A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention.
In the News: (Registration may be required to read some stories)
Bush assails 'income inequality' “President Bush yesterday said there is a growing "income inequality" gap between rich and poor Americans, and told companies they should rethink the giant compensation packages they offer top executives.” (READ MORE)
British police arrest 9 in plot “Counterterrorism police yesterday arrested nine men in a suspected kidnapping plot that reportedly involved torturing and beheading a British Muslim soldier and broadcasting the killing on the Internet.” (READ MORE)
Speaker pursues military flights “The office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pressing the Bush administration for routine access to military aircraft for domestic flights, such as trips back to her San Francisco district, according to sources familiar with the discussions.” (READ MORE)
Sanctions rattle Iran, spur talk of shake-up “The unanimous passage of U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran in December has shaken the nation's public and ruling elite, prompting talk of a shake-up of top officials and fears of a U.S. attack.” (READ MORE)
Israeli envoy rejects Mideast 'linkage' “Foreign-policy crises in Iraq and Iran will not be eased by pressuring Israel to cut a peace deal with the Palestinians, Israeli Ambassador Sallai Meridor said in an interview yesterday.” (READ MORE)
Senators Unite On Challenge to Bush's Troop Plan “Democratic and Republican opponents of President Bush's troop-buildup plan joined forces last night behind the nonbinding resolution with the broadest bipartisan backing: a Republican measure from Sen. John W. Warner of Virginia.” (READ MORE)
Records on Spy Program Turned Over to Lawmakers “The Justice Department turned over documents about the government's controversial domestic spying program to select members of Congress yesterday, ending a two-week standoff that included pointed threats of subpoenas from Democrats.” (READ MORE)
Germans Charge 13 CIA Operatives “The CIA's clandestine program of abducting suspected terrorists and taking them to secret sites for interrogation unraveled further on Wednesday as German prosecutors issued arrest warrants for 13 agency operatives in the kidnapping of a German citizen in the Balkans in December...” (READ MORE)
From the Front:
SSGT Ted Tae writes Another War 'Reconstruction, not Destruction' “After getting the signal to go, we were on board. The Chinook’s two giant rotors began spinning as it lifted us into the air. We flew into the dark sky as the pilot’s skill and the 3.5th generation night vision took us through mountain valleys. Leo’s advice of “just go to sleep” came to my mind, but having a weak heart, I couldn’t sleep much at all. After about an hour of flight, we arrived at the OE FOB Dennison Airfield, 2700 ft up. Being the furthest base out in Afghanistan, there were no lights anywhere and hardly any people around.” (READ MORE)
Andrew Olmsted writes Responsibility “If there is one constant in politics, it is that everything is someone else's fault. When there's a big mistake bad, that impulse becomes overwhelming, as we're seeing in the case of Iraq. It seems to be the general consensus that Iraq involved a number of mistakes.” (READ MORE)
Bill Roggio writes Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law, murdered in Madagascar “Khalifa had an extensive history in funding, plotting al-Qaeda terrorist activities; Task Force 145 likely scored the kill. Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, one of Osama bin Laden's brother-in-laws with deep roots in al-Qaeda as a financier and facilitator, has been reported to have been murdered in his bedroom in Madagascar.” (READ MORE)
On the Web:
Hugh Hewitt writes A Political Gettysburg - Without A Joshua Chamberlain “For the first time since Ronald Reagan began the party’s comeback after Watergate, the party’s Congressional leadership is surrendering the party’s principles on national security and national defense.” (READ MORE)
William Rusher writes The Last Shot “After nearly four years of confusing arguments over the invasion of Iraq, the debate has suddenly and unexpectedly taken on a sort of weird simplicity. The Democrats, after dividing on whether to support the attack when it began, and then adopting (individually) almost every conceivable position regarding it since, have now, together with Republican senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, more or less united on a single demand: bring our troops home, and let the Middle East settle its own problems.” (READ MORE)
Michael Medved writes Good Reasons to Scoff (and Yawn) at the Libby Trial “Despite rigorous efforts on the part of the media establishment, the public has so far reacted to the perjury trial of vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby with a combination of weary, slightly annoyed disinterest and bemused boredom.” (READ MORE)
Ann Coulter writes Free the Fitzgerald One! “The exact same people who are now demanding prison for Libby for not remembering who told him about Plame are the ones who told us it was perfectly plausible for Bill Clinton to forget that Monica Lewinsky repeatedly performed oral sex on him in the Oval Office.” (READ MORE)
Jon Sanders writes Of nuts, Chicken Little and global warming “In the fable of Chicken Little, an acorn hits the title character's head, she concludes that the sky is falling, she convinces her barnyard pals of the same, they rush pell-mell to tell the king, and on the way get eaten by a fox.” (READ MORE)
Allahpundit writes Audio: William Arkin supports the troops in his own funny little way “Here’s the man of the hour, playing softball last night with Alan Colmes about the WaPo column heard ’round the blogospheric world. Well, the right side of the blogospheric world, anyway.” (READ MORE)
