Right On The Right

Republican nominee John McCain is a national security hawk with the knowledge necessary to lead our nation through this dangerous age of Islamic terrorism. Barack Obama called Iran's threat "tiny" in comparison to that of the Soviet Union. Senator McCain disagrees:

Some of the worst news to come out of Iraq is the high number of lost limbs. Experts attribute this number to less deaths, due to advances in medicine, but giving an arm or a leg for your country is still an amazing sacrifice. One man gave that sacrifice, and is now back in Iraq. Stop the ACLU shares with us this amazing video report:

The web poses new challenges, especially in conflicts where there's a crisis of identity. Palestinians living in the contested areas want to be known as residents of Palestine, while Jewish settlers of course want to be called Israeli. Facebook got dropped into this very conflict of identity:

Facebook, which unwittingly had dropped itself smack in the middle of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, reversed itself Monday and now is allowing Jewish settlers in the West Bank to list themselves as residents of Israel, not a country called "Palestine."

Users of the social networking Web site who live in Maale Adumim, Ariel and other large Jewish settlements in the West Bank protested when Facebook automatically listed "Palestine" as their hometown, the Jerusalem Post reported.

A settlers group accused the California-based company of having a political agenda.

"I was surprised and disappointed to find that my hometown of Ariel is listed in Facebook as being part of a country called 'Palestine,"' Ari Zimmerman wrote in a posting on Facebook, Reuters reported. "I am a citizen of Israel, as are all of the other residents of Ariel. We do not live in 'Palestine,' nor does anyone else."

This is a good move by Facebook, although the unabashed Israel-supporter in me would've liked Facebook to put all of the contested territories under Israel. They could easily provide the Palestinian government's support of state-sponsored terrorism as the rationale for failing to include Palestine. If they must include Palestine, Israel should absolutely be an option, and failure to include the Democracy as an option in those territories would be horrendous.

My local newspaper ran an opinion piece about the Iraq War, sort of. The Vindicator released an article giving various opinions from local vets, organizers, and regular folks, about the War in Iraq. The article is a good read, and offered a rare balanced view of the public opinion, with more substantive thoughts than any poll could give us. I applaud them for the great piece. Excerpt:

Nonetheless, Brooks said he saw progress in winning over the Iraqi people while he was there. Comparing when he arrived with when he left, he said the Iraqi people had a lot of freedoms they didn’t have before — not just voting rights, but human rights. These were simple things, he said, like satellite dishes and outside entertainment. And, he said, there was no more torture going on, unless it was by insurgents.

“We were 100 percent right to invade Iraq. The American people knew what we were doing and where we were going, and now don’t like it because of all the politics going on,” he said. “We are going to be there a while longer because those people have built up so much anger against us. But, they are using so much time and energy defending themselves that it keeps them from attacking here. We have not had any more terrorist attacks in U.S. since [Sept. 11],” he noted.

Congressmen and Senators, including John McCain, have made trips to Iraq before, but McCain's trip today is a high profile stop that's going to earn him some much-needed headlines on the campaign trail. Ed Morrissey has the coverage, and shares the news:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain arrived in Iraq on Sunday to assess improved security attributed to a build-up of 30,000 extra troops of which he has been a strong supporter.

McCain arrived in Baghdad and was due to meet Iraqi government leaders and U.S. officials in the heavily fortified “Green Zone” diplomatic and government compound, U.S. embassy spokeswoman Mirembe Nantongo said. …

Attacks across Iraq have fallen by 60 percent since last June, when extra troops were fully deployed. There has been a fall in violence since January but U.S. commanders in Iraq say this does not represent a trend.

Ed also points out that this is McCain's eigth trip to Iraq, and says that this trip will force the media to point out the under-reported good news from the area. I have to agree, and McCain surrogates need to making the point that the surge is working just as much as the Senator does, because it's true and it fits the theme of the McCain campaign. John McCain is out doing foreign policy work while Barack and Hillary bicker...