I posted a telephone conversation with Camp Pendleton media relations below.  Stupid discussion, it was.  But I did get to lodge the complaint that the seven Marines and one Navy Corpsman were in the brig without charges having been filed.

The Marine Corps Times is reporting that they have removed the shackles from the men in custody.  Well … and … what else?  When are you going to release them?  My complaint was — and still is — that they are in custody without having been charged.  Oh.  And it wasn’t just me either.  There are thousands of other people lodging the same complaint.  I just took credit for it.

The Strategy Page has an interesting run-down of the raids that the U.S. and Iraqi forces have engaged in, along with some of the good “finds” in these raids:

June 16, 2006: Al Qaeda in Iraq has been virtually wiped out by the loss of an address book. The death of al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi was not as important as the capture of his address book and other planning documents in the wake of the June 7th bombing. U.S. troops are trained to quickly search for names and addresses when they stage a raid, pass that data on to a special intelligence cell, which then quickly sorts out which of the addresses should be raided immediately, before the enemy there can be warned that their identity has been compromised. More information is obtained in those raids, and that generates more raids. So far, the June 7th strike has led to over 500 more raids. There have been so many raids, that there are not enough U.S. troops to handle it, and over 30 percent of the raids have been carried by Iraqi troops or police, with no U.S. involvement. Nearly a thousand terrorist suspects have been killed or captured. The amount of information captured has overwhelmed intelligence organizations in Iraq, and more translators and analysts are assisting, via satellite link, from the United States and other locations.  Perhaps the most valuable finds have been al Qaeda planning documents confirming what has been suspected of  terrorist strategy. Also valuable have been the al Qaeda assessment of their situation in Iraq. The terrorist strategy is one of desperation. While the effort continues,  to attempt to trigger a civil war between Sunni and Shia in Iraq, this is seen as a losing proposition. The new strategy attempts to trigger a war between the United States and Iran. This would weaken the United States, and put the hurt on Iran, an arch-enemy of al Qaeda. Other documents  stressed the need to manipulate Moslem and Western media. This was to be done by starting rumors of American atrocities, and feeding the media plausible supporting material. Al Qaeda’s attitude was that if they could not win in reality, they could at least win imaginary battles via the media.  Zarqawi considered al Qaeda’s situation in Iraq as “bleak.” The most worrisome development was the growing number of trained Iraqi soldiers and police. These were able to easily spot the foreigners who made up so much of al Qaeda’s strength. Moreover, more police and soldiers in an area meant some local civilians would feel safe enough to report al Qaeda activity. The result of all this is that there are far fewer foreign Arabs in Iraq fighting for al Qaeda. The terrorist organization has basically been taken over anti-government Sunni Arabs. That made the capture of Zarqawi even more valuable, as his address book contained a who’s who of the anti-government Sunni Arab forces. This group has been hurt badly by last week’s raids.  The government deployed two infantry divisions and over 40,000 police in and around Baghdad to prevent “revenge” attacks by terrorists not yet rounded up by the growing wave of raids. Al Qaeda has announced an increased number of attacks. These have not occurred, although it is believed that more attacks are possible, as many attacks in various stages of preparation can be rushed forward before they are aborted by a raiding soldiers or police. At the moment, most al Qaeda members appear to be scrambling for new hiding places.  The  damage done by the post- Zarqawi raids has spurred the Sunni Arab amnesty negotiations. These have been stalled for months over the issue of how many Sunni Arabs, with “blood on their hands”, should get amnesty. Letting the killers walk is a very contentious issue. There are thousands of Sunni Arabs involved here. The latest government proposal is to give amnesty to  most of the Sunni Arabs who have just killed foreigners (mainly Americans). Of course, this offer was placed on the table without any prior consultations with the Americans. Naturally, such a deal would be impossible to sell back in the United States. But the Iraqis believe they could get away with it if it brought forth a general surrender of the Sunni Arab anti-government forces. The Iraqis, after all, are more concerned with Iraqi politics, than with what happens in the United States. Iraqi leaders believe that the U.S. has no choice by to continue supporting Iraqi pacification efforts. However, the spectacle of amnestied Sunni Arabs bragging to Arab, European and American reporters about how they killed Americans, might have interesting repercussions.

