This cartoon was inspired by Charles Johnson's LGF post, Press In Quagmire Frenzy:

Well, this was entirely predictable; taking a run around the major media sites this morning reveals the press in full bore Quagmire Mode after yesterday's missile attack that brought down a US helicopter and killed 16 soldiers.

The New York Times: News Analysis: As Casualties in Iraq Mount, Will Resolve Falter?

The Washington Post: New Attacks Intensify Pressure on Bush.

And of course, what would a quagmire be without the Spectre of Vietnam?

Nowhere in any of these reports is the slightest hint of awareness that if the US were to pull out of Iraq now, jihadis around the world would be emboldened to launch more attacks against US interests everywhere, seeing the US as a paper tiger. Osama bin Laden said this outright -- that our withdrawal from Somalia (where there was much less at stake) proved to him the US had no spine.

The media is on the side of the enemy. Their desire to see the US fail in Iraq is palpable. And the Democrats aren't far behind, as their primary concern (after mouthing empty sympathies) is, very obviously, how to use this attack against President Bush.

The war isn't only taking place in the Middle East -- it's right here in America too.

• Washington Times Nov. 4, 2003 article
• Anchorage Daily News Nov. 4, 2003 article
• The Complaint filed in Federal District Court by the Pacific Legal Foundation includes a straightforward account of essential issues and history, and as a consequence provides a self-contained source for refuting the spin being put out by the viros and other apologists for the National Park Service.

One reason why this case is very important to the viros is that they are trying to redefine guaranteed rights of way to private property to exclude "motorized vehicles". Another is that they are trying to establish that a 'right of way' across Federal land is subject to 'environmental review' and therefore denial.--Erich Veyhl

Shortly after President Bush signed the partial-birth abortion ban into law, a federal judge in [Lincoln,] Nebraska said the pro-life law is unconstitutional and issued a temporary injunction against it. "It seems to me the law is highly suspect, if not a per se violation of the constitution," said U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf. Kopf agreed with a previous Supreme Court decision and said the law should have included a health exception.

[Anti-abortion] groups say a health exception is unnecessary and would make the ban useless as any reason can be given to justify a partial-birth abortion as necessary to protect a mother's health. "While it is also true that Congress found that a health exception is not needed, it is, at the very least, problematic whether I should defer to such a conclusion when the Supreme Court has found otherwise," Kopf said.

[...] U.S. Justice Department attorney Anthony Coppolino told Kopf that he should show deference to Congress' findings that the abortion procedure is not medically necessary. [...]

Kopf also said the bill did not present "an objective" presentation of the facts and had a "serious vagueness problem." He also wondered why Congress didn't invite those who perform partial-birth abortions to testify [to Congress]. [LeRoy Carhart, who performs partial-birth abortions in Omaha] has been in court before in an attempt to block a ban on partial-birth abortions. He sued to overturn Nebraska's state ban and, in 2000, the Supreme Court agreed that the law was unconstitutional. [It] was Kopf who originally ruled that the Nebraska ban was unconstitutional.

Recommended website: www.AbortionisProLife.com

NEW YORK — A 14-year-old New Jersey schoolboy [Scott Switzer, of Colts Neck] — whose dad [a Navy engineer aboard the USS Detroit in the Persian Gulf] and stepdad are in the military — was suspended for five days because he drew a "patriotic" stick figure of a U.S Marine blowing away a Taliban fighter, officials said yesterday. "He's been punished for the drawing," said Tinton Falls [Middle] school superintendent Leonard Kelpsh. "We felt it was highly inappropriate, and we took it very seriously."

...Scott, who turned 14 Tuesday and was headed back to school Wednesday, said he was unjustly disciplined for his sketch of "a war scene." "Truth be told, it's a Marine shooting a terrorist Taliban," he told The Post. "It's just a picture. What upsets me most is that the principal would dare say it's not normal. To me, it's patriotic."

...a local psychologist who examined the teenager said the sketch was benign...Scott's mother said school officials described the drawing as "not the work of a normal mind." Scott said he understood the school's concern for student safety, but was offended by the principal's comments. "Truth be told, I'm more upset that he'd insinuate that I'm mentally unstable," he said. "I'm the class clown. I'm not a bully." ["'Patriotic' Stick Figure Drawing Troubles School", October 29, 2003]

No Scott you are the class hero. The bullies are the monsters who run your school. Compare this action to the professor in the U.S. who advocated the death of American soldiers:

At an anti-war "teach-in" this week, a Columbia University professor called for the defeat of American forces in Iraq and said he would like to see "a million Mogadishus" -- a reference to the Somali city where American soldiers were ambushed, with 18 killed, in 1993. "The only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military," Nicholas De Genova, assistant professor of anthropology at Columbia University told the audience at Low Library Wednesday night. "I personally would like to see a million Mogadishus." The crowd was largely silent at the remark. They loudly applauded De Genova later when he said, "If we really believe that this war is criminal ... then we have to believe in the victory of the Iraqi people and the defeat of the U.S. war machine." ... [Teach-in organizer Eric] Foner said that because of the university's tradition of freedom of speech, it was unlikely De Genova would suffer professionally in any way because of what he said. "A person's politics have no impact on their employment status here, whether they are promoted, whether they are fired or whether they get tenure," Foner said. [Newsday, 3/27/03]

Related: Academic "Freedom" at Columbia U. and Columbia's Anti-American Professors and Freedom of Speech.

