock, don’t watch. And while you’re at it, explain to your kids why you don’t approve of his music. Why does it so often seem that the very groups which espouse taking responsibility for raising your own children are the first ones to complain loudly and bitterly when they feel others aren’t doing enough to set standards for them?

The entire point of this new domain is to allow the adult industry to regulate itself in a voluntary, responsible manner. It’s the websites that try to pose as something else, then serve up adult content once unsuspecting websurfers enter, that these groups should worry about. It’s the websites that try to trick search engines into redirecting queries for popular information to their sites that are a problem. Any website that would set up in a domain specifically created for adult content isn’t trying to trick anyone!

As if to underscore my statement that the popular media loves to dwell on the negative rather than highlight the positive (and this by no means is limited to Iraq, but all news in general), the media is currently having a feeding frenzy over the fact that the death toll of American troops in Iraq has passed another meaningless milestone.

How exactly is this news? Where are the reports on the number of books and school supplies handed out to schools in Iraq? Where are the reports on the number of provinces in Iraq which are relatively violence-free versus those which still pose a security risk?

Sorry, you’ll have a hard time finding news on such topics because the major news outlets will put sensationalist stories first and foremost time after time. I’m not saying that the death toll in Iraq isn’t significant, but this statistic doesn’t come close to painting an accurate picture of Iraq as a whole.