However, I think that they might be relying on the supposed Al Zarqawi safe-house document.  Over at NRO, my friend Michael Ledeen has a very good commentary on why this document is a fraud.  It is a must read.  Basically, Iranian agents planted the document.

We don’t need to rely on that document for evidence that Al Qaida is on the mat.  I said that they were on the mat in an earlier post based on documents taken in earlier raids (and available over at a centcom web site).

It may not all be over — but they are currently scattering like cockroaches in the light.  Let’s hope that our boys squash them like cockroaches.

Oh, and don’t fall for that stuff about Al Qaida trying to get us to start a war with Iran.  This is disinformation.

This hangs on Staff Sgt. Wuterich’s door.  The final words to the pledge (on the banner) are “and justice for all.”  If Wuterich followed protocol and gets hung out to dry to appease the likes of the unhinged and loony John Murtha, then perhaps it should be “justice for some.”

Oh, by the way, before we get to the picture of the banner:  “Lord, may John Murtha’s picture be placed with the definition of buffoon in Wikipedia for a millennium.”

This hangs on Staff Sgt. Wuterich’s door.  The final words to the pledge (on the banner) are “and justice for all.”  If Wuterich followed protocol and gets hung out to dry to appease the likes of the unhinged and loony John Murtha, then perhaps it should be “justice for some.”

Oh, by the way, before we get to the picture of the banner:  “Lord, may John Murtha’s picture be placed with the definition of buffoon in Wikipedia for a millennium.”

Thursday, June 15th, 2006, approximately 1900 hours (EST):

Ring tone: Dial 760.725.5044 (Media Relations at Camp Pendleton, California).

Camp Pendleton (CP): Hello, this is Camp Pendleton media relations.

Captain’s Journal (CJ): To whom am I speaking?

CP: This is Staff Sgt. Jesse Lora.

CJ: I am a Marine father and a concerned U.S. citizen.  Are the eight Marines involved with the alleged Hamdaniya incident in the brig at Camp Pendleton?

CP: Are you media, sir?

CJ: I am a Marine father and a concerned U.S. citizen.  Are the eight Marines involved with the alleged Hamdaniya incident in the brig?

CP: There are seven Marines and one Navy Corpsman.

CJ: In the brig?

CP: Yes sir.

CJ: Have they been charged?

CP: No sir.

CJ: Why are they in the brig if they have not been charged?

CP: Sir, the decision has been made that there is reason to believe that there has been court martial offense and so they are in the brig.

CJ: But there is an investigation underway.  How would you know if a court martial offense has occurred if the investigation has not yet been completed?  Isn’t it the very information you need to rely upon to make such a decision?

CP: Sir, the senior staff has made the decision …

CJ: [interrupting] … who?  Who has made this decision?

CP: Sir, the commanding officer has made the decision.

CJ: How did he make it?

CP: Sir, he has reason to believe …

CJ: [interrupting] … but if the investigation has not been completed yet, how could he have made the decision — he needs the investigative results in order to make the decision.

CP: Sir, the commanding officer has reason to believe that a court martial offense has occurred.

CJ: Uh huh.  Okay then (Editorial Remark: At this point it was obvious that the company line was well-rehearsed and we were getting nowhere with this line of questioning).

CJ: Well, I still don’t see why they are in the brig if they have not been charged?  Are they in shackles?

CP: Sir, they are able to get out, to have family visits on the weekends, and they are only in leg irons, not shackles, when they are out.

CJ: I understand that this is one hour per day that they are out.

CP: Sir, they are out during meals and other times.

CJ: (Editorial Remark: Meals?  Are they shackled during meals?  What kind of idiots do we have running the brigs?): I still don’t see why they are locked up if they have not been charged?

CP: Sir, I assure you that they are being treated with the utmost of respect.  The hand cuffs and leg irons are for our’s and their protection.

