The John Glenn E-mail

This is one of those e-mails we received with a little bit of everything in it, one of those US pride e-mails that I found interesting. At the end John Glenn and Howard Metzenbaum had an exchange that was on the senate floor. Most of the facts in this e-mail seem pretty on point. I haven’t cross checked all of them, but enjoy.
-Shawn

1. There were 39 combat related killings in Iraq in January. In the fair city of Detroit there were 35 murders in the month of January. That's just one American city, about as deadly as the entire war-torn country of Iraq.

2. When some claim that President Bush shouldn't have started this war, state the following:

FDR led us into World War II.
Germany never attacked us ; Japan did. from 1941-1945, 450,000 lives were lost ... An average of 112,500 per year.

Truman finished that war and started one in Korea North. Korea never attacked us. From 1950-1953, 55,000 lives were lost ... an average of 18,334 per year.

Vietnam conflict started in 1962. Vietnam never attacked us.

Johnson turned Vietnam into a quagmire. From 1965-1975, 58,000 lives were lost .. an average of 5,800 per year.

Clinton went to war in Bosnia without UN or French consent. Bosnia never attacked us. He was offered Osama bin Laden's head on a platter three times by Sudan and did nothing. Osama has attacked us on multiple occasions.

3. In the years since terrorists attacked us, President Bush has liberated two countries, crushed the Taliban, crippled Al-Qaida, put nuclear inspectors in Libya, Iran, and North Korea without firing a shot, and captured a terrorist who slaughtered 300,000 of his own people.
The Democrats are complaining about how long the war is taking.

4. It took less time to take Iraq than it took Janet Reno to take the Branch Davidian compound. That was a 51-day operation..

5. We've been looking for evidence for chemical weapons in Iraq for less time than it took Hillary Clinton to find the Rose Law Firm billing records.

6. It took less time for the 3rd Infantry Division and the Marines to destroy the Medina Republican Guard than it took Ted Kennedy to call the police after his Oldsmobile sank at Chappaquiddick.

7. It took less time to take Iraq than it took to count the votes in Florida !!!

JOHN GLENN ( on the Senate floor - January 26, 2004)

Senator Metzenbaum (speaking to Senator Glenn): 'How can you run for Senate when you've never held a real job?'

Senator Glenn (D-Ohio): 'I served 23 years in the United States Marine Corps. I served through two wars. I flew 149 missions. My plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire on 12 different occasions. I was in the space program. It wasn't my checkbook, Howard; it was my life on the line. It was not a nine-to-five job, where I took time off to take the daily cash receipts to the bank.'
'I ask you to go with me .. As I went the other day... To a veteran's hospital and look those men ... With their mangled bodies. Look them in the eye, and tell THEM they didn't hold a job!
You go with me to the Space Program at NASA and go, as I have gone, to the widows and Orphans of Ed White, Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee... And you look those kids in the eye and tell them that their DADS didn't hold a job. You go with me on Memorial Day and you stand in Arlington National Cemetery, where I have more friends buried than I'd like to remember, and you watch those waving flags. You stand there, and you think about this nation, and you tell ME that those people didn't have a job?

For those who don't remember during WWII, Howard Metzenbaum was an attorney representing the Communist Party in the USA .

Now he's a Senator!
If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you are reading it in English, thank a Veteran.

Edwards eyes a brokered convention

Former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) has his sights set on playing kingmaker at the Denver convention in August, one of his most senior campaign officials hinted Monday.

While dismissing suggestions that this implied Edwards had accepted he was out of contention for the nomination, Deputy Campaign Manager Jonathan Prince said the candidate would probably get enough delegates to play a decisive role in tipping the Democratic nomination under party rules.

Party insiders could also give Edwards the nomination at a brokered convention if they judged him more electable in a match-up against GOP front-runner Sen. John McCain (Ariz.). “At a brokered convention, all bets are off,” said Prince.

Prince told reporters in a conference call that in “a worst-case scenario” Edwards would control 20 to 25 percent of the Democratic delegates heading into the convention. He predicted that Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) would each have 35 to 40 percent of the delegates, well short of half the 4,049 needed to win the nomination.

The race could leave Obama and Clinton with nearly the same number of delegates because complex rules would divide delegates evenly among candidates who win more than 30 percent in the congressional districts that make up each state.

