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A Better Country: Why America Was Right To Confront Iraq; Book Review

// October 21st, 2008 // 1 Comment » // WAR ON TERROR

Doubtless the war in Iraq has been a subject that when discussed brings about a myriad of emotions ranging from supportive to downright disgust. The sensitive issue is successfully tackled in the book A Better Country: Why America Was Right To Confront Iraq, by Arthur Borden.

Arthur Borden is a corporate attorney and former member of the Signal Corps in the U.S. Army, having served in Europe during World War II from 1943-1945. A graduate of Yale College and Columbia Law School, he has practiced law for over fifty years in addition to teaching corporate law at New York Law School.

His experience in law is evident throughout the book as he makes a strong case for the war in Iraq. Borden gives a detailed account of the events leading up the 2003 invasion of Iraq, illuminating the danger that Saddam posed. Due to partisan bickering the war has been misunderstood by most Americans. Borden traces the true reason of the war back to the Carter Doctrine. In other words, Oil and the preservation of American interests was and is the reason for the war.

From: A Better Country

It was widely understood before the invasion, just as it was widely forgotten afterward, that Saddam held ambitions to dominate the Persian Gulf and by controlling the flow of oil to establish a decisive position for himself in the global economy.”

Borden also reveals how the Democrats used the war to weaken Bush’s reputation and power.

By this date Democrats were ridiculing the President daily, as though they were not themselves familiar with the Carter Doctrine and its history, did not understand the President’s speeches about the risk of Iraqi regional domination, and had not read the Times and the Post in previous years.”

“While Bush had found a window of opportunity to rid the world of Saddam, the Democrats supposed they had found a window for tossing out Bush. Their strategy was to repeat ad nauseam that he had lied about WMD and to keep doubting the war’s necessity on this basis. Their position was that the only excuse for the war was a 9/11 Link and that the President had lied there was such a link. Oil seemed to have dropped out of their vocabulary. As Ted Koppel had noted, it was not something you could say.”

Read A Better Country: Why America Was Right To Confront Iraq. Don’t allow the media and liberals to manipulate your feelings about the war. Borden gives you facts, not talking points.

Table of Contents:

A Better Country is on sale at Amazon.

Release Date: August 2008

Publisher: Hamilton Books

Price: $19.95 Paperback

ISBN-10: 0761841067

ISBN-13: 978-0761841067

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Video: Obama On O’Reilly; Won’t Admit He Was Wrong About Surge

// September 5th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // POLITICAL ARENA, WAR ON TERROR

This is the first part of O’Reilly’s interview with Obama. Watch as his ego will not allow him to admit that he was wrong about the surge. The rest of the interview will be aired on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on the Factor. We will have it posted here as well in case you miss it.

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Vote For The Best Song For The Media’s Devotion To Obama.

// July 23rd, 2008 // 1 Comment » // HUMOR

Are you swooning over Obama? Does he make your knees quake? As we all know by now the media is enthralled with Obama. Now thanks to McCain’s official site you can pick the best song for the media’s devotion to Obama. The choices are “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” and “My Eyes Adored You” both by Frankie Valli. Below is the Obama Love Video featuring, “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You.”

Is it just me or have all of the men in this video lost their man card?

MonkeyCrash is Your Source For Conservative Opinion.

Op-Ed by McCain; NY Times Doesn’t Want You To Read It.

// July 23rd, 2008 // No Comments » // POLITICAL ARENA, WAR ON TERROR

Below is the op-ed by McCain that the NY Times refused to print.

In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80% to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.

Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.

Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City-actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.

To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.

Senator Obama is also misleading on the Iraqi military’s readiness. The Iraqi Army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year, but this does not, as Senator Obama suggests, mean that they will then be ready to secure their country without a good deal of help. The Iraqi Air Force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover. The Iraqis are also still learning how to conduct planning, logistics, command and control, communications, and other complicated functions needed to support frontline troops.

No one favors a permanent U.S. presence, as Senator Obama charges. A partial withdrawal has already occurred with the departure of five “surge” brigades, and more withdrawals can take place as the security situation improves. As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields, such as Afghanistan, without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.

But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.

Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his “plan for Iraq.” Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be “very dangerous.”

The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we’ve had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.

I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war-only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.

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