CJ: (Editorial Remark: If there is reason to believe that they have committed a court martial offense, why would you treat them with the utmost of respect?  Leg irons for their protection?  What kind of idiots do we have running the brigs?  What kind of idiot does Staff Sgt. Lora take me for?): Okay.  Tell me this.  Is this a show for the media?  Is this all a big show?

CP: Sir I could not comment on that.

CJ: Okay, thanks for the time.  But I still don’t understand why they are in the brig without charges being filed.

Elsewhere, using Phyllis Schlaffly, I wrote about crass politics and the Hispanic vote. Now, hat tip to Kathryn Jean Lopez over at the Corner (NRO), here is confirmation. Does this just make you sick, or what? Sigh … [the Captain’s head shakes sadly … he wonders how this could be happening in America … and what kind of country he is turning over to his children and grandchildren]

From an April 2, 2006, article in the Los Angeles Times (bold is mine):

During the 2000 election, Bush previewed a campaign video from ad-maker Lionel Sosa that used emotion-laden themes to woo Latinos.

As he watched, Sosa recalled, Bush’s face lighted up. “How much do you need for this?” Bush asked as the two men sat with Rove in the governor’s mansion in Texas, Sosa said.

Sosa replied that it would take $3 million. According to the ad-maker, Bush then turned to Rove, saying: “Give him five.”

Four years later, Sosa produced a variation of that video for the 2004 campaign that was mailed to Latino voters across the country.

The video includes images that would probably rile those who today are calling for the most restrictive immigration laws. At one point, Bush is shown waving a Mexican flag. The footage was shot, Sosa said, during a Mexican Independence Day parade in San Antonio in 1998, when Bush was running for reelection as governor.

The five-minute video, narrated by Bush, opens with an image of him fishing on his property near Crawford, Texas, as he essentially described millions of Americans who populate his home state as the true foreigners in someone else’s native land.

“About 15 years before the Civil War, much of the American West was northern Mexico,” Bush says in the video. “The people who lived there weren’t called Latinos or Hispanics. They were Mexican citizens, until all that land became part of the United States.

“After that, many of them were treated as foreigners in their own land,” Bush adds.

He says the “Latino spirit” was fueled by “strong conservative values” of family, a strong work ethic, faith in God, patriotism and personal responsibility. “These values are my values,” Bush says. “I live by them, and I lead by them.”

As Bush speaks in the video, the background music — a Latin beat — grows louder. The president is pictured waving the Mexican flag, hugging a Latino woman, and then holding a Latino baby.

Political strategists in both parties said the video illustrated how Bush, unlike other Republicans, had forged a personal relationship with Latino voters largely on his ability to convey empathy and invite them into his party.

I talked with a friend tonight about the Haditha incident.  His perspective (somewhat embellished here by me) is what I believe to be the perspective of most common men in America.

The common man tires of hearing the endless drum beat of anti-American slander and propaganda from the far left.  It is to him — well, let’s go ahead and say it — not manly.  To be sure, he is a part of or has a family, and asked in the abstract, would have no part of killing unarmed non-combatants just because of rage.  However, he doesn’t believe that this happened.  Not in Haditha, not anywhere in Iraq … not until proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.  The United States Marines are our finest, and they deserve not only our respect (which is easy), but our forbearance and patience.  They deserve grace.

See, in the abstract, we go to work, wrestle with our bosses and co-workers, stop at the grocery store on the way home, hug our wives, eat our meals, knock around the house for a while and then sleep until it is time to do it again.  Answers to moral questions are easy when we sleep in comfortable beds after eating tasty dinners in a protected home.  In reality, the Marines do not know if they will live or die tomorrow.  They do not know what awaits them around even the next corner.  They eat MREs out of disposable containers.  They go on patrols to find an enemy that may be among the very people they are trying to protect.  They know at any time, an IED might explode and turn over their Humvee, instantly killing the gunner and maiming some of their brothers.  Tomorrow they might face bullets coming their direction having left the muzzle of the enemy’s rifle at two thousand feet per second.  They might get to see their loved ones again, and they might not.

