"Bush is Playing Chess" —Dick Morris

As Dick Morris put it so brilliantly prior to the election on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor,

"Bush is playing chess and Kerry is playing checkers."

That statement was referring to the election, of course, but may be applicable to the Iran nuclear situaion as well. Despite all the rhetoric from the left about what an idiot George W. Bush is, he keeps beating them at every turn. If he is such an idiot, why is it he keeps winning?

In retrospect, the Iraq war looks like a brilliant chess move, the second such move after taking out al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Obviously, there were clear, immediate, and justified reasons for those actions separately, but when the security and future stability of the region are also taken into account, the overarching strategy reveals itself.

Does anyone doubt that Iran would have pursued a nuclear weapons program regardless of the coalition invasion of Iraq? Of course they would have, no matter what happened in Iraq. Was anyone even talking seriously about Iran and the potential for their development of nuclear weapons BEFORE the invasion of Iraq? The coalition certainly did Iraq a favor in removing Saddam, and has freed them to build weapons for potential use on Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and even parts of southeastern Europe. Given the Iranian nuclear situation, we feel better having American armed forces, particularly American air power, now in position on both sides of Iran, along with carrier-based air power in the Persian Gulf.

Democrats and the Election

We are all growing weary of the endless election analysis, but an article in The Weekly Standard caught our eye. It is a very succinct dissection of the poor efforts of the Democrats to woo voters in middle-class America, but it illustrates an even deeper and more insurmountable problem for the Democrats in the future.

The problem Democrats face, and is well described in the article, is that the party that once represented working class America is now the party of the rich, limosine liberals from the coasts, and the far left-leaning progressives who look back fondly on the glory days of socialism in the first part of the last century. It is these two groups, along with the elitists of higher education and their accomplices in the Old Media who now control the party. They hate corporate America, a significant source of jobs and income for millions of average Americans. They want to stop all logging, oil exploration, and new housing construction to 'save the environment', but at the cost of the jobs of many of the working class Americans they claim to want to help!

While these bi-coastal elites jet across "flyover county" in their fuel-guzzeling private jets, and are chauffered around Manhattan and Beverly Hills in their equally gas-guzzleing super stretch limosines, they can't understand why "the red neck masses" below them or waiting at the bus stops as they streak by don't support their brand of politics.

Given how these groups have taken control of the party, we don't see how the Democratic party can ever regain their lost political power. Only when the true Democrats in the tradition of Democrats in the past rise up and wrest control of their party from these elites will the Democratic party be a force for positive good.

Here is the link to the article.

((Kofi Annan+the UN) x (most of Europe+Sadam Hussein))/Oil for Food = Corruption

With the election now past, and the future of Iraq riding on the upcoming elections in January, the long-simmering Oil-for-Food (OFF) scandal is beginning to heat up. The pot may soon boil over, spilling out corruption of the highest order, along with several deposed world leaders.

Senator Norm Coleman, chaiman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, wrote in today's Wall Street Journal Online that he believes Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the UN, should resign. Senator Coleman's committee has been investigating the OFF scandal for seven months now, and as many of us have suspected, and as the Duelfer Report (discussed here) suggested, the OFF program turned into the biggest get-rich-quick scheme in history. Even Kofi Annan's son has been implicated, as well as many companies and leaders throughout the world, mostly in France, Russia, and Germany, though the investigation is not yet complete and will likely expose other countries, companies, and individuals. No wonder so much of Europe was opposed to the Iraq war; they never wanted the 'gravy train' to stop!

Here is an excerpt from Senator Coleman's column:

Our Investigative Subcommittee has gathered overwhelming evidence that Saddam turned this program on its head. Rather than erode his grip on power, the program was manipulated by Saddam to line his own pockets and actually strengthen his position at the expense of the Iraqi people. At our hearing on Nov. 15, we presented evidence that Saddam accumulated more than $21 billion through abuses of the Oil-for-Food program and U.N. sanctions. We continue to amass evidence that he used the overt support of prominent members of the U.N., such as France and Russia, along with numerous foreign officials, companies and possibly even senior U.N. officials, to exploit the program to his advantage. We have obtained evidence that indicates that Saddam doled out lucrative oil allotments to foreign officials, sympathetic journalists and even one senior U.N. official, in order to undermine international support for sanctions. In addition, we are gathering evidence that Saddam gave hundreds of thousands -- maybe even millions -- of Oil-for-Food dollars to terrorists and terrorist organizations. All of this occurred under the supposedly vigilant eye of the U.N.

Here is a link to the whole article.