Vets for Freedom Executive Director Pet Hegseth's "Back to Iraq: Golden Moments" column on February 22, 2008 and the video excerpts from his a debate over victory or defeat in Iraq provide powerful support (underscored by his first-hand knowledge and experience when he served in Iraq)for victory and a powerful rebuke to those willing to snatch defeat from the emerging jaws of victory. (A YouTube version of the video of those excerpts appears to the right, and a smaller version suitable for embedding in sites or blogs appears below-left.) He was serving in Iraq when the al Qaeda bombed the Golden Dome Mosque. He met with local leaders that evening. That bombing marked the beginning of our most difficult times in Iraq. He's just returned from a trip back to Iraq. He provides a powerful, first-hand account not only of the fact that "the surge" has worked but also vivid, personal knowledge of HOW and WHY it's worked.
An unexpected event that occurred while I was writing this column ought to serve to wake-up those (especially leftist in the entertainment media) who think George Bush has exaggerated the threats to modernity and Western Civiliation posed by Islamic fanatics: As a form of retaliation against YouTube for hosting a video critical of Islam, Pakistani hackers took-down YouTube today (February 24, 2008) beginning around 2:00 pm Eastern Time. One might say, "So what if YouTube goes down-- it's mostly trash anyway," but the problem is obviously far larger to the extent it shows the scale of damage fanatical hackers can wreak. Thus, if you see the YouTube video in the above right and above left boxes, then You Tube will by then have recovered. If not, the damage persists. Ahhh. Just as I'm posting this (circa 4:20 pm Eastern Time on Feb. 24, 2008), YouTube seems to be "back up" after having been down for quite a while. Does that mean the threats just described don't exist? Of course not.
Yet there's poetic justice in this sequence of events. The original of the video (NOT limited to "YouTube") is still up and running at the website of those who have protected, and continue protecting, our freedoms from fanatical medieval interpretations of Islam-- i.e, the Vets for Freedom, to which a link is provided in the beginning of this installment. That's all for now.
Jim Wrenn, Editor at PoliSat.Com; Editor@WrennCom.Com.
Jim is a proud descendant of 18th Century criminal exiles from England who swam to the Outer Banks when the British ship taking them to a Georgia penal colony sank in a storm near Cape Hatteras. Having the prescience to prevent their descendants from becoming "TarHeels," they immediately migrated to Virginia, where, within just a few generations they worked their way up into poverty. Jim's grandfather was the first in the family tree to see the distant horizons, but his career was cut short by severe injuries he sustained when a cousin cut down the tree.
After a brief stint in the Amry (ours) following graduation from law school, he began his legal career in the state bureaucracy but was never able to break into the federal bureaucracy. Several years later, he entered the private practice of law and co-founded a small law publishing company. Later, finding the publishing of small laws unstimulating and finding his private practice too private to be lucrative, he began writing political satire/commentary. His greatest vice is taking himself too seriously.
Although he regularly teaches Continuing Legal Education courses to lawyers, he's too-often available through he Rubber Chicken Speakers Bureau to speak on politics, satire, etc., at luncheons, dinners, root canals, funerals, etc. His speaking fees are so outrageously high they border on criminal price-gouging, but as a free-market advocate, he defends his fees on the higher moral ground of charging whatever the traffic will bear. For more information (surely more than one would want or need), go to www.PoliSat.Com.