A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention.
In the News: (Registration may be required to read some stories)
Warner bill hits Bush's troop surge “Sen. John W. Warner of Virginia and other Republicans publicly offered a resolution yesterday condemning President Bush's proposal to send more troops to Iraq.” (READ MORE)
Warner Backs Resolution Opposing Troop Increase “Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), the former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, yesterday endorsed a new resolution opposing President Bush's buildup of troops in Baghdad, as even some of the most loyal Republicans scrambled to register their concerns and distance themselves from an unpopular policy.” (READ MORE)
Iranian cleric hits Tehran's tactics “Iran's most senior dissident cleric said President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's aggressive nuclear diplomacy had harmed the country, joining a chorus of criticism that has included even the hard-line leader's allies.” (READ MORE)
O'Malley eyes health, emissions “Expanding health care, toughening car-emission standards and streamlining government are among the bills that Gov. Martin O'Malley says he will submit to the General Assembly.” (READ MORE)
Bush To Face Skeptical Congress “President Bush plans to reach out to the opposition in his State of the Union address tonight with new and recycled proposals on health care, energy, immigration and education, but the uproar over his decision to send more U.S. troops to Iraq has eclipsed potential consensus on domestic policy.” (READ MORE)
General May See Early Success in Iraq “The battle for Baghdad will start in mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods chosen by military strategists as being the least likely to offer stiff resistance, raising the odds of early success, according to military planners and officials familiar with the thinking of the incoming Iraq commander, Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus.” (READ MORE)
News From the Front:
Bryan writes Baghdad Report: Over There “My son, standing on the sidewalk in the dusky light hugging my wife’s leg. That was the image I carried in my mind on the long ride out. Michelle and I were now really bound for Iraq, and we were both mostly quiet for the first few minutes of the ride as her husband drove us to the airport.” (READ MORE)
Bill Roggio writes Suicide Strike on Pakistani Army in North Waziristan “The Pakistani government continues to lose control over the tribal regions bordering Afghanistan. The Taliban and al-Qaeda have attacked a Pakistani military convoy with suicide car bomb near Mir Ali in North Waziristan.” (READ MORE)
Rusty Shakleford writes New al Qaeda Video: Zawahiri Taunts Bush “A new as Sahab produced propaganda video by al Qaeda's #2 in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has been released on the internet. The video is subtitled in English, which means that the message is directed to an American audience.” (READ MORE)
Michael J. Totten writes Hezbollah Riots in Lebanon “While I was in Lebanon gathering the material I've been publishing, Hezbollah kept threatening to strangle the country by seizing major roads, including the one that leads to the airport. I was worried I might get stuck there, but I didn't. Today, though, they finally make good on their threat. Palestinian guerillas are reportedly helping.” (READ MORE)
Bandit 36 writes Making the Bad Seem Worse “As you have no doubt read Coalition Forces took casualties this weekend. The LA Times leads with "At Least 19 US troops killed in Iraq." They of course make the point that 12 of those deaths occurred when a helicopter went down northeast of Baghdad. The LA Times also helpfully notes the deadliest day for American service members in Iraq was January 26, 2005 when 37 were killed, 31 in a single helicopter crash. What none of these facts and figures do is place those deaths in any sort of context.” (READ MORE)
Bill Ardolino writes Recruiting Day “A slight tension shadowed the professionalism of the Marine Corps Police Transition Team stationed at Fallujah Police Headquarters. It was recruiting day for the city police department. Recruiting drives throughout the country — key milestones in the development of Iraq’s security forces — have been the scenes of some of the war’s worst attacks, as insurgents view them as opportunities to destabilize the young government.” (READ MORE) (HERE TOO)
On the Web:
Cal Thomas writes The Hillary factor “Fund-raisers on the left and right are salivating now that Sen. Hillary Clinton has declared, ‘I'm in’ the 2008 presidential race. On the left, feminists will likely hail her as the reincarnation of suffragette Susan B. Anthony. On the right, conservatives will portray her as a cross between Lady Macbeth and Bonnie Parker.” (READ MORE)
Thomas Sowell writes The "Greed" Fallacy “In an era when our media and even our education system exalt emotions, while ignoring facts and logic, perhaps we should not be surprised that so many people explain economics by ‘greed.’” (READ MORE)
Patrick J. Buchanan writes The X Factor in 2008 – Iran “After a weekend in which 29 Americans died and the 82nd Airborne deployed in Baghdad, what the Iraq war will mean to the politics of 2008 becomes clear.” (READ MORE)
Jack Kemp writes Give Patreas a chance to succeed in Iraq “Attempts to pass nonbinding resolutions as so-called messages to the president will end up sending a clear message to the insurgents in Iraq, Iranian radicals and al-Qaida.” (READ MORE)
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. writes Truth To Power “Tonight’s State of the Union address should be unlike any in recent memory. Not because George W. Bush turns it into the expected paean to bipartisanship, or abases himself before his newly ensconced opposition. Rather, it should stand apart because the President uses the occasion to speak unvarnished truth to power.” (READ MORE)
Herman Cain writes A Strange Way to Seek a True Leader “The next president of the United States of America may not be what we need. We need a real leader who will bring real solutions to the challenges facing our economic infrastructure and national security.” (READ MORE)
