From The London Daily Mail:

A roaring magical hit
By Christopher Tookey

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe *****

When news came through that a film of CS Lewis's The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe was planned, many must have dismissed the idea as eccentric.

In this age of Harry Potter, and the distinctly atheist children's author Philip Pullman, surely CS Lewis was a little quaint, old-fashioned - and just too Christian - to work in this present climate?

How could a tale involving London wartime evacuee children, a magical wardrobe, a terrifying witch and a lion who serves as a metaphor for Christ translate to an epic film that would take on all the other major franchises?

But then, another epic from another crusty Oxford figure of the 1950s - JRR Tolkien - hasn't done at all badly recently.

And if this amazing film is anything to go by, CS Lewis is about to enjoy a similarly spectacular and hugely well-deserved revival.

Indeed, his haunting story may even prove bigger than The Lord of the Rings. Expect all the Narnia books to go into reprint soon.

For the fact is that The Chronicles of Narnia is a wonderful, colossal, stupendous film that should entertain anyone of any age, nationality or religion.

It is not just a 'must see' but a 'must see again and again'.

Where is that sixth star when you need it?

Not only does it miraculously do full justice to CS Lewis's classic fantasy, it improves upon it and gives a more sophisticated sense of humour.

Above all, there's a spectacular sense of scale that turns the children's sagas into a worthy successor to The Lord Of The Rings as an epic piece of storytelling.

Just as miraculously, it achieves all this without sacrificing the qualities of the original novel, including its charm, sense of wonder and feeling for myth.

Even the Christian subtext of Lewis's book is handled with taste and sensitivity. It's there, but never laboured.

Although shot in New Zealand by an American director, it remains lovingly true to its original cultural background.

With only a few weeks to go until the end of 2005, I was certain that Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit would be carrying off my plaudits as Film of the Year.

Now that I have seen this beautiful picture which achieves similar perfection on a far more stunning scale, I would have to give it to Narnia.

The script sticks amazingly - you could say 'religiously' - close to Lewis's novel.

The four Pevensie children are sent from London as Blitz evacueesto the rambling country house of the mysterious, eccentric but twinklingly benevolent Professor Kirke (played by the great Jim Broadbent).

Peter (played by Prince William lookalike William Moseley) is the oldest of the children, but his authority is disputed by his stroppy younger brother Edmund. Peter's somewhat priggish-sister Susan regards herself as a more responsible guardian of their small sister Lucy. It is, of course, Lucy who, in a game of hide and seek, discovers that a huge Jacobean wardrobe on the top floor contains more than just coats and mothballs.

'It's an awfully big wardrobe,' she comments in a masterpiece of English understatement as she stumbles out of its back and into the enchanted (and fabulously large) landscape of Narnia, where the White Witch (played by Tilda Swinton) has ruled the land for a hundred years of winter.

Director Andrew Adamson proves himself not only a master of effects and animation, which might be expected of the director of Shrek and Shrek 2, but an accomplished director of children.

The quality of the four young leading actors is exceptional - light years ahead of the Harry Potter cast, even on a first attempt. They make an utterly convincing and captivating family, and provide marvellous depth to characters which were fairly sketchy in Lewis's original.

Even their comic timing is impeccable, as when Peter resists the responsibility of saving Narnia from the White Witch by objecting, 'We're not heroes'. And Susan amplifies this by adding bathetically: 'We're from Finchley'.

The direction is a delight in both its sweep and its detail, as when the White Witch casually torches a passing butterfly and turns it to stone without even bothering to watch it plummet to earth.

Tilda Swinton must be singled out for her cold, cruel and commanding performance; Ray Winstone and Dawn French are hugely funny as the voices of Mr and Mrs Beaver (just two of many animated triumphs); Liam Neeson is impeccably leonine as the voice of the kind but powerful Aslan.

Despite the long running time (over two hours) I would recommend Narnia even for small children. Whatever your age, this is a magical movie, and far, far classier and more imaginative than I ever dared to hope.

More importantly, expect your heart - and the hearts of your children - to soar.

