WASHINGTON (AP) — A Senate panel has agreed to block U.S. funding for Iraq reconstruction projects worth more than $2 million and to try to force Baghdad to cover the costs of training and equipping the country’s security forces.

The provision, included in a 2009 defense policy bill approved this week by the Senate Armed Services Committee, comes as Democrats draft a similar provision within separate legislation that would cover this year’s war spending.

The efforts are part of the latest push on Capitol Hill to get Iraq to spend more of its own money and spare U.S. taxpayers. Democrats and many Republicans say it is unfair that Iraq is looking at pulling in as much as $70 billion in oil revenues this year while Americans grapple with soaring fuel prices at the pump.

The AP

Way to go!  It is financially irresponsible and inconceivable to be spending millions of American tax dollars on Iraqi infrastructure while our own country is $9 trillion in the hole and has plenty of its own needs.  They have $70 billion in oil revenue.  That’s not enough for them to start paying for themselves?

As six Republican senators devised a plan to yank $2.3 million in federal funding for Berkeley programs, the mayor of the famously liberal city apologized Wednesday for his hard stance against a Marine recruiting center.

Two City Council members vowed to soften their stance as well.

NCB11

Looks like these “principled” extremists changed their tune once their Federal welfare check was threatened.

By a vote of 17-4 today, a Senate Panel approved to move forward to bring this to the full Senate. The Law of the Sea Treaty is a dangerous grab at American sovereignty and its U.S. ratification needs to be stopped.

This was first proposed during the Reagan Administration and he objected to it for three very good reasons:

• Former President Reagan’s first objection to the Treaty was the Principle of the “Common Heritage of Mankind,” which dictates that oceanic resources should be shared among all mankind and cannot be claimed by any one nation or people. In order to achieve this goal, the Treaty creates the International Seabed Authority (”Authority”) to regulate and exploit mineral resources. It requires a company to submit an application fee of $500,000 (now $250,000), as well as a bonus site for the Authority to utilize for its own mining efforts. Additionally, the corporation must pay an annual fee of $1 million, as well as a percentage of its profits (increasing annually up to 7%), and must agree to share mining and navigational technology–thereby ensuring that opportunities aren’t restricted to more technologically advanced countries. The decision to grant or to withhold mining permits is decided by the Authority, which consists disproportionately of underdeveloped countries. Technology-sharing is no longer mandatory, however, there are remaining “principles” to guide its use and distribution. Additionally, the Council has been restructured so that the United States has a permanent seat, and developed countries can create a blocking vote.
• Secondly, former President Reagan believed that the Treaty would restrict the world’s supply of minerals. The Treaty was originally designed to limit the exploitation of heavy minerals in order to protect the mineral sales of land-locked, developing nations. This is no longer a severe limitation, because production limits to preserve land-based mining have been removed.
• The third–and still valid–objection is that mandatory dispute resolution restricts autonomy. Either a U.N. court or tribunal must mandate maritime issues involving fisheries, marine environmental protection, and preservation, research, and navigation. A country may opt out if the dispute involves maritime boundaries, military, or limited law enforcement activities. Submitting to external jurisdiction creates an uncomfortable precedent. Furthermore, it weakens the U.S. argument of autonomy when it refuses to submit to the International Criminal Court. Additionally, a country must petition to be excluded from mandatory jurisdiction requirements.
• The Heritage Foundation
  

The Democrats (as well as idiots like Dick Lugar) are behind this, of course, because they’ll get behind anything that weakens America’s standing in the world.  Trent Lott and John Kyl seems fairly certain that there won’t be enough affirmative votes in the Senate to ratify it.  For a treaty, two-thirds is required. Bush is also pushing this to be signed. As usual, he doesn’t pass up a chance to sell out our sovereignty.

President Bush waited until he had vetoed a relatively inexpensive children’s health insurance bill before asking for tens of billions of dollars more for his misadventure in Iraq. The cynicism of that maneuver is only slightly less shameful than the president’s distorted priorities. Despite a pretense of fiscal prudence, Mr. Bush keeps throwing money at his war, regardless of the cost in blood, treasure or children’s health care.Mr. Bush is threatening to veto most of the 12 domestic spending bills now before Congress because Democrats want to provide $22 billion more than the $933 billion he has requested. His argument? Something about the president’s responsibility to rein in lawmakers’ “temptation to overspend.”

