Republicans held to their philosophy.Anthing goes for Democrats

No way to prove it, but I believe the effort to influence our elections has begun and thus the increased terrorist activity in Iraq and would soon expect more between Israel, Hamas and Hezballah. Weather should be improving and this gives the IDF more flexibility.

Evidence The Surge is unraveling is a plus for Obama who has to be the terrorist's favorite candidate both because of his background, statements, lack of experience and party affiliation.

The Iraq police are throughly infiltrated and thus, remain unreliable but the Iraq military is a somewhat different matter. What is going on right now is critical and a test of both Maliki and ourselves.(see 1 below.)


The current Damascus conference with Syria and a few attending Arab nations highlights the strong position Syria continues to maintain and how they, with Iranian help, are able to thwart the demands of Egypt and the Saudis. Hezballah continues to grow in strength and political power as the supported spoiler regarding Lebanon.

Word is that Israel also seeks an accommodation with Syria.
(See 2 and 3 below.)

Mort Zuckerman, highlights the world's hypocrisy in this article and poses the right but unanswered question. (See 4 below.)

More commentary akin to David Frum's argument in "Comeback," about how the Republican Party as fallen on its own sword. This time out West.

What is ironic is that Democrats haven't done anything distinguishing since capturing control of Congress but "to the victor belongs the spoils" and things continue to "spoil" in Disney East as Reid and Pelosi pursue their rancorous management of the Senate and House. Partisanship is as rife as ever.

I believe Republican legislators are held to a higher level of expectation because Democrats have been in control for most of the past 50 years and voters seem to have become more complacent about their incompetence. Voters generally turn to Republicans out of frustration but quickly lose faith when Republicans screw up. One day, perhaps, voters will connect our nation's systemic and endemic problems with past Democrat legislation but until they do, Republicans failures quickly become their undoing.

Republicans are expected to stick to their conservative philosophy whereas Democrats are seen as progressive and therefor voters tend to give them wider latitude and expect "anything goes." (See 5 below.)

Have a nice weekend.

Dick

1)Exclusive: First signs of weakening in Maliki-led government Basra offensive

Military sources report: After three days of combat, thousands of troops led by prime minister Nouri al Maliki have made no headway in breaking the grip of militias and gangs on the southern oil city of Basra and the outlying towns. Friday, March 28, the prime minister softened his previous ultimatum for combatants to hand over their weapons, extending it from Saturday night to April 8, and throwing in “a financial reward” for those complying.

From a go-it-alone Iraqi venture, Maliki was reduced Friday to calling in “coalition airplanes” to bomb militia positions holding fast in Basra. Moqtada Sadr’s Mehdi army appears still in control of the densely-populated areas of Basra, Iraq’s third largest city of 2.5 million, as well as taking over the center of Shiite Nasiriyeh. The intra-Shiite clashes have also spread to the southern Shiite cities of Kut, Hilla, Diwaniya, Amara and Karbala.

Maliki, the intra-Shiite conflict which he has ignited in the whole of southern Iraq up to and including Baghdad is looking like a win-all, lose-all gamble for himself and his government.

In the Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad, thousands of Sadr supporters took to the streets sparring with the police and calling for Maliki to resign.

After Sadr called for a political solution to the crisis, Iraq’s parliament was called into session Friday afternoon. They will meet under the three-day curfew imposed on Baghdad after repeated rocket attacks on the fortified Green Zone seat of government left two US government employees dead.

US embassy staff in Baghdad have been told not to leave reinforced structures and wear protective clothing including helmets following the rocket attacks on the Green Zone – 16 Wednesday and 12 Tuesday. The three-day curfew imposed Thursday night bans pedestrian and vehicle traffic in the city.

Two oil pipelines were hit by bombs after the fighting began - one carrying oil to an export terminal in Basra harbor. Thursday night, Maliki was praised by President George Bush, who said “normalcy was returning to Iraq.”

