The high water mark for bloggers

Bloggers have done a lot of important work in recent months, from driving the MSM crazy in general, to debunking specific stories that were either completely false (Dan Rather) or just misleading (missing weapons).

On Pundit Review Radio we are dedicated to following the work of the best, most influencial bloggers and thought leaders in the new media. We started this show because of how impressed we are with these people and because we believe they play an increasingly important role in how politics is covered by the media and digested by the public.

For all the great work that has been done, nothing can compare to what Chief Wiggles, Dean Esmay and Operation Give have done.

Dean was one of the first guests on Pundit Review Radio. He came on not to talk about media bias or his blog, but to discuss a special project that a group of bloggers had undertaken to help a young Iraqi girl.

Here is the backstory, Chief Wiggles is a military blogger stationed in Iraq. He started handing out toys to kids there and was blown away by their reaction. He posted about it and asked for more toys. Before he knew what hit him, he had thousands of toys. A group of bloggers decided to formalize this and started Operation Give, a blogger driven charity.

A soldier associated with Operation Give in Iraq was approached by an Iraqi man who told him that his seven month old daughter needed immediate medical attention. The baby, named Tabby, had a cancerous growth on her face that would kill her if left untreated. The operation needed was unavailable in Iraq but routine here in the states. Operation Give went to work, letting the blogsphere know about Tabby’s situation and they proceeded to raise funds for her and her father to come to the states. They also found a doctor to perform the surgery, a family to put them up and even arranged for an expedited Visa so they could get here quickly.

Today, Dean posted an update on Tabby. The long and short of it, thanks to Chief Wiggles, Operation Give and thanks especially to the blogsphere who rallied around this cause, Tabby is here in the Unietd States, having her surgery and getting a new lease on life.

Fox News just did a story on Tabby that is incredibly moving. Be sure to watch the attached video.

For more background on Tabby and Operation Give, check out Pundit Review Radio’s interviews with Dean Esmay on here and here

Dennis Boyle has an excellent article on National Review Online

The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.

Jacques Chirac recently ridiculed Blair’s support of the war in Iraq:

I said then to Tony Blair: ‘You absolutely have to obtain something in exchange
for your support.’ Well, Britain gave its support but I did not see much in
return. I am not sure that it is in the nature of our American friends at the
moment to return favours systematically.

That, of course, is exactly what we should by now expect from Chirac, the notion that if it’s not a bribe, it’s not a deal. It would never occur to Chirac that what Blair got in exchange for liberating Iraq had nothing to do with the U.S. What Blair got was what he thought he’d get, the knowledge that he had done the right thing for his own country and for others.

What an unsophisticated way to see the world, non? A French leader would never say, “Either you are with us, or you’re against us.” In French, it translates like this: “Either you give us something, or we are against you.”

Read the whole letter at The American Thinker. Spotted it over at Dean Esmay.

french_shutup
Originally uploaded by punditreview.

Open Letter To Europe
By Herbert Meyer

With the notable exception of Great Britain, you no longer have the military strength to defend yourselves. Alas, you no longer have the will to defend yourselves.

What worries me even more than all this is your willful blindness. You refuse to see that it is you, not we Americans, who have abandoned Western Civilization. So take a good, hard look at yourselves and see what your own future will be if you don’t change course. And please, stop sneering at America long enough to understand it. After all, Western Civilization was your gift to us, and you ought to be proud of what we Americans have made of it.

Herbert E. Meyer served during the Reagan Administration as Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and Vice Chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council. His DVD on The Siege of Western Civilization is a nationwide best-seller.

Below Top Secret is wondering,

“I couldn’t help but notice. The cubist style symbolism

phallacial_library
Originally uploaded by punditreview.

seems to ask: Was this the erection of a building or the building of an erection?”

Ann Althouse’s first thought, “What a glamerous looking prison.”

Michael Goodwin of the New York Daily News,

But behind the facade of generous tributes was the sad spectacle of the once-most powerful man on Earth trying desperately to find his footing on history’s rain-slicked ladder. It’s a tricky climb, and time is no longer his friend – and not just because of his fragile health.

The world before 9/11 seems like a million years ago. Most of the political lessons he taught us then about the “third way” mean little now. In all the important ways, the
future became unhinged from the past. And so the Man from Hope is now the Man
from Yesterday.

That’s not to say Bill Clinton isn’t relevant. He is to the 30,000 devotees who trekked to Arkansas and to the millions who look back with fondness on the first baby boomer President.

And each time his party loses a presidential election, he looks more like a giant. It is shocking to remember that no Democrat since FDR has been elected twice -except Clinton.