The New York Times

What’s another $200 billion? After all, the National Debt is only approaching $9 trillion. That’s just a drop in the bucket.

I think the Times makes a point that will resonate with a lot of people. Bush is vetoing all of this domestic spending while asking for tenfold in Iraq. While I am very much against SCHIP, if the government is hell bent on flushing $200 million dollars down the crapper on foreign nation building, I’d rather see that money spent on our own people rather than those half a globe away.

PAWLEYS ISLAND, S.C. | Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney called the United Nations a failure on Thursday and said he would support a new coalition of the free nations of the world.

The former Massachusetts governor said the U.N. Human Rights Council has repeatedly condemned Israel while taking no action against nations with repressive regimes.

“The United Nations has been an extraordinary failure of late,” Romney said in response to a question at a pancake house along the coast of early voting South Carolina. “We should withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council.”

Wilmington Star

Romney is right on this and I am glad to hear someone address the issue.  The United Nation is nothing but a cesspool of corruption and has become increasingly anti-American, all the while we are their largest source of funding.  Apparently the adage “don’t bite the hand that feeds you” doesn’t resonate with those nimrods.

Bush, who presided over 152 executions as governor of Texas, wants to halt the execution of Jose Ernesto Medellin in what has become a confusing test of presidential power that the Supreme Court ultimately will sort out.

The president wants to enforce a decision by the International Court of Justice that found the convictions of Medellin and 50 other Mexican-born prisoners violated their rights to legal help as outlined in the 1963 Vienna Convention.

That is the same court Bush has since said he plans to ignore if it makes similar decisions affecting state criminal laws.

Associated Press

So now Bush suddenly cares about what the International Court of Justice thinks?  Rather interesting case for him to suddenly jump on board with their opinions.  This guy is a convicted murderer and rapist of two children and Bush is trying to halt his execution.  What Constitutional provision gives Bush the power to interfere in this in the first place?

Once again Bush shows us how he is more concerned about the well being of the Mexican people than he is the American people.

Here is some good news that shows maybe, just maybe the american public understands that we truely are at war and the ramifications of both victory and  defeat in Iraq.  One  reason I am supporting Fred Thompson is because I believe that he could be a Winston Churchill type leader that can unite and communicate directly to the american people the importance of victory.  This is an area that Bush has completely failed in my opinion.  Our next president needs to have the ability of going over the heads of the media and going directly to the american people.  The average american does not feel responsible or connected to this struggle and that must change.  All americans have a stake in  this struggle and all should be willing to take a role in it. 

The Club for Growth has organized a petition of 1028 economists that are united in their belief that new barriers to trade must not be enacted by this congress. They warn that new proposed tariffs imposed on our second largest trading partner China would have a ruinous effect on the economy not only of this country but of the entire world.

Why 1028 economists? Well that is the exact same number that signed a petition way back in 1930 to encourage President Hoover and congress not to enact the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. We all know how well that last petition worked out, let’s hope this country’s leaders have learned something in the last 77 years.

As an aside that is mostly relevant to Alex, Langley and myself two professors from Georgia Tech signed the petition: Li Haizheng and Christine Ries neither of whom I have heard of before, but will keep my eye out for from now on. As for the other alama maters of Save the GOP:

Drexel University: Bang Jeon and Joseph R. Mason
George Washington University: John Berthoud, Donald O. Parsons, Joseph Pelzman, Michael Wiseman, and Yang Jiawen

Some of the more prominent names to sign the petition include: Dick Armey, Daniel Drezner, Bryan Caplan & Arnold Kling, Mark Perry, Grover Norquist, Donald Luskin, John L. Barry, Eric Rasmusen, Don Boudreaux, Bill Conerly, Roy Cordato, Michael Cosgrove, Stephen Entin, David Gitlitz, John Goodman, Monty Graham, Wendy and Sen. Phil Gramm and their son Marshall Gramm, Robert Hall, Glenn Hubbard, Andrei Illarionov, Tim Kane, Raymond Keating, Larry Kudlow, Arthur Laffer, John Landon, Thomas Lenard, Philip Levy, Greg Mankiw, Lawrence McQuillan, Marc Miles, James Miller III, Adrian Moore, Ramon Myers, Richard Rahn, David Ranson, Michael Rizzo, Harvey Rosen, Paul Rubin, John Rutledge, Gary Shilling, George Shultz, Vlad Signorelli, John Silvia, David Tuerck, Richard Vedder, Alan Viard, Elizabeth Webbink, David Weiskopf, Brian Wesbury (PDF), Walter Williams, Richard Zecher, Benjamin Zycher, not to mention Nobel Laureates Finn Kydland, Edward Prescott, Thomas Schelling and Vernon Smith.

