After a month off because of a combination of holidays and Celtics games, Pundit Review Radio is back on Boston’s Talk Station WRKO this Sunday evening at 7pm EST.
We will be all over the Iraq issue, starting right out of the gate with one of our favorite guests, Retired Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, author of Never Quit the Fight.
PRESIDENT’S NEW IRAQ PLAN DESERVES SUPPORT
By Ralph Peters
As for the Democrats in Congress, they can’t continue whining that they support our troops while threatening to cut off funding for those in uniform in wartime. They should be ashamed of themselves for even hinting at such a course of action.
What does the president’s plan have going for it? A sound tactical concept for security in Baghdad; significant Iraqi commitments (we’ll see what they’re worth); an overdue integration of Provincial Reconstruction Teams – the moneybags guys – into our combat units; a core of genuine Iraqi patriots; a refreshingly tough stance with Iran and Syria, and an extremely capable American commander en route to Baghdad, Gen. Dave Petraeus.
There are no guarantees that this plan will work, but it deserves a chance. Surrender isn’t a strategy, and cowardice won’t save us from the deadly threats we face.
The president’s new plan will have a painful human cost. But the cost of defeat would be incalculably higher.
Our president deserves our support. One last time.
At 8pm, Hollywood producer turned Iraq documentary filmmaker Pat Dollard, a ballsy guy who embedded with the troops in Iraq and was injured twice in combat. Last time Pat was on Pundit Review Radio, we received our most memorable call EVER, from Susan, an Army wife and mother.
At 9pm, our weekly collaboration with Matt Burden and Blackfive to bring his series Someone You Should Know to the radio. Immediately following Someone You Should Know, the one and only Michael Yon will be joining us from somewhere in Iraq.
If you enjoy our show, let the station know about by sending them a note
What is Pundit Review Radio?
Pundit Review Radio is where the old media meets the new. Each week Kevin and Gregg give voice to the work of the most influential leaders in the new media/citizen journalist revolution. Hailed as â??Groundbreakingâ? by Talkers Magazine, this unique show brings the best of the blogs to your radio every Sunday evening from 7-10pm EST on AM680 WRKO, Bostonâ??s Talk Leader.
Schadenfreude is a German word meaning “pleasure taken from someone else’s misfortune.” So, when 14 more members of the Carter Center resign in protest over his new book, well, I’m delighted. No figure in American public life bothers me more than Jimmy Carter.
The Washington Post
14 quit Carter Center panel as fuss over book grows
January 12, 2007
Fourteen members of an advisory board to the Carter Center in Atlanta resigned Thursday in protest over former President Jimmy Carter’s best-selling new book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying they could “no longer in good conscience continue to serve.”
The resignations were the latest episode in an escalating controversy over the book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” published in November. It has been criticized within the U.S. Jewish community as tilting sharply toward the Palestinians. Scholars have found fault with his fact-checking. At least one former Mideast negotiator has expressed outrage over what he called “misrepresented” history.
The straw that broke board member Steve Berman’s back, he said Thursday, appeared on Page 213, in a passage he quoted from memory: It was imperative, Carter wrote, that Arabs and Palestinians “make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals” of an internationally proposed peace accord “are accepted by Israel.”
“What does that say to you?” asked Berman, a commercial real estate developer in Atlanta. “It says they can stop when they get their state. He’s condoning terror as a means of obtaining the objective of a Palestinian state.”
For more Jimmy bashing, don’t miss Allen Dershowitz’s column, Ex-President for Sale
Watch this video tribute to Cpl. Jason Dunham, who today posthumously received the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Back on May 8, Matt Burden, author of Blog of War, and proprietor of Blackfive, told us the incredible story of Jason Dunham during our Someone You Should Know segment on Pundit Review Radio.
The White House ceremony honoring Jason moved President Bush to tears today. Say what you want about George Bush, but this man cares deeply about the troops. I can’t even tell you how many stories I’ve read on milblogs about his various visits to Walter Reed.
Bush Bestows Medal of Honor on Fallen Marine
WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 â?? In April 2004, Cpl. Jason L. Dunham, a Marine Corps recruit from a small town in upstate New York, did something extraordinary: he threw himself on an exploding grenade to shield two men in his unit as they battled insurgents on a road in Iraq, losing his own life.
On Thursday, just one day after Corporal Dunham would have turned 25, President Bush bestowed the Medal of Honor, the nationâ??s highest military award, on him and presented it to his mother and father in a somber East Room ceremony attended by his relatives and friends, as well as prominent members of the government.
Michael Yon has another great photo essay from Iraq. Don’t miss it.
This war is fraught with more paradoxes and seeming contradictions than I can track, but one thing I�??ve encountered on every embed is the high number of people who know the most, and suffer the most, still believe we are winning. For the most part, anyway. While most of the young soldiers still hold hope for a good outcome here, others think it�??s a lost cause. The same is true for Iraqis. Many are still pushing for better days, while others guzzle apathy tea.
Read the whole thing.
As always, if you can afford to support Michael’s amazing reporting from the war zone, please do.