They do it all for us … because of love and service and protection and honor and courage and commitment and family and religion … and all the things that make America great and the U.S. Marines the very best of a great nation.  To say that we owe them a debt of gratitude is to make an understatement to the point of embarrassment.  It is because of the Marines that we are free.

Bad things happen in war.  Horrible things.  It sounds like something terrible happened that day in Haditha.  Families died who should otherwise be alive.  But based on what we know about the insurgents, and most importantly, based on what we know about the Marines, we strongly suspect that the America-hater’s account of things is just not quite right.  We suspect that there was a fight that day, and we suspect that the Marines defended themselves.  Further, we expect Marines to defend themselves.  We would not have it any other way.  When a Marine feels threatened, we do not expect him to act in any other way but to attack the enemy and defend his brothers.

When these Marines defended themselves, we strongly suspect that whatever collateral damage was done, was done by the insurgents.  We do not for a moment believe — especially without evidence — that the Marines wantonly created collateral damage.  And regardless of what happens tomorrow with this case, we believe that the Marines deserve grace.  After all, bullets were flying, explosions were happening, Marines were being hurt and killed, and tired, hungry and battle-weary Marines reacted as they are taught to.

At any rate, this is what we suspect.  And this is our perspective.  We are the common man in America.

I talked with a friend tonight about the Haditha incident.  His perspective (somewhat embellished here by me) is what I believe to be the perspective of most common men in America.

The common man tires of hearing the endless drum beat of anti-American slander and propaganda from the far left.  It is to him — well, let’s go ahead and say it — not manly.  To be sure, he is a part of or has a family, and asked in the abstract, would have no part of killing unarmed non-combatants just because of rage.  However, he doesn’t believe that this happened.  Not in Haditha, not anywhere in Iraq … not until proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.  The United States Marines are our finest, and they deserve not only our respect (which is easy), but our forbearance and patience.  They deserve grace.

See, in the abstract, we go to work, wrestle with our bosses and co-workers, stop at the grocery store on the way home, hug our wives, eat our meals, knock around the house for a while and then sleep until it is time to do it again.  Answers to moral questions are easy when we sleep in comfortable beds after eating tasty dinners in a protected home.  In reality, the Marines do not know if they will live or die tomorrow.  They do not know what awaits them around even the next corner.  They eat MREs out of disposable containers.  They go on patrols to find an enemy that may be among the very people they are trying to protect.  They know at any time, an IED might explode and turn over their Humvee, instantly killing the gunner and maiming some of their brothers.  Tomorrow they might face bullets coming their direction having left the muzzle of the enemy’s rifle at two thousand feet per second.  They might get to see their loved ones again, and they might not.

They do it all for us … because of love and service and protection and honor and courage and commitment and family and religion … and all the things that make America great and the U.S. Marines the very best of a great nation.  To say that we owe them a debt of gratitude is to make an understatement to the point of embarrassment.  It is because of the Marines that we are free.

Bad things happen in war.  Horrible things.  It sounds like something terrible happened that day in Haditha.  Families died who should otherwise be alive.  But based on what we know about the insurgents, and most importantly, based on what we know about the Marines, we strongly suspect that the America-hater’s account of things is just not quite right.  We suspect that there was a fight that day, and we suspect that the Marines defended themselves.  Further, we expect Marines to defend themselves.  We would not have it any other way.  When a Marine feels threatened, we do not expect him to act in any other way but to attack the enemy and defend his brothers.

When these Marines defended themselves, we strongly suspect that whatever collateral damage was done, was done by the insurgents.  We do not for a moment believe — especially without evidence — that the Marines wantonly created collateral damage.  And regardless of what happens tomorrow with this case, we believe that the Marines deserve grace.  After all, bullets were flying, explosions were happening, Marines were being hurt and killed, and tired, hungry and battle-weary Marines reacted as they are taught to.

At any rate, this is what we suspect.  And this is our perspective.  We are the common man in America.