You may recognize some but not all of these names, but they are a mix of accomplished academics, think tank analysts, research consultants, investors, bloggers, free market advocates, businessmen, and former government officials who understand that when you artificially raise the price of the flow of goods between two countries you stifle economic growth in both lands.

Some interesting trivia emerged has I scanned over the list of economists who lent their names to the petition. Firstly, like I said before this was an eclectic mix of people, not merely economists at elite universities who are applying theory to a real world issue. This gives the petition more weight than if only professors had signed it, though their contribution was equally necessary.

Secondly, I was slightly surprised at the large number of economists with a Chinese or other East Asian background who had signed onto the free market statement. I wasn’t surprised that they existed, because Chinese and East Asian nationals, immigrants and Americans of such ancestry represent a large proportion of the modern academy both here and abroad. Nor was I surprised that they were willing to sign a petition supporting free trade, but the numbers were higher than I had expected.

The Chinese community in America generally leans left, though this is a difficult statement to support at times because Chinese-Americans have very diverse histories and therefore have divergent interests. In a casual count, out of the 1028 economists listed, 75 had a Chinese surname or first name (usually just married women in this case) which I counted as having some cultural affinity at some level to China and the Chinese world abroad. This does not of course include women who had a western first name before they were married so there might be a bit of an undercount but I feel it is better to lean to the side of caution in this case. This only represents 7% of the petitioners but for an academically slanted group to begin with that is surprising amount of free market support on this issue.

When all East Asians are considered, with some Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese and Thai names thrown in, the numbers are even higher, though the Chinese names represent the greatest among them. Out of the 1028 economists, a rough total of 101 were of East Asian origin or 9.8%. I don’t know if these numbers are in or out of the norm, but they are food for thought.

So why am I even talking about this? Because this issue has brought non-traditional conservatives to the “right” side of a free market issue. Now I don’t think a single one of these economists with an East Asian background signed the petition because China (and other parts of East Asia) loomed large as places that would be devastated by stiff tariffs. I think they signed it because they believed in what was written down and nothing more. But I do think that this petition is a microcosm of what is happening in the country as whole in terms of attitude adjustments that are made based on self-interest but end up helping the general good as Adam Smith explained in 1776. When a group of economists who are Chinese/Korean/Vietnamese nationals look at this issue, even if they do lean slightly left, they are strongly compelled to respect reality and not support a policy that shoots their other interests (in this case economic growth back home) in the foot. This is more an issue with the general population than a tiny slice of an even tinier slice of economists, but it is nice to see nonetheless.

The Washington Times is reporting that China has been caught by the Pentagon shipping large amounts of small arms and more advanced weapons to Iran and Syria, removing the serial numbers and then selling (or facilitating the transfer of) these weapons to insurgent groups in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In some cases the weapons have been flown directly from the factories inside China (which are almost exclusively state-owned) to Taliban groups inside Afghanistan with no help from the Iranians.

Some arms were sent by aircraft directly from Chinese factories to Afghanistan and included large-caliber sniper rifles, millions of rounds of ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades and components for roadside bombs, as well as other small arms. [empahsis added]

So just what is President Bush going to do to stop this latest outrage?

U.S. government appeals to China to check some of the arms shipments in advance were met with stonewalling by Beijing, which insisted it knew nothing about the shipments and asked for additional intelligence on the transfers. The ploy has been used in the past by China to hide its arms-proliferation activities from the United States, according to U.S. officials with access to the intelligence reports.

Impressive, read on.

The Bush administration has been trying to hide or downplay the intelligence reports to protect its pro-business policies toward China, and to continue to claim that China is helping the United States in the war on terrorism. U.S. officials have openly criticized Iran for the arms transfers but so far there has been no mention that China is a main supplier.