Christians Afoot
By William F. Buckley

I am mindful that Samuel Johnson enjoined the preachers of his time not to inveigh against those who were absent from church on Sundays by scolding those who were not absent. Notwithstanding Dr. Johnson's stricture, I here berate those who fail to heed the atrocities in China and North Korea, by appealing to those who have heeded these barbarisms, drawing attention to the inattention that the Christian world seems to be paying them. There is no means of putting away from memory the experience of the Jews in the last century, objects of discrimination of various and imaginative kinds, culminating in genocide.

Meghan Clyne of the New York Sun cites a report on North Korea compiled by David Hawk, the author of "Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea's Prison Camps." Hawk and his South Korean researchers obtained dozens of eyewitness accounts of persecutions of Christians.

President Bush, in his speech in Japan last week, didn't say that Christians in North Korea were in large numbers imprisoned, but he spoke of "satellite maps of North Korea (that showed) prison camps the size of whole cities."

Michael Cromartie, chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which issued Hawk's report, "called on Mr. Bush to include the specific findings of the North Korean report in his diplomatic discussions with Chinese and South Korean officials ... and to urge leaders of both Asian nations to take a firmer stand against their communist neighbor." He is proud of the report, citing the difficulty in bringing together reliable information from within that ideological mudhole.

The report tells, among many other accounts, of a woman in her 20s who was washing clothes in a river. A fellow washerwoman saw a small Bible fall out of her basket and reported her to the authorities. She was executed by firing squad.

That martyr got off lightly. Nine years ago in South Pyongan province, a unit of the North Korean army was assigned the job of widening a highway connecting Pyongyang to the nearest seaport. Demolition of a house standing in the way revealed, hidden between two bricks, a Bible and a list of 25 names: a Christian pastor, two assistant pastors, two elders and 20 parishioners. The 25 were all detained and, later that month, brought to the road construction site, where spectators had been arranged in neat rows. The parishioners were grouped off to one side while the pastor, the assistant pastors and the elders were bound hand and foot and made to lie down in front of a steamroller. As if following a script written in early Roman history, they were told they could escape death by denying their faith and pledging to serve Dear Leader Kim Jong II and Great Leader Kim Il Sung. They chose death.

Ms. Clyne quotes Mr. Hawk's report: "Some of the parishioners ... cried, screamed out, or fainted when the skulls made a popping sound as they were crushed beneath the steamroller."

Anti-Christian activity is not as rabid in China, but it is everywhere evident, and it has not been noticeably reduced by recent rumors that the Vatican may withdraw the papal nuncio from Taipei and move him to Beijing. The Vatican has so far persisted in recognizing the state of Taiwan, which is something most other diplomatic entities shrink from doing. As everyone knows, the determination by the Chinese to obtain sovereignty over Taiwan is of a pitch comparable to the Vatican's devotion to St. Peter's Basilica.

The Vatican's desire for diplomatic relations with Beijing makes almost difficult any remonstrance over Chinese treatment of Catholics, though such is being attempted, as when the Italian newsweekly L'Espresso published a two-page article based on an interview with two Chinese priests. The article had not identified the priests, out of fear for their safety, but authorities interrogated the reporter's interpreter to learn their names. The priests have since been arrested.

In the interview one of the priests spoke of a previous detention, during which attempts were made by Chinese authorities "to evaluate whether I had become patriotic." China is officially and aggressively atheist, and such Christianity as is vestigially permitted is doctrinally emasculated. (Christ did not rise from the dead; his mother was not a virgin.) Worship is allowed, according to one Associated Press dispatch, "only in government-controlled churches, which recognize the pope as a spiritual leader but appoint their own priests and bishops. Catholic Chinese who meet outside sanctioned churches are frequently harassed, fined, and sometimes sent to labor camps."

The government's Catholic Church claims 34 million believers. The Cardinal Kung Foundation, a U.S.-based religious monitoring group, says the unofficial church of Chinese loyal to Rome has 12 million followers.

How ought western diplomats to have treated Nazi officials in pre-war Germany? There is enduring speculation on that subject, but none, we'd guess, that argues that simply to ignore religious persecution is one acceptable way to confront it.

From The New York Times: Kudos to Coben's self control for not saying specifically that the Republican leadership in Congress are douchebags.