[...] The American defence department has begun a recruitment drive for local draft boards, raising questions about a possible revival of conscription. A notice on a department website invites United States citizens over the age of 18 to volunteer for the boards. The board members will decide who can be exempted if a draft is needed. [...] There has been no draft in the US since it was ended by Congress in 1973, the year that US troops pulled out of Vietnam. [...] Pentagon officials have denied any move to re-instate the draft, saying that this would require a conflict of the magnitude of World War II. They say the Selective Service System (SSS), which runs the draft boards, is merely launching a routine recruitment drive as 80% of places are now vacant.

The embargo has been in place for more than 40 years The United Nations General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly for an end to the United States' 40-year-old economic embargo against Cuba. The vote marks the 12th consecutive year that the assembly has called for an end to the blockade. Only three nations voted against the motion - the US, Israel and the Marshall Islands. Two others abstained. [...] "The blockade is a cruel and absurd policy that finds no support within or outside the United States," Cuban Foreign Minister Perez Roque said.

Clearly Israel--someone who the dictatorship loaded UN consistently votes against--is not outside the United States.

"The crime being committed against Cuba today could very well be committed against any other country tomorrow."

And what crime is that? Failing to sanction and financially support a thug and murderer? What about the crime of Castro enslaving Cubans under communism? Observe the hypocrisy here:

 "Cuba's foreign minister cried victory Friday after the U.N. Human Rights Commission voted against condemning his country's recent crackdown on dissidents....The top United Nation rights watchdog rejected a proposed resolution criticizing Cuba's recent moves against opponents, instead approving a milder resolution Thursday calling for a U.N. rights monitor to visit the island. "The unquestionable majority vote is a clear signal from the Human Rights Commission that Cuba has the right to apply its own laws," [Cuban Foreign Minister] Perez Roque told a news conference. "We express our profound satisfaction." Earlier this month, Cuban tribunals sentenced 75 dissidents to prison terms ranging from 6 to 28 years on charges they were mercenaries working with the American government to harm the island's socialist system...Perez Roque said his country would not comply with the milder resolution, which urged Cuba to accept a visit by U.N. human rights investigator, French jurist Christine Chanet. [AP, April 2003]

Remember who is in charge of the so-called UN "Human Rights" Commission: Libyan leader Colonel Gadaffi. The U.N. Inhuman Joke Commission would be more apropos.

Quoting from "Isn't the U.S. embargo of Cuba the cause of Cuba's economic woes?":

As wealthy as Americans are, is the United States the only country in the world that has wealth? The fact is all the countries in Europe, South America, Asia, etc. have trade relations with Cuba. So the real question is: why isn't Cuba rich from its trade with all these other countries?

The reason why Cuba is so poor is that the right to life -- the moral-political basis of a free market -- and all the corollaries of that right (liberty, property, speech, etc.) do not legally exist in Cuba. In Cuba there is no private property, no private employers (the only employer is the state), and the only honest way to support oneself in Cuba is in the 'black market.'

Perhaps, the real reason that American Leftists want the U.S. to establish normal relations with Cuba is that once we do so, they can further bleed Americans taxpayers dry to support the Castro regime, as they do to support other bankrupt, socialist regimes in other countries.

To send money to Cuba will only further enrich Castro, as all foreign funds invested there do now (since foreign investors don't pay Cubans, but pay the Castro regime, from which the actual workers only receive a miniscule portion). It is the looters in these foreign countries, ready to "profit" from slave labor, that prop up and empower the Castro regime. It is they along with Dictator Fidel Castro who should be condemned. 

It is Cuba's absolute socialist system--the hallmark of totalitarianism--that should be condemned--not the U.S. embargo.

Recommend reading:

• A Leftist "Indictment" of Communist Cuba
• Isn't the U.S. embargo of Cuba the cause of Cuba's economic woes?
• Fidel Castro's Dupes

Recommended websites: LibertyForCuba.com and UNisEvil.com.

"A mighty empire launches an unprecedented military campaign. It will patrol the globe to end a heinous and uncivilized form of behavior. Financing this pre-emptive project demands great sacrifices. Old allies refuse to participate. The empire's lonely unilateral exercise drags on for decades, costing thousands of lives. Observers from Cuba to Moscow assume that this folly will bring down the empire." [New York Sun, 11/4/03]

[S]o eager is Kerry to subordinate U.S. foreign policy to Saddam's patrons that his attacks on America's real allies have become increasingly obnoxious. In the last presidential debate, Kerry said:

''This president has done it wrong every step of the way. He promised that he would have a real coalition. He has a fraudulent coalition.''