You really had to be drinking the WH kool-aid to believe that China was ever truly helping the United States in the “War on Terror”. I can’t take George Bush seriously when he talks about the “War on Terror” simply because he has allowed politics to infect every aspect of its prosecution. When we make even the slightest effort to stop the flood of arms from China, Syria and Iran into our warzones then maybe we can talk about actually winning this thing, until then it is all just hot air.

Of course we couldn’t stop our “friend” Austria from shipping arms to our enemies, why should we bother trying to stop our enemies?

In this same article is a nice blurb on a story that has been thrown by the wayside.

U.S. intelligence agencies think North Korea is continuing development of nuclear weapons, as well as working on “miniaturization” of weapons for missile warheads, according to a senior Bush administration official.
Since the February nuclear accord reached in Beijing, North Korea has continued work on weapons, said a senior Bush administration official involved in North Korean affairs.
“There are no indications that they are not pursuing a nuclear weapons capability, to include the weaponization and miniaturization,” the official said.

. . .

“Those who are looking at the six-party process and where we are today with [the Banco Delta Asia funds transfer] are very disappointed,” the senior official said. “This doesn’t build confidence. This is a time that is very tense and we want to go to implementing the 13 February agreement. So even though this is a normal exercises, I think there is an element of disappointment that North Korea would move in that direction.”

Do ya think so? BTW, the Banco Delta Asia funds that he is refering to were returned to North Korea recently. Why did the US government return $15 million to North Korea? Good question.

Rudy Giuliani made clear in Tuesday night’s Republican presidential debate that he is not ready to let the facts get in the way of his approach to foreign policy.

The most heated moment in the debate, which aired live on the conservative Fox News network, came when the former New York mayor and current GOP front-runner angrily refused to entertain a serious discussion about the role that actions taken by the United States prior to the September 11, 2OO1, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon may have played in inspiring or encouraging those attacks.

Giuliani led the crowd of contenders on attacking Texas Congressman Ron Paul after the anti-war Republican restated facts that are outlined in the report of the The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

The Nation

There is only one thing I don’t completely agree with Paul on regarding last night’s comments.  Even if the U.S. hadn’t had a sustained presence in the Middle East over the last twenty something years, I am not certain that we still wouldn’t be feeling some of their aggression.  Islamic fundamentalism plays a large part in the role on exercising terror across the globe.

Aside from that, Ron Paul was right.  When we stake out a position to be the World’s police force, we are going to incur resentment.  I have always been against the idea that it is our job to police the world.  The Monroe Doctrine be damned.

Here is a graph showing the per month Vietnam War deaths superimposed on a graph of the to date Iraq war deaths. The contrast is stunning and speaks volumes, not about our success or failure in either war but rather our complete collapse as a society in both cases. We are truly a weak people who seem unable to emotionally and mentally endure any sustained conflict. Let us hope we don’t have to fight a real war anytime soon or we would surely lose.

H/T: Instapundit

John o’sullivan has been giving a talk on foreign policy and it has some good points I’ll quickly highlight.

3 Threats
* Islamic radicalism
* Transnational progressives
* China

Islamic radicalism is winning in Europe but losing worldwide, and if we keep the fight we will win

In 50 years, 75% of world GDP will be divided between China, India, and the US which actually works to fight transnational progressivism. These new powers will not want to give up their influence to transnational progressives. In some ways the EU will be the only pro-transnational entity.

But even the EU will no longer be able to fight for abortion on demand, gay rights, etc because of the growing muslim influence.

O’Sullivan also had a great comment that we suffer from “cultural masochism”

Rivkin is now talking about the need to portray Islamic fundamentalism as antithetical to human nature. He argues part of that being democracy promotion

This is a very enlightening article with firsthand accounts of how the Christian community of Ain Ebel in southern Lebanon was forced into bombardment by Israeli forces by Hezbollah’s military reign there during the Hezbollah-Israel war of the summer of 2006. The article is very long, and has many pictures accompanying the reporting. Continue reading below to see some excerpts I found interesting.

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In response to Sam’s earlier post on the President’s new policy in Iraq, I just have one question. What would you have President Bush do?

This is where I go all neocon on you.