Kim Priestap writes Arkin: The Troops need to Shut Up and Take the Insults “A man named William Arkin writing at a Washington Post blog says that the troops need to support anti-war Americans and their views. He writes this in reference to the NBC Nightly News video of US troops asking that Americans support them all the way. Arkin's essay is nothing more than a string of insult after insult. Here's just a few:” (READ MORE)
A.M. Mora y Leon writes In The Eye of The Storm “Two democracies collapsed in South America today - Venezuela’s, where Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has now crowned himself ruler by decree, and Ecuador, where rabid red-shirted mobs aligned with President Rafael Correa, drove the democratically elected opposition congress out of power and into the streets, leaving only Correa with any power and who, as of this writing, is also a dictator in the Chavez-Hitler mould.” (READ MORE)
Right Wing Nut House writes They Just Can't Help Themselves “[T]ry as they might to suppress their natural proclivities regarding the American armed forces, many on the left get so carried away sometimes they forget that they are trying to fool the American people into believing that they are but simple patriots, concerned about the lives and welfare of the troops and, in a spasm of hate and loathing, reveal exactly what they think of the young men and women who have volunteered to serve.” (READ MORE)
ShrinkWrapped writes Delegitimizing America “During the 60s and 70s one of the great divides between Liberals and Conservatives involved the question of criminal rights. Although there was broad agreement, and our system of jurisprudence explicitly supported the idea, that it is better to let 10 guilty men go free than to imprison one innocent man, great battles took place over where to draw an acceptable demarcation. The far left insisted that any, even the most minimal and non-contributory, infraction by the state was enough to invalidate the entire process. One (probably unintentional) effect of this approach, was to create barriers to the community's ability to defend itself against human predators.” (READ MORE)
Jules Crittenden writes Two More of Arkin’s Ingrates “They didn’t have to, but they did. For Arkin and for all of us. Most of all, for the guys who were relying on them. Meet Sgt. Keith A. Callahan and Sgt. Alexander Henry Fuller, two more of Arkin’s ingrates:” (READ MORE)
John Hinderaker writes The Peril of Newspaper Blogs... “...is that a reporter might say what he actually thinks before an editor catches up with him and makes him stop. A case in point: William Arkin writes on "national and homeland security" for the Washington Post. Yesterday morning, in his blog titled Early Warning on the Post's website, Arkin wrote a post that has to be read to be believed. Titled "The Troops Also Need to Support the American People," the post comments on an NBC program in which soldiers expressed dismay at the lack of support for their mission manifested by some people back home. Arkin appears to take the position that the U.S. military is not worthy of the nation that it protects.” (READ MORE)
Curt writes Screw The Troops! “Most of my regulars know I try to keep away from cussing on this blog since it really doesn't bring anything to the debate. I mean we have all seen the KOS kiddies cuss away, thinking they are making a bigger point but in the end they just look ignorant. Well, after getting home from work tonight and reading about the WaPo writer, William Arkin, who wrote this:” (READ MORE)
John Noonan writes Fallen “And with that piece, every frustration that I've felt over America's new fifith column, every insult that smug anti-war pundits have hurled at the silent stoics in our armed forces, all the false pity, all the overused meaningless cliches ("we support the troops but not the war") that we in the military have endured, every bit of anger that I've suppressed in the name of good manners and honorable debate, reaches a fist-clenching apex.” (READ MORE)
Cassandra writes Fisking the Arkin-Bot “What did this man just suggest? Has he read the Constitution lately? Did he just suggest that the United States military, without our elected representatives having reflected the will of the people by impeaching the President and stopping the war, take it on themselves to subvert the law by taking up arms against their lawful government? Is that really how we want the military to act?” (READ MORE)
John Hawkins writes The New York Times Vs. The Family Of A US Soldier KIA “Many people say that exaggerated accounts of what was happening in Cuba from William Randolph Hearst's New York Morning Journal helped push us into the Spanish American War. Well, the New York Times seems to be making the same sort of concerted effort to make us lose the war on terror.” (READ MORE)
Captain Ed writes Senate Closer To Anti-Surge Resolution “The Senate moved closer to a non-binding resolution opposing the surge strategy last night when two key members of the chamber reached a compromise on the wording in the bill. John Warner and Carl Levin have agreed to reinforce the resolution with a vow that the Senate will not stop funding the troops:” (READ MORE)
Kat writes Poor, Duped Soldiers, Oil, Iraq = Vietnam "As I said in a letter to the editor...I have it up to my eyeballs with the whole "poor youths duped into war to serve the Military/Republican/Oil conglomerate and turning Iraq into Vietnam". I may have to puke. Frankly, I think anyone that repeats such nonsense should be whipped through town, tarred and feathered and rode out of town on a rail." (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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