I have been toying with the idea of writing a piece called “Ten Reasons why John McCain will Never be President of the United States,” but I am having a hard time culling the list down to ten.  For now, one will have to do.  See the informative piece “US Border Patrol Agents Angry with McCain.”  McCain will not win as an independent, he will merely draw away enough voters to make one of the two other parties lose who would not otherwise have lost.  He will certainly not run as a Democrat for President — he is too conservative.  Finally and most important, he will not win the Republican nomination because he is a RINO (Republican in Name Only).  His shameless trips to “rub shoulders” with the Christian right will not play well to the Christian right.  I know, I am the Christian right.

I have spoken on immigration before here, here, here and other places.  I have tried to point out how the financial burden for the poverty problem in Mexico will end up being shouldered by the American middle class (the employer gets the benefit, a form of corporate welfare).  Well, Phyllis Schlaffly’s piece over at Townhall on immigration makes the point better than I can.  She points out concerning the Senate bill that:

… the 795-page bill announces its “temporary guest worker” plan. Those words are lies because the fine print in the bill converts these workers, who are given H-2C visas, into permanent residents with the right to become citizens after five years.

The plan will start by importing 200,000 H-2C workers in the first year. The H-2Cers can immediately bring in their family members on H-4 visas, without any numeric limits and without being required to have a physical, and they will also get permanent legal residence and citizenship.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this bill would import 7.8 million immigrants, and convert another 11 million current immigrants, legal and illegal, into U.S. citizens over the next decade. The Heritage Foundation estimates that 66 million new citizens will be added to the current population over the next 20 years. The number would accelerate as the racket called family chain migration allows more new residents to bring in more and more relatives.

The bill gives these temporary workers some preferential rights that U.S. workers do not have. These new temporary workers can’t be fired from their jobs except for “just cause,” they must be paid the prevailing wage, and they can’t be arrested for other civil immigration offenses if they are stopped for traffic violations.

The bill assures the preference of in-state college tuition (something that is denied to U.S. citizens in 49 states), and certain types of college financial assistance will be available to illegals at the state’s option. As minorities, they might even get affirmative action preferences in jobs, government contracts, and college admissions.

After the so-called temporary workers and their spouses become citizens, they can bring in their parents as permanent residents on the path to citizenship. Although the parents have never paid into Social Security, they will be eligible for Supplemental Security Income benefits, and in 46 states they will be eligible for full Medicaid benefits after five years. Siblings and adult children (and their families) will be given preference in future admissions.

The demographics of the so-called temporary workers are expected to be similar to those of the illegal immigrants already in our country. More than half will be high school dropouts, they will work low-paid jobs that require payment of little or no income tax, they are 50 percent more likely to receive taxpayer-funded government benefits than natural-born households, and they have a 42 percent rate of out-of-wedlock births (all of whom, of course, will be granted automatic U.S. citizenship).

Estimates of the cost to the taxpayers of this gargantuan expansion of the welfare state are at least $50 billion a year over the long term. U.S. taxpayers will pay for entitlements to these tens of millions of low-income families, including Medicaid, Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, Earned Income Tax Credit (cash handouts of up to $4,400 a year to low-wage households), public schooling and lunches, the WIC program, food stamps, public housing, and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families.

In the beginning I could not decipher why Bush would spend his political capital on what I call his “loser” immigration policy.  Now I see why after reading Phyllis.  It is as naked, crass and unadulterated a political move as I think we have ever seen or experienced in America.  We have seen some crass moves by the pols, but the problem here is the enormous cost associated with this new class of people.  It is a class that the pols know will be the new “minority,” who will eventually have the vote — if the pols have their way — and who will be the recipient of endless give-away programs and subsidies and the subject of countless social engineering experiments.  In short, as long as the middle class is funding this whole endeavor, the votes will keep coming to the GOP.  Or so the thinking goes.

It might be a jaded and dark view of this administration (to whom I have given the benefit of the doubt), but it appears to me that this is all about the vote.  It is as simple as that.  As for the Democrats, they see it as all about the vote, make no apologies and just want to go faster.  It is a choice between dark and darker.

To make this vision even more bleak, since the middle class American will be shouldering the burden, we might be watching the beginning of the end of the middle class in America.  I know this sounds reactionary.  If you think so, go back and re-read Phyllis.