This new policy in Iraq is a course correction. Granted it is late, and mistakes have been made, but still it is an attempt at correction. One I hope succeeds. War sucks, and can never be perfect. Robert E. Lee put it best when he said, “It is well that war is so terrible, lest we should grow too fond of it.”

As for our soldiers in Iraq “getting picked off like they’re first prize in a turkey shoot” is just plain silly. I am not picking on Sam, but we need to discuss this plainly and simply. We have yet to experience major losses in the war on terror. In the Civil War we lost 365,000 men. In WWI, 116,00. 407,000 in WWII. 40,000 in Korea and 58,000 in Vietnam.

So the fact we have lost 3,000 men is not lining them up for a “turkey shoot”. Any death is tragic but we must put this war into the perspective of history. But at what expense? Yes our casualties are low (not by the left’s standards), but we also are not winning. So do we cut and run with our tails between are legs? Or do we correct past mistakes?

In my opinion 20,000 troops is not enough. We currently have 116,000 troops in Europe? Why? All they are doing is helping Germany’s economy. I propose cutting the European force in half and redeploy the rest to Iraq. Put a platoon on every street corner of Baghdad if we have to. Suffocate the insurgency. Of course this will never happen. This proposal would cause the death toll to rise, something the American people do not have the will to do and our Politicians know this all too well.

I believe it was the right decision to go into Iraq. Not for WMDs, or to over through a tyrant, but rather to draw out our enemies. To force them into a single front. That objective has succeeded. Now all that is left is to beat them. Will we win? I have my doubts. I have no lack of competency in our military. My doubt lies in the American people who do not have the will to stand up to Islamic Fascism. Our weak stomachs hamstring our politicians when fighting in a war. Especially a gorilla war like the War on Terrorism.

So what are we to do? President Bush has waged a war in which we did not have enough troops on the ground in Iraq and setbacks have occurred. If the troop surge is not the answer, what is? No one is proposing an alternative plan for success in Iraq. No one. Only defeat.

Before

After

Ahmadinejad, take notes.

Its all Iraq Study Group, All the time.

This cute little phrase represents the last policy initiative that both the Rockefeller Republicans and the Democrats who are running this country still seem to support. With the war in Iraq now almost certainly “lost” in the minds of the men leading this nation the one remaining front in the war against radical Islam is in Afghanistan. It may not be a front much longer.

With France, Germany, Spain and Italy refusing to engage the enemy (or even deploy into hostile provinces) it would seem that the NATO mission in Afghanistan is collapsing due to lack of troops. Pakistan has now told certain NATO members in secret meetings that the Taliban have won in Afghanistan and the best thing for everyone involved is to just leave.

Senior Pakistani officials are urging NATO countries to accept the Taliban and work toward a new coalition government in Kabul that might exclude President Karzai of Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s foreign minister, Khurshid Kasuri, has said in private briefings to foreign ministers of some NATO member states that the Taliban are winning the war in Afghanistan and that NATO is bound to fail. He has advised against sending more troops.

Since President Bush lacks the political will to send US forces into Pakistan it seems that Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar have secured for themselves in Waziristan what they once had in Afghanistan, a state of their own from which to conduct terror operations around the world.

Remind me again why we invaded Afghanistan?

That is an interesting question. It was posed to the three people running for House leadership positions by Dean Barnett. Here is the result: 0/3.

FIRST, THE BAD NEWS. Not a single candidate was able to mention a specific book. The one candidate who tried created inadvertent hilarity by saying, “Gosh, I have a book in my draw. ‘Jihad’ or something like that.” That representative then apologized but quickly recovered a sheen of omniscience by reminding us all that he/she has spoken to constituents who have served in Iraq, and through these conversation she has learned a lot.

Not the end of the world, but have no doubt my fellow conservatives, most of you are more informed about the true nature of this war than your congressman.

Eric Egland lays out Six Steps to Victory in Iraq. Hat-tip: Powerline

U.S. forces need to reduce the predictability of their movements. To do this, generals in Baghdad should stop requiring units to report the number of patrols conducted, and instead focus on effective offensive operations. The current emphasis on gauging unit effectiveness by the quantity of patrols conducted keeps the troops too busy to conduct quality operations that offensively hunt the enemy.

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