... It's taken as a given among Democrats that somehow this administration has needlessly offended the French and Germans. But insulting Britain, Australia and Poland as a cheap way to get at Bush demonstrates your superior sense of the subtleties of foreign policy? I'd say it's going to be very difficult for President Kerry to work with these chaps after his election victory--or I would say it if I could type that sentence without collapsing in giggles.

The really ''fraudulent'' coalition is the one Kerry wants: one that gives the Belgians and Syrians a veto over U.S. action for nothing in return. The ''fraudulent'' coalition is Clark's from the Kosovo war, where all ''allies'' were entitled to advance operational information regardless of whether they were actually contributing to any of the operations, and where, as Clark himself noted in his memoir, ''one of the French officers working at NATO headquarters had given key portions of the operations plans to the Serbs.'' [Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun-Times, 11/2/03]

The number of Americans who believe it's OK to cheat "a little here and there" on their taxes has risen 50 percent in the past four years, a government survey says -- a trend that new IRS Commissioner Mark Everson promises to reverse by going after scofflaws at all income levels.... The percentage of people who agreed with the statement that it was every American's civic duty to pay his fair share of taxes decreased from 81 percent in 1999 to 68 percent in 2003. [Yahoo News]

Freed of an onerous Baath Party bureaucracy that sought to regulate even the most fundamental aspects of Iraqi life -- such as who married whom -- Iraqis lately are tying the knot in numbers not seen in recent memory. Before President Saddam Hussein was toppled, the ruling party imposed a complex and strict set of matrimonial rules on Iraqis, particularly on members of the military.... "Because Saddam is gone, now I'm getting married!" said Wasim Adel, 27, beaming beside his bride, Sheelan Shafeeq, 18, in a crowded corridor at Karrada city hall, which serves a neighborhood in central Baghdad. The hallway was jammed with couples making their way from the office of the registration clerk to the office of the judge who would perform a civil ceremony.

Last month mass hysteria apparently swept the [Sudanese] capital city, Khartoum, after reports that foreigners were shaking hands with Sudanese men and causing their penises to disappear....

"Another victim, who refused to give his name, said that while he was at the market, a man approached him, gave him a comb, and asked him to comb his hair. When he did so, within seconds, he said, he felt a strange sensation and discovered that he had lost his penis."

Tales of the vanishing penises ran rampant round the city, spread by cell phones and text messages...

...it's useful to be reminded that the International Jewish Conspiracy is comparatively one of the less loopy conspiracies in the Islamic world. That said, they'll probably figure out a way to pin the disappearing penises on some or other agent of Zionism. After all, according to reports in Middle East newspapers, Israel laces Arab chewing gum with secret hormones to make Muslim men hot for Jewish babes who turn out to be Mossad agents....

It is, in that sense, the perfect emblematic tale of Islamic victimhood: The foreigners have made us impotent! It doesn't matter that the foreigners didn't do anything except shake hands. It doesn't matter whether you are, in fact, impotent. You feel impotent, just as -- so we're told -- millions of Muslims from Algerian Islamists to the Bali bombers feel "humiliated" by the Palestinian situation. Whether or not there is a rational basis for their sense of humiliation is irrelevant.

...There's something pathetic about a culture so ignorant even its pathologies have to be imported. But what do you expect? The telling detail of the vanishing penis hysteria is that it was spread by text messaging. You can own a cell phone, yet still believe that foreigners are able with a mere handshake to cause your penis to melt away. [SunTimes]

"Our Declaration of Independence calls for a deepened respect for the opinions of mankind, but this administration simply doesn't listen. From our most important allies in Europe to our relations with neighbors in this hemisphere this administration has spanned the range of emotions from dismissive to indifferent," [Sen. Clinton] added. [NYSun]

Allan Johnson, a high school English teacher and debate coach from Fairfax, Va., held a sign saying "U.S. Troops Out of Iraq. Bring Them Home Now!" at Saturday's "End the Occupation" rally in Washington. In fact, though, Johnson isn't sure he wants to bring the troops home now, or to end the American occupation of Iraq. At least, not yet.

"We've made a giant mess," said Johnson, a handsome man who wore his long snowy hair in a ponytail and had a sparkling stud in one ear. "I would hate for the Bush administration to halfway fix things and then leave, and then blame the Iraqis if things go wrong. Once you go to somebody's house and break all the windows, don't you owe them new windows?"

Why, then, was he marching at an End the Occupation rally? "I don't agree with all the people here, believe you me," he said. But his own sign? He glanced at it, startled, and explained that someone had handed it to him. "I didn't even look at it," he said. "I was just waving it."

...According to an ANSWER pamphlet, "Counter-revolution & Resistance in Iraq," "The anti-war movement here and around the world must give its unconditional support to the Iraqi anti-colonial resistance." [Salon, Hat Tip: Taranto]