Rock and a Hard Place
By Harlan Coben

Ridgewood, N.J.

ON May 26, Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, sponsored a resolution congratulating Carrie Underwood for winning the "American Idol" television program.

Last Friday, Senators John Corzine and Frank Lautenberg, Democrats of New Jersey, sponsored a resolution congratulating Bruce Springsteen on the 30th anniversary of his album "Born to Run."

Guess which resolution got shot down by the party in power?

In the recent past, Senator Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, has seen fit to sponsor resolutions recognizing "Sun Studio's Contribution to the Birth of Rock 'n' Roll," and commending the Grand Ole Opry on its 80th anniversary. There have been House and Senate resolutions congratulating or commending musicians, artists and athletes like Chris LeDoux (a rodeo champion and musician), Michael Campbell (a golfer from New Zealand) and Siegfried and Roy.

But no love for the Boss.

Senator Frist or one of his colleagues didn't let the resolution come up for consideration.

I confess to having a bias here. I am from New Jersey and a big Bruce Springsteen fan. In fact, on several occasions in recent years I have even gone to Bruce Springsteen concerts with my childhood friend, Christopher J. Christie, the United States Attorney for New Jersey, arguably the state's most prominent Republican, a Bush appointee, an honorable man and a total Springsteen freak. In his office in Newark, he has a guitar signed by the Boss on his wall. Chris probably wears a black "Born to Run" concert T-shirt as a pajama top, but I can't swear to that.

Bruce Springsteen's music, especially "Born to Run," meant a lot to Chris and me growing up. It still means a lot to us. But now I wonder. Will Chris have to take his guitar down from the wall? Now that I've outed him as a Springsteen fanatic, will this hurt his standing with Senator Frist and company, with the administration, with the Republican Party? And really, when you think about it, isn't it pathetic that those last few questions aren't asked in jest?

Love him or hate him, there can be little doubt of Bruce Springsteen's contribution to culture and music. You can't even fault the guy on the personal stuff. By all accounts, he is a good husband, father, man. Unlike many of his musical colleagues, he has never been involved in scandals or self-destructive binges: "No drug busts, no blood changes in Switzerland," the singer Bono said. "No bad hair periods even in the 80's."

So why was he denied this honor?

That's a rhetorical question, of course. Does anybody on either side of the political aisle really believe that the Springsteen resolution was turned down for any reason other than political payback for backing John Kerry?

We are so shameless now, so openly hostile to one another, that we don't even pretend otherwise. Here is how the senate power structure works: the resolution sponsored by Senator Gordon Smith, Republican of Oregon, honoring that golfer from New Zealand passed unanimously - but commending one of the seminal albums and musicians of the past 30 years gets nixed right away? Come on.

What happened to embracing diversity of opinion in this country? What happened to the idea that a healthy opposition is good for us, that it helps clarify our own views, that only when one idea is shown better than another does it truly strengthen? And when did we stop listening to the other side, if for no other reason than it's polite, humane and hey, it helps us hone our own viewpoint?

I don't love it when musicians or actors (or novelists, for that matter) get on their soapbox. I know my friend Chris doesn't agree with everything the Boss says. Neither do I. But we listen. Part of the paradox here is that many of Mr. Springsteen's characters - the factory worker, the soldier, the working stiff seeking release, the Friday-night racer looking for escape - would vote Republican.

But it doesn't matter to the Boss that his own creations may disagree with him. He loves them anyway. Maybe he loves them even more because of it.

Harlan Coben is the author, most recently, of "The Innocent," a novel.

From The Los Angeles Times:

The rise of the bland old party

All the noise out of Washington covers up the fact that the GOP and the Democrats are galloping toward the center.

By Jonah Goldberg

November 24, 2005

BEHOLD: We have entered the Age When Dinos and Rinos Rule the Earth. See them battle each other for absolute dominion!

Though this might sound like a cool monster mash of the "Mechagodzilla versus Godzilla" variety, it's a good deal less exciting and more depressing, like a taste test between 2% milk and soy milk. What we are witnessing is the dawn of the boring phase of the Great Republican Realignment, and it promises to have liberals and conservatives alike going bonkers.