Michael Yon has just posted his first Dispatch from Iraq. It is a wonderful photo essay. He writes about his plans for 2007,
I plan to spend the entirety of 2007 with our troops at war, until sickness, wounds or worse send me home, or the military tires of my presence and catapults me over the wire. Having spent most of 2005 in Iraq, I know what this means. �??Drive-by reporting,�?� as some commanders call it, is worse than no reporting at all. The only way to approach describing what our troops experience, and what is really happening in Iraq, is to go the distance.
Michael will be joining us on Pundit Review Radio for regular updates from all across Iraq in the coming weeks.
Michael finances these trips on his own. He is not being paid by a media organization. He does not accept advertisements on his website. He is 100% independent, and that is why we’ve come to expect the good, the bad and the ugly from his reporting. As you can imagine, the costs are staggering. If you appreciate what Michael is doing to report the truth from Iraq, and have the means to support him, you can do so here.
Crossroads, with Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan for those who care to listen. Jules Crittenden says our country is at a crossroads and will soon have to make a decision. We don’t have the luxury of taking Yogi Berra’s advice on what to do when you reach a fork in the road, “Take it”. We have to choose. Here’s Jules,
We’ve arrived at a crossroads in history. The choices are simple.
In a letter to President Bush Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate President Harry Reid said they want out of Iraq. It’s over. The American people are sick of it. There is no reason and no will to keep fighting this.
At the American Enterprise Institute the same day, senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman came out for a big, sustained surge of troops into Iraq. They made the case for fighting. Key word: “Winnable.” They outlined the consequences of accepting defeat. Key word: “Catastrophic.”
We are sharply divided as a nation. There will be no governing by consensus. Only by hardnosed leadership.
Read the whole post here.
One of the major reasons that I wrote my book â??Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Liesâ? is that I was sick and tired of hearing liberals refer to themselves as â??progressive.â? The more I thought about their stated positions and their actual track record of success (or lack thereof), I realized that the term â??progressiveâ? is actually a misnomer.
So I donâ??t get it. How is it that the political and educational elite left still refers to themselves as â??progressive?â? The word â??progressiveâ? is actually defined in my McMillianâ??s Modern Dictionary as, â??proceeding forward or onward; advancing; making progress or improvement; favoring or advocating liberal or advanced ideas.â? But if one evaluates liberal â??progressiveâ? ideas, proposals, and institutions, it becomes abundantly clear that their â??advanced ideasâ? have all been unmitigated disasters for America.
A short list of these â??progressiveâ? brain children include: The ERA, The Great Society, public housing, The New Deal, Carterâ??s price controls, The ABM Treaty, The windfall profits/luxury taxes, the estate tax, the Wall Mart tax, the living wage, National Health Care (Hillary Care), government run schools, sex ed, national daycare, bilingual ed, motor voter, social security, abortion on demand, same sex marriage, embryonic stem cell research, human induced global cooling in the 70s and now â??human induced global warming.â?Â
And yet, the modern day liberal Democrats continue to refer to themselves as â??progressives.â? The â??progressiveâ? Democrats are now proposing in their â??first 100 hoursâ? a minimum wage increase among other â??progressiveâ? new spending bills which they like to euphemistically refer to as â??investments.â? Even though almost every economist who ever lived has said that raising the minimum wage leads to higher unemployment especially among low skilled minorities, those smarty-pants â??progressivesâ? are going to propose it anyhow regardless of whether it ends up hurting the very same poor constituencies they purport to represent.
My question is, why should any American with a least half a brain (for Senator Kerry this would included any of our military in Iraq) support any Democratic â??progressiveâ? economic proposal when they have been incorrect in every prediction they have ever made about supply side tax cuts since JFK?
Take for example some recently released economic statistics as reported in todayâ??s Wall St. Journal:
â??Job growth in December exceeded expectations at 167,000 and the jobless rate held at a very low 4.5%, despite a slowdown in manufacturing and construction.â? (The very opposite of what the â??progressivesâ? predicted when they howled about the â??jobless recovery.â?Â)
â??Since the Bush tax cuts on dividends and capital gains passed in mid-2003, the economy has created 7.2 million new jobs according to the survey of business establishments, and an additional 1.2 million in the more variable household survey.â? (The very opposite of what the â??progressivesâ? predicted.)
â??Federal receipts rose by 14.6% in fiscal 2005, another 11.8% in 2006, and kept rising by 9% in this year’s first two months despite slower GDP growth.â? (The very opposite of what the â??progressivesâ? predicted.)
â??The budget deficitâ?¦fell by $165 billion in two years, and including state surpluses is now down to about 1% of GDP, which as an economic matter is negligible. Tax revenues as a share of the economy are also back above 18.5%, which is their modern historical norm.â? (The very opposite of what the â??progressivesâ? predicted.)
And now, Pelosi, Kennedy, Kerry, Clinton, and the rest of the â??progressivesâ? will conveniently ignore this â??inconvenient truthâ? (to borrow a phrase from that other enlightened â??progressiveâ? Algore) and will continue to play the class warfare card by talking about â??two Americas,â? â??excessive CEO pay,â? the â??evils of Wall Mart,â? etcâ?¦with the hopes that Americans never figure out that their â??progressiveâ? ideas represent anything but real progress.