2) ANALYSIS: Isolating Syria serves to highlight its importance
By Zvi Bar'el

"In the name of merciful and compassionate Allah, I hope you solve just one Arab problem," begged a surfer on television network Al-Arabiyah's Internet site. His supplication, which will apparently go unanswered, was directed at the heads of state convening in Damascus on Friday for an Arab League summit, or at least those heads of states bothering to attend after Egypt and Saudi Arabia neutered it.

The pair seek to punish Syria for continually thwarting any political solution in Lebanon by not allowing the appointment of General Michel Suleiman as president and not forcing Hezbollah to accept a reasonable division of cabinet posts. Syria rejected, albeit politely, the Arab League's compromise proposal, positioning itself as the victor over the united Arab front.

But the Saudi-Egyptian penalty could become an own goal. It does not promote a resolution to the crisis in Lebanon and it highlights the chasm between the camps. This is no longer the well-known split between "moderates" and "extremists," but between the "Arab circle" and the "Iranian circle" and has emphasized the power of organizations like Hezbollah, and to some extent Hamas, to set the Arab agenda.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia are frustrated that Iran succeeds in influencing Arab policy no less and maybe - regarding Lebanon - more than the Arab countries themselves. The attendance of the Iranian foreign minister - not a member state and not an Arab state - emphasizes Tehran's role in this rift.

It is possible that Egypt and Saudi Arabia's partial embargo of the summit will turn Syria's isolation into a source of power. The Arab states know that the solution to the two most severe crises in the Middle East pass through Syria, yet they don't have the means to force its hand. Syrian agreement to the suggested solution would gnaw away at Hezbollah's political maneuvering power, which could lead to Syria losing control in Lebanon.

3) 'Israel trying to bring Syria to table'

Israel is trying to bring Syria back to the negotiating table, National Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said just days after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert hinted that Israel might be holding - or planning to hold secret talks with Syria.


"All efforts are being made to bring Syria to the negotiating table" in order to "sign a peace treaty," Ben-Eliezer told Israel Radio.

"We know exactly what the price would be," he added - namely, Israel's return of the Golan Heights.

He would not disclose what results there have been, if any, from Israel's efforts to resume dialogue with the Syrians.


* Syrian FM: Israel doesn't want peace

Israel-Syria peace talks - a centerpiece of then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak's political agenda - broke down in 2000 with Syria rejecting Israel's offer to withdraw from the Golan Heights, and insisting that Israel pull back to the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee.

Ben-Eliezer told Israel Radio that Barak, now defense minister, was a partner to the current efforts to renew talks with Damascus.

On Wednesday, Olmert told foreign journalists that Israel favors face-to-face talks with Syria that could result in a peace treaty, adding: "That doesn't mean that when we sit together you have to see us," he said, an apparent reference to the possibility of secret contacts.

A week earlier, Olmert told a joint meeting of the Israeli and German Cabinets that he was ready to restart negotiations with Syria if Damascus would end its support for Hizbullah and Palestinian terror groups. All are backed by Iran and opposed to Israel's existence.

Since the Second Lebanon War in 2006, both Israel and Syria have declared their readiness to renew negotiations and exchanged messages through third party emissaries, but there has been no sign of movement.

The efforts to engage Syria in negotiations come at a time when Israeli attempts to reach a peace deal with the Palestinians are making no visible progress.

Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas pledged at a US-hosted Middle East peace conference in November to try to reach a peace accord this year. On Wednesday, Olmert said he did not believe it would be possible to sign and implement a comprehensive peace treaty by the end of the year.


This summit will be considered the Arab League's largest failure, but could clarify how Syria, in spite of its isolation, is becoming the most significant state in the region's diplomatic processes. The question now will be what option Egypt and Saudi Arabia will have to resolve the Lebanon crisis and how they can extract Hamas from the Iranian-Syrian circle to resolve the Palestinian crisis.


