HILLARY THINKS YOU ARE STUPID



The following quotation is from Sen. Clinton's recent address to the Council on Foreign Relations:

Now, some of us spoke out about the excesses of the Taliban regime, especially its treatment of women, and the Clinton administration did attempt, through military action with missiles, to ferret out bin Laden and his training camps. In the years that followed, the government looked for efforts, covert and overt, to try to hit bin Laden, but he was, as he is today, an elusive enemy.



September 11th gave us the opportunity as well as the obligation to do what there had been no domestic or international consensus to do before we were attacked on our own shores: to go into Afghanistan and to try to root out both the Taliban and al Qaeda. We cannot afford to make the same mistake that we made in 1989, yet I fear we might unless we ramp up our involvement in this forgotten front-line land in the war against terror.

Sen. Clinton failed to mention that her husband's use of "missiles" on deserted terrorist training camps (which resulted in the bombing of an aspirin factory) was meant to distract the country from the ongoing news about Monica Lewinsky. Even more shameful is her assertion that, prior to 9/11, there wasn't "domestic or international consensus" for action against our terrorist enemies. Translation: We were too cowardly to act when the circumstances called for it (i.e. the first bombing of the World Trade Center, etc.), because of "allies" and looney left supporters wouldn't have approved.



RealOne video of the Senator's remarks can be launched by clicking here.

IRAQI FOREIGN MINISTER SLAMS THE UN



The Washington Times reports that Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari read the riot act to the UN Security Council about that institution's lack of concern for the Iraqi people:

Although he did not list names, France, Russia and Germany were prominent among the countries that had resisted a Security Council resolution authorizing the war in Iraq.



"One year ago, this Security Council was divided between those who wanted to appease Saddam Hussein and those who wanted to hold him accountable," Mr. Zebari said dispassionately in an address to the 15-member council.



"The U.N. as an organization failed to help rescue the Iraqi people from a murderous tyranny that lasted over 35 years, and today we are unearthing thousands of victims in horrifying testament to that failure. ...



"The U.N. must not fail the Iraqi people again," Mr. Zebari said in a plea for Secretary-General Kofi Annan to return international staffers to Baghdad for relief work and nation-building assistance.

Take that, France, Russian, Germany, et al.

THE PREDICTABLE NEW YORK TIMES



From today's lead editorial (registration required):

The trial of Saddam Hussein must do several things at once. It must educate Iraqis and the world about the nature of his regime, adhere to the highest international standards of fairness, and provide a mechanism for appropriate punishment.

And who should administer justice to this tyrant who killed at least 300,000 of his own citizens, including those he gassed with weapons of mass destruction in Halabja?

The best way to achieve those goals is by creating a tribunal inside Iraq under United Nations authority, staffed by Iraqi and international judges and prosecutors.

That's right. Under UN authority. The New York Times obviously received the same DNC "internationalization" memo that went out to Hillary, Howard Dean, John Kerry, etc.

THE "BIKE-PATH LEFT"



Mark Steyn appears in today's Wall Street Journal, where he evicerates the looney left:

Vermonters marked the end of the Dean era by electing a Republican governor and a Republican House. Even Vermont isn't as liberal as liberals assume. What's liberal is the idea of Vermont as it's understood across America: a bucolic playground of quaint dairy farms punctuated by the occasional boutique business that's managed to wiggle through the Dean approval process. A lot of those dairy barns are empty and belong to weekending flatlanders, the rest are adorned with angry "Take Back Vermont" signs, and the quintessential Green Mountain boutique business, Ben and Jerry's, wound up selling out to the European multinational Unilever. But these dreary details are irrelevant. To Democratic primary voters across the land, Vermont is a shining, rigorously zoned, mandatory-recycling city on a hill. And the only way up the hill is by the bike path.

The column is also available at OpinionJournal.com, where you can read it with a free registration.

THE "BIKE PATH LEFT"



Mark Steyn appears in today's Wall Street Journal, where he evicerates the looney left:

Vermonters marked the end of the Dean era by electing a Republican governor and a Republican House. Even Vermont isn't as liberal as liberals assume. What's liberal is the idea of Vermont as it's understood across America: a bucolic playground of quaint dairy farms punctuated by the occasional boutique business that's managed to wiggle through the Dean approval process. A lot of those dairy barns are empty and belong to weekending flatlanders, the rest are adorned with angry "Take Back Vermont" signs, and the quintessential Green Mountain boutique business, Ben and Jerry's, wound up selling out to the European multinational Unilever. But these dreary details are irrelevant. To Democratic primary voters across the land, Vermont is a shining, rigorously zoned, mandatory-recycling city on a hill. And the only way up the hill is by the bike path.

The column is also available at OpinionJournal.com, where you can read it with a free registration.

THE "ME" GENERATION...



At the web site called the Democratic Underground [emphasis added below]:

There really do seem to be a lot of us here who are genuinely happy that Saddam is captured. This suprises me. I'm not happy they captured him. That's not to say that I'm sad. I just think today's news doesn't stir any emotion in me at all. Saddam was never a threat to me. He never did anything to me personally. I doubt he ever did anything to you. In fact, Saddam, over the course of his life and rule of Iraq, probably did more to help America than any other world leader.

No relief that the rape rooms are gone? No celebration of the destruction of facism in Iraq? What a fruitcake.

A LITANY OF BAD NEWS FOR DEMOCRATS AND LOONEY LEFTISTS



From the Wall Street Journal:

• Underlying inflation plunged to a 40-year low of 1.1% in November as slack in the economy continued to put downward pressure on prices.



• The current-account deficit, the broadest gauge of the nation's global trade, narrowed to $135.04 billion in the third quarter from $139.39 in the second quarter.



• More U.S. employers expect to boost hiring than to reduce jobs in the first quarter of 2004, according to a bellwether survey by staffing agency Manpower.



• Bush reaped a quick political benefit from Hussein's capture as a new poll showed increased approval of the president's leadership and the nation's direction overall.

More to come...