Jay Leno

You know what today was? The official opening of the Clinton Library in Little Rock, Arkansas. President Bush was there. Huge event. Poured. Nothing but rain. Which is kind of ironic because a lot of dresses got ruined.

President Bush was there. In fact, when they told President Bush it was going to be a gala event. He said, “None of them are going to be getting married, right?â?

In fact there were 4 presidents there, standing side by side. Presidents Carter, Bush One, Clinton and of course George W. Bush all standing together. It kind of looked like the 99 cent store version of Mt. Rushmore!

It was all very dignified. You know there was one kind of tacky moment when Clinton started handing out cigars. I didnâ??t think that was proper form.

One other thing I thought was premature. When Hillary announced groundbreaking for her own presidential library.

Hillary Clinton said Bill Clintonâ??s Library “tells the story of his life.â? In fact, thatâ??s why itâ??s a two story building.

and my favorite,

Al Gore was sitting there. I donâ??t want to say that al has gotten big, but Clinton saw him from behind and said, “Monica?â?

Is there any doubt that the Bush foriegn policy strategy has the Al-Qaeda network on the run? Their ability to communicate and execute has been severly disrupted and their leadership has been gutted. There is much to criticize about execution in post-war Iraq, but the strategy was sound, and has been proven so since our invasion. Iraq was a central player in global terrorism. Saddam was bribing governments across Europe, corrupting and endicting the United Nations at the same time. We now know the reason the UN did not lift a finger in Iraq, because the status quo was better for them. It was good business.

Bin Laden, Zarqawi Are Attempting to Communicate, U.S. Says

Nov. 19 (Bloomberg) — Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Jordanian terrorist
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi are attempting to communicate with each other, a general
with the U.S. Central Command told a news conference at the Pentagon.

Blogs for Bush tell you where to go to show your support for the young Marine caught in the Sites of a media and propaganda firestorm?

Here is a sample,

Powerline has a very powerful letter home from a Marine in Iraq who is on his second tour of duty. He talks about the shooting incident caught on tape and immediately broadcast by Kevin Sites and NBC. Read It.

For more on Kevin Sites, Little Green Footballs has it.

I guess I have been wondering if it would kill Kevin Sites, the reporter, to say to himself, “for the safety of these troops, I’m not going to broadcast this and hand these savages a PR recruitment tool they will be able to misuse and misrepresent for years.” Is Kevin Sites career so damn important? Is he doing us a public service by broadcasting this? Who has anything to gain from broadcasting this other than the terrorists and Kevin Sites himself?

Instapundit linked to this great round-up on the subject from Chapomatic who observes,

This is an information war; just as Al-Jazeera didnâ??t play the Italian or
CARE snuff film murders and nobody showed the pictures of the horror we
stopped in Falluja, and just as the pornographic obsession with Abu Ghraib
dominated media, this will become a way to weaken the American center of gravity of public support. This is a warfare tactic as surely as cryptography use or artillery employment.

The Wall Street Journal has a terrific editorial on the subject today,

Beyond the one incident, think of what the Marine and Army units just
accomplished in Fallujah. In a single week, they killed as many as 1,200 of the
enemy and captured 1,000 more. They did this despite forfeiting the element of
surprise, so civilians could escape, and while taking precautions to protect
Iraqis that no doubt made their own mission more difficult and hazardous. And
they did all of this not for personal advantage, and certainly not to get rich,
but only out of a sense of duty to their comrades, their mission and their
country.

In a more grateful age, this would be hailed as one of the great
battles in Marine history–with Guadalcanal, Peleliu, Hue City and the Chosin
Reservoir. We’d know the names of these military units, and of many of the
soldiers too. Instead, the name we know belongs to the NBC correspondent, Kevin
Sites.

We suppose he was only doing his job, too. But that doesn’t mean the
rest of us have to indulge in the moral abdication that would equate deliberate
televised beheadings of civilians with a Marine shooting a terrorist, who may or
may not have been armed, amid the ferocity of battle.

And Thomas Sowell has this for bleeding hearts like Chris Matthews of Hardball, who has been asking,

“what may be the illegal killing of a wounded, unarmed insurgent” and “Is there ever a justification for shooting an unarmed enemy?”

The unreality of this question is breath-taking, both logically and
historically. The rules of war, the Geneva Convention, do not protect
soldiers who are not wearing their own country’s uniforms. To get the protection
of rules, you have to play by the rules. Terrorists are not enemy soldiers
covered by the rules of war. Nor should they be. They observe no rules.