4) The world will not answer these questions
By Mort Zuckerman

The world applauded when Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, forcibly removing Jewish settlers. At last, the Palestinians were free to show how they could build their own society.


But what did they do with their freedom? They elected the terrorist organization Hamas in 2006. First Fatah and now Hamas have rained 4,000 rockets on Israel, killed 24, and wounded 620 — the equivalent of killing 1,200 Americans and wounding 31,000. The citizens of Sderot and Ashkelon have suffered a collective trauma; children fear that when parents leave for work, they will never see them again.


And what does the world do?


It criticizes Israel — Israel! — for a "disproportionate" response. Israel is discriminating in trying to defend its people. It attacks Gaza's rocket launchers, weapons factories, and terrorists, all hidden in civilian areas.


What is a proportionate response? None at all, it seems.


Hamas kills indiscriminately. It makes no distinction between civilians and combatants. But it is Israel that earns the opprobrium. The moral equivalency was evident in a New York Times headline: "Hamas and Israelis Trade Attacks, Killing at Least Nine." Nor did TV broadcast pictures of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza celebrating the news that eight teenagers had been shot dead and many more injured in the library of a Jewish religious school in Jerusalem.


Would Paris, London, Bonn, or New York sit back quietly if terrorists attacked from sanctuaries somewhere just off their borders? Silent voices. Where is the world's outrage against these Palestinian war crimes? Twelve resolutions have passed the United Nations Human Rights Council on the conflict, but not one has made even a passing reference to the terrorism against Israel.


Where is the appreciation that while under attack, Israel has continued to supply its enemies with electricity and with 2,500 tons of food and medicines every day? Last year, 14,000 Gazan Palestinians were treated in Israeli medical facilities.


But Palestinians continue to get away with their confidence trick of persuading the world that they are the victims. The death of every Arab woman and child is a propaganda victory for Hamas, so it uses women and children as human shields and then exaggerates the casualties. The distortion foisted on the world is manifest in the celebrated case of the death of Mohammed al-Dura, who was alleged to have been shot by the Israelis in Gaza on the first day of the intifada. Now an independent French ballistic expert reports that he could not have died from Israeli gunfire. The technical analysis shows the shots could have come only from Palestinian positions.


And what of the Palestinian leader supposed to be leading the peace effort? Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas says, "What is happening now in Gaza is more than a Holocaust." Absurd? This from the "peacemaker" whose doctoral dissertation included the theory that European Zionists conspired with the Nazis to push for the Holocaust so that it could ultimately result in the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. According to Abbas's writings, 6 million Jews were not sent to the gas chambers to be killed but were among corpses cremated for sanitation reasons.


Some suggest Israel should deal with Hamas; there is talk of Egypt negotiating a truce. But why negotiate with an enemy dedicated to Israel's destruction? Recognition of Hamas would prove that terrorism, not diplomacy, is the way to gain Israeli concessions — not to speak of international support — and would strengthen Hamas in the West Bank. Any truce would protect the smuggling of arms and munitions until Hamas can attack again, with missiles that can reach Tel Aviv.


This current turmoil is a direct outcome of Bush administration misjudgments. We forced the Israelis and the Palestinians to include Hamas in the 2006 election. Later, we caused the removal of Israeli control of the Philadelphi road, a crucial barrier in the protection against the smuggling of arms, insisting it be left to the Palestinians under Egyptian and European supervision. Israeli protests that foreign troops would not stop either terrorists or arms from making their way into Gaza went unheeded.


America has an extra moral obligation to defuse this crisis. We should pressure Egypt by both political and economic means to stop the smuggling. Hamas must be contained. In the meantime, we have a war of attrition with Hamas determined to show Fatah's Abbas that terrorism is the only path. In the process, Hamas has made a mockery of President Bush and the Annapolis process. It has made it clear in blood that it will not permit Abbas to conduct real diplomatic negotiations.