Victor Davis Hanson writes Club America “When Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman pulled up to Savannah, Ga., after his legendary March to the Sea in December 1864, he was savagely slandered in the Southern press as a renegade leader of a ‘vandal horde.’ But at that same time, leading Confederate officers privately appealed to him, hoping he would guarantee the safety of the relatives they had left behind in Savannah.” (READ MORE)
Kobayashi Maru writes Climate Change in Iraq? Just Ask Heidi Cullen “Heidi Cullen, the latest mother-knows-best expert-of-the-moment on global climate change is also an expert on... Iraq. Yes, you read that right. In a press release issued a month after the invasion began, Cullen is listed as the primary go-to person for media inquiries by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), part of a murky nonprofit entity called the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) which in turn gets most of its funding from the left-leaning National Science Foundation (NSF), plus lesser sponsorship from a host of government agencies:” (READ MORE)
Bryan writes Eason Jordan said what? “A better title for this post might be “Can anyone connected to the MSM read? At all? Or is getting an accurate quote, in the age of Skype and digital voice recorders, just impossible?” But that’s a pretty long title.” (READ MORE)
Hugh Hewitt writes The Collapse of the Congressional GOP? “House Minority Leader Boehner's decision to break with the president yesterday, and the desperate attempt of John Warner and some of his Senate colleagues to split the difference between defeatist Democrats and round-heeled Republicans underscores that the GOP is now close to splitting on the war.” (READ MORE)
GayPatriotWest writes Hillary Announces, Offers No Ideas; CBS Swoons “Hillary had announced her intentions to run for President and the media is all in a tizzy. NewsBusters notes that today on its ‘Early Show,’ CBS ‘ran four stories pertaining to Hillary Clinton entering the Democratic race for president.’ The show failed to provide "any coverage at all" when the top tier Republican candidates made their presidential intentions known. The show did provide coverage of some of the other Democratic candidates, but not nearly as much as they offered Mrs. Clinton.” (READ MORE)
Baron Bodissey writes Sound Bites for the Counterjihad “Rep. Goode broke new ground with his letter, becoming the first national politician in the United States to make an unequivocal statement against Islam. Had I known ahead of time what he was going to say, I might have suggested to him that he follow a more subtle strategy, leaving himself less of a target for the Muslim Brotherhood’s front organizations and their shills in the MSM.” (READ MORE)
ShrinkWrapped writes Future Imperfect: Part I “The threat of Islamic terrorism is going to be with us for the next 10-15 years at a minimum. It will persist in attenuated forms for a very long time after that but will no longer represent an existential threat to America. Our technology will evolve in such a way as to make terrorist activity much less likely to succeed and much easier to combat.” (READ MORE)
Jules Crittenden writes Beware of Mullahs Talking Peace “Khamenei reportedly wants to reign in Ahmadinejad and put a more moderate team in charge of nuke talks, to reduce tensions, stop the economic damage. UK Observer. Khamenei, we are told, is not expected to see out the year, so what he wants is not so relevant.” (READ MORE)
Curt writes The Ongoing AP Shenanigans “While Zawahiri puts out a new video full of his usual stand-up schtick that only the foolhardy and the fanatic Islam nimrod could love Michelle Malkin put out the video of those ‘destroyed’ mosques. You know, the ones the AP described as so:” (READ MORE)
Michelle writes I'm ashamed of the Republicans in the Senate “This is a political ploy pure and simple, if this war were more popular with the American people, they would not be doing this. I hope the president responds harshly to the defection of his own party and that it only toughens his resolve:” (READ MORE)
John Hawkins writes Sorry Charlie, Nancy Lied About Including American Samoa In The Minimum Wage “Oh, Nancy, Nancy, Nancy. What a tangled fishing net we weave when first we practice to deceive -- on the minimum wage. ‘The Democrat-controlled Senate took up a bill yesterday that would raise the minimum wage across the United States and its territories but exempt American Samoa, where tuna canneries pay workers $3.26 an hour.’” (READ MORE)
Captain Ed writes Kosovo Quagmire Drags On “The UN has dragged its feet on the final determination of the status of Kosovo ever since the intervention in 1999 that stopped a war between the ethnic Serbs and Albanians in the province. Member nations had pressed for a resolution to the standoff over the last couple of years, and hoped that the recent elections would give an indication of a direction to pursue. However, after Serb nationalists won a significant but not overwhelming victory, it appears that the various European powers will continue the stalemate:” (READ MORE)
Blonde Sagacity writes How Will The Revisionists Respond...? “Really, I'd love to hear from some of the United Nations/Hugo Chavez defenders after you read these two stories... The first is another UN scandal that could be bigger than the Oil for Food scandal (it was big- even though the MSM buried it). United Nations money could have funded Kim Jong-il's secret nuclear bomb program.” (READ MORE)
The Belmont Club writes To the Shores of Tripoli “The scene is surprisingly familiar. America is under attack by Arab terrorists. The President wants to fight, but Congress, believing that fighting terrorists would embitter Muslims forever against America, votes to capitulate. But the news story isn't set today, but 220 years ago. Sam Ser at the Jerusalem Post retells the story from the vantage of Michael Orren's book, Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present.” (READ MORE)
Have an interesting post or know of a "must read?" Then send a trackback here and let us all know about it. Or you can send me an email with a link to the post and I'll update the Recon.
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