The Occasional Observer

Nice to see she's wasting no time trying to undermine the office of the President, by visiting Syria next week against wishes of Bush's administration. Regardless of what she thinks is appropriate policy, she and the Dems do not currently hold the office of President. Until they do, this is an entirely inappropriate action. It's one thing for them to protest the war and give solace to our enemies, but now to actively negotiate with them in direct opposition to the standing policy of the sitting President is outrageous. This type of maneuver is extremely dangerous to US as far as I'm concerned; we cannot have competing factions setting foreign policy.

As always, Post's front cover gets it right!

Interesting, the issue that DC earlier posted (firefighter criticism of Rudy) is now gaining some legs in MSM here and here. Clearly this is CNN's (Clinton News Network) attempt to undermine Rudy's strong lead, because he will beat any Dem candidate and they don't like that.

We're still a year and a half away from the '08 Presidential election, and already Time magazine is starting to whine that the Republicans lead the polls in head-to-head matchups. They throw reason after reason at you as to why this shouldn't be the case, but yet it is.

I will lay good money on the line that the following scenario will play out. If Rudy wins primary, MSM will do their best to turn him from 9/11 hero into "evil conservative." They will proclaim that his fiscal and law enforcement policies were overly suppressive of minorities and the underpriveleged. If McCain wins, he will be labelled as another Bush neo-con, who supported the Iraq war from day 1 and still supports our presence there. However, should either one of them win the general election, the MSM will completely change their tune to suggest that this was more of a win for Dems and Indies than Repubs. They'll suddenly play up Rudy's liberal social policies and McCain's "maverick" status, to suggest their election can only be viewed as a rejection of conservative policies..

Let the games begin..

While I appreciate that the situation in the Middle East is very tense and it is best to be cautious before making any strong moves, I have to believe it is in the best interests of the West for Britain not to appear to be Iran's whipping boy. Iran has now seemingly further escalated the situation with inappropriate release of hostage photos, fake or forced letters of admission of guilt, and forced wearing of headscarves. It is time for Britain to make a more forceful, public response. The longer it takes to respond, the more it will be perceived that these types of aggressive actions by the Middle East will not be met with consequences.

Will Fred Thompson actually throw his name into the ring? He's already running neck and neck with Romney if he does. Of course, he's also got a lot of name/face recognition, so I'd expect him to have an early boost if he ran.

...no one likes you. Or, at least 50% of the people don't.

What's that I hear? It's the AMT creeping up on you! Let's see if Congress finally does something to prevent the AMT from hammering the middle class soon, or yet again punts the issue because they don't want to give up the potential revenue..

Wow, Hagel intimating that impeachment of Bush might be an option. Once you've publicly taken that position against someone in your own party, there's no turning back.

This is certainly not good news. The Brits insist they were conducting routine police work in Iraqi seas, an area they have been patrolling for some time now. Based on the photos, it looks like the Brits were in small hovercraft that appear to be meant for ferrying soldiers back and forth. They sure don't look like naval combat vessels.

The Iranians apparently escorted them into Iranian waters (one must presume they had substantially heavier ships) and then placed them in custody.

That's the "what." But now we've got to figure out, "why?"

Why would Iran seek to provoke the West like this? Could it be some out of control ship-level commander who wanted to make a name for himself? Could the Brits have been mistaken, and wandered into Iranian waters on their own (Answer: no)? Or has Iran made a calculation that our ground forces are stretched to their capacity, and they are trying to bait us into escalating the conflict?

UPDATE 03/24/2007 0939 HRS:

The Iranian authorities tell us the British soldiers have "confessed and admitted their mistake" by entering Iranian territory. Sure they did.


UPDATE #2 03/24/2007 2140 HRS:

The British prisoners have apparently been transferred to Tehran, and the Iranian government wants to trade them for Iranians being held by the UK. I guess that answers the question of who authorized the capture. Sounds like the order came right from the top: give us bargaining chips to get back our men.

Now, how does the British government respond?