Soccer Mom: Unplugged

You don't have to be a monster to be an American president.  But Bill Clinton was. 

1- He changed the policy in Somalia where US forces had been acting in a purely humanitarian capacity, putting soldiers in the unenviable position of nation-building and hunting down warlords.  When the mission changed and MG Montgomery asked for more firepower - troops and equipment, Les Aspin said "uh-no."  This left our guys high and dry and a month later 18 died, 80 were wounded and some were desecrated posthumously, having their bodies dragged through the streets of Mogadishu.

2- By the way - he left them so unsupported that we had to borrow tanks and armored personnel carriers from Pakistan and Malaysia.

3- In the Balkans, Bill engineered the Dayton peace accords and interjected American troops into a region of the world with absolutely no US interests.  While our soldiers have done a magnificent job staving off the civil wars that erupt periodically, the five year mission that Bill advertised has already turned into a ten year excursion.  There is no exit strategy for the military in this region because the peace (if you can call it that) is so tenuous that we can't afford to leave.  We now have what appears to be a permanent American force in Bosnia and Kosovo.  (And the cost of that venture reached 15 billion before he even left office. Bill's policy was to exagerrate and outright invent atrocities - fabricating a genocide that never happened in Kosovo.  To resolve the apparent imbalance (Bill made muslims the victims in that fairy tale) mujahadeen were imported from the Middle East to fight. 

4-  Bill bombed Serbia against the will of congress (they actually voted not to authorize him to use such force) and in doing such was the first US prez to act in direct opposition to congress. 

5- Under Bill's direction the US Information Agency purported that hundreds of thousands of Albanian Muslims had been slaughtered when in acuality there were no mass graves.  "The Spanish forensic surgeon Emilio Perez Pujol, who was dispatched to uncover evidence of Serbian atrocities, reported that 'we did not find one - not one - mass grave.'" (This quote taken from Thomas Woods Jr's 2004 book)

6- I won't even detail the bombing of El Shifa - the pharmaceutical company.  When he wagged the dog because Monica was giving testimony  before the grand jury.  Suffice it to say that the soil sample used to show that El Shifa was really a WMD manufacturing plant in disguise, like so many other things in the Clinton White House, never showed up.

7- Also according to Woods' count Clinton "dispatched the military overseas an amazing forty-four time during his eight years.  The American military had been deployed outside of our borders only eight times in the previous forty-five years."

Now, there are things about the current war that I don't like.  Finding WMDs would have done a lot to quiet the naysayers but WMDs or not, I would have sent guys in to take out Saddam.  The footage you can link to from my last post is more than enough reason for him to be out of power.  Not to mention gassing the Kurds.  But there is one thing you cannot deny no matter how many rumors, how much innuendo and how many brazen and outright lies are fabricated about George W. Bush, you know where he stands every step of the way.  He never said the transition would be easy.  It hasn't been.  He said Saddam was a ruthless tyrant and a homicidal killer.  The bodies and mass graves are numberless.  He said that we thought there were WMDs or the capacity to produce them.  WMDs have been found (not in the quantities that the press and the liberals demand - but then again, what amount would truly satisfy them?).  You could pick apart the details but every piece of intelligence that this president saw (and that has been made public) could have gone either way. We all knew from day one that the relationship with Al-Queda was circumstancial at best.  What the president listed in his address as evidence of a connection between Osama and Baghdad was never strong. 

So, if you felt you were deceived going into Iraq, then you just weren't paying attention.  If, on the other hand you are just plain disgusted with the US military being sent around the globe like a world cop,  I'd suggest you give Bill Clinton a call.

The mothers who cradled the dead bodies of their young children in Beslen probably won't be clamoring to get in on the "Matriotism" movement.  In fact, they'd likely appreciate it if freedom loving soldiers took out the terrorist threat that left dead and wounded in the town elementary school.  Sheehan is either very naive or hopelessly indoctrinated. 

http://www.michaelmoore.com/mustread/index.php?id=589

Once again the war's most confused war critic speaks out.  This time to call mothers to action against any form of war.  This ignorant woman speaks out against nationalism in its most benign forms: the plege of allegiance and the national anthem.  How silly can one woman be. 

No mother wants to send her boys to war.  If you think that's hard, try being a military wife.

For that matter, no real man wants to go to war.  Those men who shout "hooah" are generally under 25 and half drunk.  Real military men don't want to fight and kill anyone.  They don't want their wives and children at home to bury them. 

But real men, real soldiers, take seriously the obligation to safeguard the freedom and liberties that we enjoy.  They recognize that no matter how safe we want the world to be, there will always be men like Bin Laden, Hitler, Stalin, Pinochet, Castro, Lenin, and on and on and on..... 

Real soldiers, want to make life better in other countries where mothers like Cindy are burying their sons at a much more tender age than poor Casey was laid to rest.  Real sodiers know that over there (in that global community that Cindy talks about but hasn't really seen - unless you count that spring break to Mexico) children are bought and sold, maimed and killed, for nothing more than being on the side of the road at the wrong time. 

Real soldiers, real men, like my wonderful husband, have tender hearts for those suffering from oppression and willingly put their lives on the line to offer them a chance at freedom.

Real sodiers build schools where young girls, like Cindy, can be educated and perhaps teach their sons and daughters a better way of life.

Real soldiers build roads and bridges, establish power lines and bring food.  They offer medical services and schooling. 

Being willing to take aim and pull a trigger is only the beginning of being a soldier. A horrifying, unwanted beginning to be sure - but also, on occasion, very necessary.

Thank God for patriots who stood against oppression in 1776 (1775 actually) and who fought to free slaves (US) and Jews (Germany) and women (Afghanistan) .

She is right on one account, our government is not always the one wearing the white hat, we have made mistakes for which we continue to atone - but to wholly condemn our nation's defenders is throwing the baby out with the bath water.  Were Sheehan around in colonial days, she would no doubt have been a loyalist to the crown.  Shame on her for assuming that those who have endowed her, with their very blood, the right to freely spew such uneducated drivel, are the problem!

http://www.michaelmoore.com/mustread/index.php?id=589

Now, I'm not real pleased when anybody calls anybody else a prostitute.  It's just not nice!  BUT and this, my friends is a huge but, this lady has lost any right to my respect. 

I am an Army wife.  This year my husband will finish a 20 year career during which he has seen combat, dodged bullets and done some pretty awesome things.  As a woman, married to the military, I have had the recurrent nightmare of receiving the last phone call, opening the door to see the CNO (casualty notification officer) and having to raise four children alone.  Fortunately, for me that was not the case.  I feel for Cindy Sheehan, the grieving mother.  I do not feel for the woman who a year after the loss of her son has used his name to further a political agenda.  I find it sad and pitiable that she has let her love for her son turn into a vengeful quest for political notoriety.  As a mother, I can't imagine using my child as a poster boy for such public display of animosity.  This is akin to the mother of a mentally handicapped boy holding him in front of the camera and yelling see this sick retarded child...  Her love for Casey has become  heartbreakingly confused with her hate for Bush.  She'll never remember her boy as anything else but an anti-war prop.  And sadly, no one else will either.