Memory Lapse - Part II

Of course, Mike Littwin had to get into the "Bush-isn't-allowed-to-talk-about-9/11-and-Iraq-in-the-same-speech" act.

No surprise there. There are a good number of folks asking President Bush to talk about 9/11 more often.

Byron York has an article on this subject called: Mr. President, please talk more about Sept. 11:

"But what’s so wrong with talking about Sept. 11? It was only a world-historic, before-and-after event that has fundamentally changed the way the United States deals with the rest of the planet.

If Bush administration officials have made a mistake on the national security front in the months since the election, it is that they have not talked about Sept. 11 enough."

Andrew McCarthy, in his article, It's All About 9/11 writes:

"The president should know he hit the sweet spot during his Fort Bragg speech because all the right people are angry. The New York Times, with predictable disingenuousness, is railing this morning that the 9/11 references in the speech are out of bounds because Iraq had “nothing whatsoever to do with the terrorist attacks.” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and the tedious David Gergen, among others, are in Gergen's words “offended” about use of the 9/11 “trump card.”

If the president is guilty of anything, it's not that he's dwelling on 9/11 enough. It's that the administration has not done a good enough job of probing and underscoring the nexus between the Saddam regime and al Qaeda. It is absolutely appropriate, it is vital, for him to stress that connection. This is still the war on terror, and Iraq, where the terrorists are still arrayed against us, remains a big part of that equation."

The main reason that all the right people are angry is because they know that they cannot beat the 9/11 argument. Frustration leads them to anger. Why are they frustrated, because they know the truth about what they have not been telling America: They were all involved in sending us into Iraq.

Check out SoCalPundit for the complete round-up of all the things that happened prior to the Iraq War and all the people who were involved. Most of the people screaming for exit strategies and timetables were right there at the start, cheering us on. This great post also details the connections between Saddam and 9/11. Most of this history is conveniently left out of the daily newspapers.

Memory Lapse

In this morning's DP editorial the question of President Bush using 9/11 as justification for the war on Iraq is called into question:

"At least five times, Bush tied the war in Iraq to the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. The tie-in is a tactical gimmick we had hoped he'd left on the campaign trail.

The president harks back to Sept. 11 because the attack provided ample justification for military response. But that was al-Qaeda and Afghanistan. Iraq itself had nothing to do with Sept. 11, even though the Bush administration insists on weaving the two together."

It seems that the editorial boards have forgotten that President Bush was not the only one who linked 9/11 and Iraq.

Over at The Corner Mark Levin points out the text of the resolution that several Democrats voted for:

How soon some of our liberal friends forget. Among others, Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, Charles Schumer, Chris Dodd, John Kerry, John Edwards, Joe Biden and Jay Rockefeller voted for the October 11, 2002 congressional joint resolution authorizing the president, on his discretion, to go to war. Here, in part, is what the resolution said:

"Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq:

"Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terroist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of United States citizens;

"Whereas the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, underscored the gravity of the threat posed by the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by international terrorist organizations ...

And not a single news person bothered to ask any critics of the president's speech last night how they can square their offense at the president's linking terrorism to the war against Iraq when they did the same exact thing.

Hat-tip: Powerline

In addition, Hugh Hewitt is leading the charge against the "retooling" and "redefinition" push from the MSM:

"The MoveOn/Dean/Clinton/Moore/Kennedy/Brownstein gang wants to revise history in order to make it easier to assault the GOP in 2006. The reaction from the public will be the same as in 2002 and 2004, I think: A fundamentally feckless party cannot be allowed near the controls of national security, and a fundamentally deceptive MSM will not be trusted to tell us that that party has the answers."

As usual, the DP is a part of this deception.

AP/Ipsos Iraq Survey

There is a new AP/Ipsos survey on Iraq. It shows that 53% of the respondents think the decision to go to war was a mistake.

I checked the internals of this poll and what a surprise, 50% of the registered voters who responded were Democrats, while only 40% were Republicans.

However, even with the oversampling of Democrats, 59% said we should stay in Iraq until it is stabilized, further reinforcing the argument that the MoveOns of the world are out of touch with the party they most identify with.

The question that I find the most interesting is D7a: Would you describe yourself as a born-again or evangelical Christian, or not? Why ask this, especially when the next question asks about religious preference? Do those crazy evangelicals need to be separated out from the rest of the demoninations? Although there is no correlation analysis, I suspect the 43% of the respondents that identified themselves as evangelicals or born-again were mostly the same as the 42% that said we made the right decision to go to Iraq.

Those Young Whippersnappers

I'm not really a part of Generation X or the new "Entitlement Generation", but I have seen this new entitlement attitude in my job lately. I'm glad to know that it's not a problem with my company's hiring process, rather a widespread shift in attitudes toward work.

I'm not that old, but I entered the workforce back in '97 in the middle of the tech boom. I worked for one of the big consulting companies and the expectation was that you would work long hours doing the lowest level grunt work. We were fairly well compensated for the level of work we were doing. We all knew that if you could make it through a few years, you could advance and move into more managerial roles. If you complained about the work or the hours, you probably weren't going to last very long.

In my current job, which is mostly project management within the company, I've seen people coming out of college wanting it all and wanting it right now. There's no long term attitude of "paying your dues." It's to be expected that those of us with a few more years of experience resent this attitude a bit.

Maybe those young whippersnappers are right and this new philosophy on employment will change the workplace. Most likely, we will see companies struggle with large turnover ratios and increased training expenses as the "I-want-it-all-now" workers bounce from job to job in search of greener grass.

Nutjobs At My Alma Mater

According to the UPI there is a professor at Texas A&M spinning conspiracy theories about the WTC collapse:

"A former Bush team member during his first administration is now voicing serious doubts about the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9-11. Former chief economist for the Department of Labor during President George W. Bush's first term Morgan Reynolds comments that the official story about the collapse of the WTC is 'bogus' and that it is more likely that a controlled demolition destroyed the Twin Towers and adjacent Building No. 7. Reynolds, who also served as director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas and is now professor emeritus at Texas A&M University said, 'If demolition destroyed three steel skyscrapers at the World Trade Center on 9/11, then the case for an 'inside job' and a government attack on America would be compelling.' Reynolds commented from his Texas A&M office, 'It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a scientific debate over the cause of the collapse of the twin towers and building 7. If the official wisdom on the collapses is wrong, as I believe it is, then policy based on such erroneous engineering analysis is not likely to be correct either. The government's collapse theory is highly vulnerable on its own terms. Only professional demolition appears to account for the full range of facts associated with the collapse of the three buildings.' "

However, unlike other schools in the Big 12, A&M's President was quick to denounce the rantings of the campus idiot:

Dr. Morgan Reynolds is retired from Texas A&M University, but holds the title of Professor Emeritus-an honorary title bestowed upon select tenured faculty, who have retired with ten or more years of service. Additionally, contrary to some written reports, while some faculty emeriti are allocated office space at Texas A&M, Dr. Reynolds does not have an office on the Texas A&M campus. Any statements made by Dr. Reynolds are in his capacity as a private citizen and do not represent the views of Texas A&M University. Below is a statement released yesterday by Dr. Robert M. Gates, President of Texas A&M University:

"The American people know what they saw with their own eyes on September 11, 2001. To suggest any kind of government conspiracy in the events of that day goes beyond the pale.”