By the way, the group that did this graph, AppealForCourage.org, says that its aim is "to communicate to Congress the troops' desire to remain in Iraq until our mission is complete." The only problem with this argument is that an actual poll of troops in Iraq revealed the opposite. For instance, see the Zogby poll from February 2006:
An overwhelming majority of 72% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year, and more than one in four say the troops should leave immediately.
Who is this "Appeal for Courage" group representing again?
[UPDATE: Perhaps this is part of the reason why President Bush only raised a paltry $630,000 at his RPV fundraiser yesterday in Goochland County, "attended by the President's 120 remaining supporters." Ha.]
I notice that bush-cheney supporters mouth this mantra in some form or another constantly. Unfortunately this is NOT a plan to win a war. Increasingly many of us realize that this is just a hope that if we just stay long enough (years, decades, centuries) somehow God or fortune will favor us. Many bush-cheney supporters that I see love to talk about WWII. I have to point out that we won in WWII by actually having a plan and executing the plan. In Iraq we have just fumbled and bumbled along due to the incompetence of the bush-cheney administration who have ignored or refused to follow the advice of our best and brightest from day 1.
"I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history," Carter told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in a story that appeared in the newspaper's Saturday editions. "The overt reversal of America's basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including those of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me."[...]
"The policy from the White House has been to allocate funds to religious institutions, even those that channel those funds exclusively to their own particular group of believers in a particular religion," Carter said. "As a traditional Baptist, I've always believed in separation of church and state and honored that premise when I was president, and so have all other presidents, I might say, except this one."
Douglas Brinkley, a Tulane University presidential historian and Carter biographer, described Carter's comments as unprecedented.
"This is the most forceful denunciation President Carter has ever made about an American president," Brinkley said. "When you call somebody the worst president, that's volatile. Those are fighting words."
Fighting words, perhaps, but all true. Good for Jimmy Carter, he's a courageous man no matter else anyone has to say about him.
That provided the name Jason Nichols and from there a google search provided a SourceWatch article on our man in the green zone, Jason Nichols
Initially, I was smelling something along the line of a Lincoln group
propaganda hack but I haven't fully eliminated that yet.
Ahhh, 'tis Spring and the air abounds with the aroma the right wingers' fertilizing of astro-turf!
A related veer off of this track.... who or what is behind this "Victory in Iraq" yard sign I saw in Eric Cantor territory? It's on my way to work and I have to remind myself to respect the 1st ammendment rights of boneheads almost every day.
"First, we are winning because of the action in Iraq. Any military strategist will tell you that the force fighting in their own back yard is the losing force."
I know it's late but I thought we fought the American Revolution here in our back yard and not in England. Oops, he must have forgotten.
Just as with the Nazis and the Communists, darkness is again falling across the earth, and it is again the calling of America to light her moral lamps, and place them out, for all the nations to see.Today, however, we face an additional difficulty. We are accustomed to having the truths of the Declaration challenged from without.
But what is new, is that for the first time in our history, those truths are now being challenged from within. A growing culture of radical secularism declares that the nation cannot publicly profess the truths on which it was founded. We are told that our public schools cannot invoke the Creator, nor proclaim the natural law, nor profess the God-given equality of human rights.
In hostility to American history, the radical secularist insists that religious belief is inherently divisive, and that public debate can only proceed on secular terms when religious belief is excluded.
In this contorted logic, the public square becomes more welcoming to the extent that it strips away and banishes all religious symbols and language.
Unfortunately, these false principles of secular absolutism have deeply penetrated the legal establishment. It is called upon to justify all sorts of judicial destruction. In New Jersey, school officials prevented a student from reading to the class his favorite story, because it came from the Bible. In Pennsylvania, a teacher's assistant was suspended because she wore a necklace with a cross. And in California, the nation's most persistent secularist has renewed his crusade to strike the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance.
To his great credit, Rev. Falwell decided to step forward publicly and counter the outrageous intolerance of the secular absolutists. This was a difficult decision. Early in his ministry, Rev. Falwell was reluctant to be involved with politics. But he changed his mind. He later explained that "I never thought the government would go so far afield?I misjudged the quality of government we have."
Jerry Falwell's heart "was burning to serve Christ" in this way. And because of his courage, America is not the same.
Yeah, America sure is NOT the same because of Jerry Falwell. It's a meaner, less tolerant, place to the extent that Falwell had any influence. It's also less true to the original intent of our Founding Fathers, many of whom were agnostics, atheists, pantheists, deists...just about anything BUT the brand of right-wing political-religion that Jerry Falwell supposed.