The entire Arab world watches to see if Israel can find can find a way to deter Hamas — or if terrorism, with the acquiescence of the hand-wringers, can win.

5) GOP ACHILLES HEEL: HOW REPUBLICANS LOST WEST
By RYAN SAGER



CHEERED as Republicans may be by the Clinton-Obama wars, the fact is that long-term trends still favor the Democrats this fall. To see the problem, consider the interior West - the eight states between the Midwest and the Pacific Coast: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

This week, I spoke at a panel put on here in Denver by the America's Future Foundation, a youth-oriented libertarian-conservative group. The topic: "How the West Will Be Lost."

In fact, having heard my fellow panelists' takes on the situation in Colorado and the rest of the region, the use of the future tense looks optimistic: The GOP is already well on its way to losing the West.

The reasons were well summed up by the president of Colorado's Independence Institute and a popular conservative radio talk-show host in the state, Jon Caldara: "We lost our values. We lost our way."

It's been clear for years the interior West, once reliably Republican, was becoming a swing region. While 60,000 votes in Ohio would have thrown the presidental race to John Kerry in 2004, roughly the same number of votes, split between Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, would have done the same thing. All three were on the verge of turning "blue" in 2004; they've since gone over that edge.

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press finds that the share of voters who call themselves Republicans has dropped six points nationwide since 2004. That doesn't matter much in the Northeast (where the GOP's already locked out) or Down South (where the GOP remains dominant). But in the interior West, it's a big, big deal.

In 2000, none of these eight states had a Democratic governor. Now five do, including Colorado. A 2006 post-election Salt Lake City Tribune analysis showed that, where the GOP had beaten the Democrats by 20 points in the region's vote for the House in 2000, that advantage had fallen to one point in 2006. A few states, including Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, had seen a majority of House votes cast for the Democrats.

In fact, Colorado now looks bluer than a half-drowned Smurf. It's got a Democratic governor, House, Senate and high court. The GOP lost both houses of the Legislature in 2004 after spending a session on such issues as gay marriage, the Pledge of Allegiance and the liberal biases of college professors - while the state faced a massive fiscal crisis.

At the federal level, the state's got a recently minted Democratic senator (Ken Salazar, replacing a Republican in 2004) and two recently acquired House seats (one picked up in 2004, one in '06). Turning Blue on the presidential ballot is all that's left in this metamorphosis.

As Caldara put it: "Colorado is, in fact, the test tube of how to export liberal expansion to the Western states." A moderately conservative state has been turned Blue, Caldara says, because of "the absolute demolishing of what the Right stood for, how the Republican Party turned into something it was never meant to be and went away from Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan ideas."

Of course, Democrats have worked hard to capitalize on the Republicans' carelessness. Liberal groups funded by folks like billionaire Quark founder Tim Gill have turned discontent into votes. And now they have a model to use in the rest of the region.

It's no coincidence that Democrats chose Denver for their convention. When they converge on the Mile High City in five months, they'll be staking their claim to what was once a solidly Red region.

The Republicans have one hope - at least, for a four-year reprieve: Hillary Clinton. While the Democrats as a party are building strength out West, polls consistently show that Clinton has little appeal to Independents and Republicans in the region.

Survey USA did a 50-state, 30,000-person poll earlier this month, looking at the electoral map for hypothetical McCain-Clinton and McCain-Obama races. It showed that New Mexico is likely to tilt Democratic no matter what this fall - and Barack Obama could pick up Colorado and Nevada rather handily (by 9 and 5 points, respectively). But Hillary would lose Colorado by 6 points and Nevada by 8 points.

This is just one poll, taken months ahead of the election, but it certainly jibes with past polls by Survey USA and recent polling by Rasmussen.

It certainly wouldn't be the first time the Clintons helped keep the Republican coalition together (see: 1994). But until Chelsea's old enough to throw her hat in the ring, it would probably be the last.