I should back up. Dinos, of course, are "Democrats in Name Only." Rinos are their GOP counterparts. Nobody actually ever admits to being a Republican in name only. Rather, these are epithets used to describe politicians of insufficient ideological purity or partisan backbone. Think David Gergen without the smoldering sexual intensity. Or, if you can't, think moderates, squishes, apostates, New York Times-pleasing "mavericks," centrists and all the others who want to "get beyond labels" or get a standing ovation from the Brookings Institution.

Galloping toward the center is nothing new in American politics. The parties have always regressed to the mean. The center of gravity is in the, uh, center. What's changed is that the center has — finally — been moving an eensy bit to the right.

But not too much. People forget now, but President Bush's compassionate conservatism was never intended to be radical, it was meant to be the Republican version of feel-your-pain Clintonism. If Bush's domestic spending were a Broadway musical, reviewers would call it "Lavish!" and "Spectacular!" His big first-term domestic initiatives — aside from tax cuts — were an education bill cosponsored by Ted Kennedy, campaign finance "reform" favored by the sensible-shoes types and the biggest expansion in entitlements (prescription drug benefits) since the Great Society.

Now, you wouldn't know any of this from listening to Democrats and vast swaths of the mainstream media. If you went by this crowd, you might imagine George W. Bush and Dick Cheney swaddled in ermine robes, drinking blood-red wine from golden goblets as they pored over maps of the world plotting new conquests and singling out whistle-blowing CIA agents for the lash and the gibbet.

And the congressional GOP, we've been told, is little better than a horde of Cotton Mathers determined to burn down the nation under the twin banners of Terri Schiavo and creationism.

This anti-Bush huffing and puffing has been caused in part by an overreaction to the Iraq war and liberal terror over losing the courts. But much of the rage can also be traced to an overcompensating bitterness over small differences. In much the same way the Marxist English professor is suddenly deeply troubled by the slightly less Marxist ideology of the colleague who unfairly got a better office, many liberals are more angered by the fact Republicans are running the government than they are about Republican policy. It just seems wrong! Republicans don't even like government!

This isn't to say there haven't been some big victories for the conservative wing of the GOP over the last five years. Tax cuts, judges, John Bolton, the blocking of the Kyoto Protocol and watching Dan Rather dismantle himself like a robot ordered to put himself back in the box: good times, good times.

But you know, when tectonic plates smash into each other, there are earthquakes and, after that, it's slow inexorable grinding, with little chunks breaking off of one side and then the other now and then. That's where conservatives are now: the slow, grinding phase.

If you average out the spikes in the political Richter scale, the trends have been obvious for more than a decade: The Democrats are becoming a minority party. The 1990s saw them hemorrhage power in the House, Senate, state legislatures, etc., even as Bill Clinton moved his party to the right on many of its core issues. Even this month's Democratic election victories are at best preservations of the status quo. In Virginia, the winner of the governor's race was a nominally pro-life Dino replacing another Dino. These centrist Democrats understand that listening to the base of their party would be electoral suicide. Not exactly champagne wishes and caviar dreams for the crowd at the Nation.

And we aren't drinking out of slippers here on the right either. Bush is a lame duck, Social Security reform is dead, the dreams of the revolution come up only when we gather around the campfire to sigh about what might have been. The Rinos are in charge now. Drilling in ANWR was pulled from the House appropriations budget, tax-cut extensions in the Senate were crushed in deference to the fearsome clout of … Olympia Snowe. Even on judges, the power-players are the Gang of 14 centrists and Rinos like Arlen Specter. It was Specter, not Kennedy, who gave John G. Roberts Jr. the toughest questions during his hearings.

The most depressing prospect is that this will be the status quo for years to come. Liberals will shriek about GOP radicalism and conservatives will whine about the lack of it. And we'll all have to make do with 2% milk.

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Illegal Alien Deported 17 Times Before He A Killed North Carolina Student

Posted By Bryanna Bevens On 23rd November 2005 @ 15:26 In General | No Comments

Last Friday, a man in North Carolina was killed by a drunk driver.

(The MSM has ignored this story for reasons which will be obvious in a moment but the local story can be found here.)