Spokesmen for the Obama and Clinton campaigns did not respond to requests for comment.
Many political observers believe that if Edwards had the power to pick the Democratic nominee and could not grab the nomination for himself, he would throw his support to Obama. During a memorable exchange at a Democratic debate in New Hampshire this month, Edwards sided with Obama as a fellow candidate of change and drew a sharp contrast with Clinton, whom he has labeled a candidate of the status quo.

Prince argued that since nearly 800 of the delegates are so-called superdelegates and thus not bound by the results of any state primary or caucus, a candidate would have to get 60 percent of all the delegates in play to be assured of the nomination.

Prince said that Obama or Clinton would have to win nearly 80 percent of the vote in many congressional districts around the country in order to win the nomination outright — a difficult achievement considering how competitive the race has been so far.

Edwards’s campaign manager, David Bonior, said on a conference call with reporters, “We have a great shot to pick up a lot of delegates.”

But he refused to say on the conference call how Edwards would wield his delegates: “We’re not going to talk about how we’re going to use our delegates.”

Stephen Wayne, a political science professor at Georgetown University who specializes in presidential primary politics, said Edwards could help decide the nomination.

cont...
By Alexander Bolton

Actually Bush Didn't Lie

Two leftist organizations have released a study that claims that the Bush administration lied about Iraq. Somehow I think we've heard that one before. Well, the two groups--the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism--managed to secure major media attention by making the claim that the Bush administration released 935 false statements.

Clearly no one was in the mood to read all 935, so the leftist groups boiled them down to 532. We hear that on 532 occasions the Bush administration claimed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. So the claim is not that Bush told 532 lies, but that he told the same lie 532 times.

But consider this: If Bush actually knew that Iraq didn't possess weapons of mass destruction, and yet repeatedly told the American people that Iraq had them, didn't Bush expect that following the Iraq invasion his deception would be found out? When I raise this point with liberals on campus, they typically say, "Well, we're not saying that Bush knew for sure that there were no such weapons. We are saying that his administration stacked the data." But this is another way of saying that Bush actually believed that there were those weapons, and he mobilized whatever evidence he could muster to make his case. This may reflect prejudice against Saddam Hussein's motives or even imprudent decision making but it is hardly proof of lying.

Consider a similar decision made by President Roosevelt. In the period leading up to World War II, a group of refugee German scientists warned Albert Einstein that the Germans were building an atomic bomb. The project was headed by that country's greatest scientist, Werner Heisenberg. Acutely aware of the dangers of Hitler getting such a weapon, Einstein took this information in the fall of 1939 to President Roosevelt, who commissioned the Manhattan Project. America built the bomb, and later dropped two of them on Japan.

Many years later, Americans discovered that the Germans were nowhere close to building an atomic bomb. Their project was on the wrong track, and it seems to have stalled in its infancy. Some historians believe Heisenberg was trying to thwart the project from the inside. Be that as it may, in retrospect we now know that the intelligence that led to the Manhattan Project was wrong. But no one goes around saying, "Einstein lied" or "FDR lied." They didn't lie. They used the information they had to make a tough decision in a very dangerous situation.

The same is true of Bush. As a statesman, he had to act in the moving current of events. He didn't have the luxury of hindsight. To those leftist pundits who say, "Knowing what we know now, President Bush, why did you do what you did then?" Bush's answer is, "Obviously I didn't know what we know now." Acting against the somber backdrop of 9/11, Bush made a hard call based on an assessment of the intelligence provided to him.

He may have acted in haste, and he may have acted in error. But even this is not so clear. Do you recall recent reports from the CIA that Iran stopped working on its nuclear program in 2003? The reports were interpreted as a reversal for the Bush administration, because Bush has allegedly been trying to raise public concerns about Iran’s nuclear program. But many people forgot to ask why Iran’s mullahs decided to suspend their nuclear program in 2003. That happens to be the time that America invaded Iraq. So it’s quite possible that the Iranian mullahs were deterred from their nuclear ambitions because of the fear that the U.S. military might call on them next.

Whatever you think of this analysis, there is no evidence that Bush made his decision about the Iraq war in bad faith. Therefore the claim that Bush lied is itself a lie.

By Dinesh D'Souza

From: Townhall.com