We read about these horrible accidents all too often however, this case is uniquely bad for a variety of reasons:

1. The victim was Minn Soon Chang—an 18 year-old freshman at the University of North Carolina

2. The drunk driver had at least 2 previous arrests for drunk driving

3. The drunk driver is an illegal alien from Mexico

Hold on—it gets worse…far worse: He has also been deported 17 times…yes, 17.

Jorge Humberto Hernandez-Soto has been charged with 2nd Degree Murder and if convicted, he faces 20 years in prison.

Gee…that’s great—expensive but great…entirely avoidable but great.

In North Carolina , the average cost of incarceration for a prison inmate is $22,787 per year so this is what I’m thinking:

Should he serve 20 years, the cost to taxpayers will be roughly half a million dollars.

Yeah…you know that whole cost of illegal immigration debate? The one about the exorbitant cost of illegal immigration being off-set by the contributions they make?

In spite of evidence to the contrary, let us suppose that basic math was used to draw that conclusion. Next, let’s exclude from the equation all the incarceration expenses incurred by illegal aliens.

Yeah…we’re still in the red but even so, that is nothing—nothing—compared to the price the Chang family has paid.

The real crime is that this tragedy could have been avoided by simply enforcing our immigration laws and guarding our borders.

If only we could impose twenty years in prison for that infraction!

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From VDare.com:

Illegal Aliens Now Offered Protection By US Labor Department
By Donald A. Collins

I read the following story with utter disbelief and dismay!

Mexican, U.S. labor officials vow to protect rights of immigrant workers - legal or not (by Giovanna Dell’orto, Associated Press November 07,2005)

“The U.S. Department of Labor and Mexico's Foreign Ministry pledged Monday to protect the rights (especially fair pay and safe working conditions) of immigrant workers, whether they are in the United States legally or not.

“‘It's not the policy of the Department of Labor to penalize and expose workers," said Peter Accolla of the department's Office of Trade Agreement Implementation. "We want to protect them regardless their status.’

“Accolla joined Bosco Marti, Mexico's Foreign Relations Department's point man on North American affairs, and Mexican consuls from across the United States to review progress made on two agreements between the countries.”

Now you go figure!

Every year, roughly 3 million illegal aliens stream across the border and settle in the US, where it is already legal to obtain a driver's license in several (ten) states.

Additionally, many US banks have provided bank accounts and home mortgages to illegal aliens for years.

Now our own Federal government—in cahoots with the Mexican government which gives out those Matricula Consular cards to its illegals—is offering these same illegal aliens working here “protection” and using our own US Government employees to help them keep breaking the law.

An arrogant Congress gets away with doing nothing significant to fix this immigration mess because they don’t have to listen to the 80% of American citizens who want our immigration fiasco reformed.

Basically, they have gerrymandered themselves into a 98% reelection success rate in the House of Representatives—they don’t have to worry about getting re-elected.

Then again, look at the Bush Administration which is always pandering to its large donors by allowing the importation of cheap labor to continue—even as the outsourcing of American jobs to Asia gains daily momentum.

If we don’t start screaming now, there won’t be anything to stop the government and the business community from allowing non-citizens (illegal aliens) to steal our jobs, our birthrights, and our democracy which is looking less like one by the day.

Immigration reform needs to be the number one issue concerning our citizens right now!

Anyone now in Congress not ready to stand up for a massive drive to fix our internal security and getting real border security by building those walls and putting stiff penalties on employers who hire illegal aliens, needs to be sent home.

This includes firing people like the above-mentioned Peter Accolla of the Labor Department's Office of Trade Agreement Implementation.

The AP’s Dell’orto notes that this story from the Labor Department comes five days after the Department of Homeland Security announced a plan to reduce illegal immigration—a plan that includes "greatly increased interior enforcement of our immigration laws - including more robust worksite enforcement" [November 2 press release]:

“‘If a company is hiring illegal aliens, we're going to go after them’ Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Marc Raimondi said Monday. ‘Our job is clearly and simply to enforce the law.’”

Oh, sure you are. We have heard this guff before and nothing has happened.

We want action not words, Mr. Raimondi.

Raimondi and others from the Bush Administration need new legislation which would make law-breaking companies pay big for such hiring breaches.

How about $50,000 per illegal?

Agribusiness with their illegal chicken pluckers and all the other abusers of illegal labor would then get the message. Anything short of punitive damages will not work.

The time is now, America. Either we fix our broken system or the flood of illegal aliens—including an unknown number of terrorists—will continue to break our laws and ultimately the fabric of our Republic.

Donald A. Collins [email him], is a freelance writer living in Washington DC and a board member of FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

From Chronicles Online:

Sex and Death
By Thomas Fleming

I do not like to say a good thing about a sitting President, but when George finally held his nose and nominated a man, instead of a mouse, to the Supreme Court, he seems to have picked wisely. Samuel Alito is one of the best conservative judges in the country, and while he lacks some of Chief Justice John Roberts’ charm (a quality I find revolting in any serious man), he has spent his professional life with his cards planted firmly to his chest. Although he has left a long paper trail of firm and coherent decisions, he has avoided the grandiose rhetoric and self-dramatizing statements of Robert Bork, and, unlike Justice Thomas, he has not been foolish enough to allow a Straussian assistant to publish nonsense under his name. In his own quiet way, Alito is as baffling to the Demcratic leadership as Roberts was, and even the pundits at the far-left CNN.com concede that opposition to his nomination will really be coming from leftwing lobbying groups that are calling in their chits.

The biggest constellation of lobbyists are, it goes without saying, the infanticide lobby. Why do so many leftists get het up over abortion rights? In the world we live in, infanticide of unborn and newborn infants is far from difficult, and, considering the large number of women who have had abortions (plus their approving boyfriends, husbands, fathers, brothers) no one seriously thinks that the Court is going to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision. Even if some abortion “rights” were restricted, if underage girls had to inform their parents or if a waiting period were imposed, this is hardly the end of the world. In parallel cases—e.g., major surgery, marriage—young people are expected to talk it over with parents and take a little time to reflect. Why is the right to kill one’s own child so special that it trumps all other considerations, even public health rules. Abortuaries are subject to less regulation than veterinary clinics. Is that really how most Americans view unborn babies?

The answer is probably known to everyone who reads this column: reproductive rights, or rather on-reproductive rights: the right and duty to have sex without reproducing. The sexual revolution, a far more profound and dangerous revolution than either the French or Russian Revolutions, was a revolution against human nature and against the most basic elements of human society. However wicked the Cities of the Plain might have been, Sodom and Gomorrah were, to some extent, only a story that foreshadows the nightmare we have come to accept. Do not look for parallels in ancient Greek bisexuality (a much misinterpreted phenomenon) or Roman decadence.

Ordinary people in the ancient world lived as most ordinary people have always lived, dividing their time between worrying about crops and chasing after the children who are supposed to be tending the livestock or working in the fields. The tiny elite classes might become as decadent as they liked without influencing the rest of us whose lives are shaped by natural necessities. Yes, in 18th century Europe an anti-ethic of irresponsible hedonism reached its peak in figures like Voltaire and Sade, but the sexual antics of the Palais Royal were not being imitated by peasants in the Vendée. Only in the 20th century have we universalized the rebellion against nature and God and communicated it to the common man.

God? I do not refer only to the commandment to “be fruitful and multiply” or to the punishment of Onan for practicing contraception. Christianity, though some of the early fathers were too skeptical about marriage and sex, has represented an affirmation and elevation and transfiguration of marital relations. When the churches turned first to contraception and then to abortion, they became the church of Antichrist. (I understand that ELCA Lutherans pay for their pastorettes’ abortions.) The deeper meaning of this revolution I glimpsed yesterday, reading about a bizarre Gnostic sect whose members devoted 365 different copulations to 365 different supernatural forces. Contraception was the rule, but where contraception failed, they had recourse to abortions carried out in combination with grotesque rituals. This worship of sex and death, I submit to you in all seriousness, is the diabolical religion of mainstream “Christianity” today.

From Chronicles:

Iraq: They Know They Are Lying
By Thomas Fleming

Last May a Republican friend asked me if I had changed my mind about the Iraq War, seeing that things were going so well. Actually, I replied, things were going just about as badly as I had imagined they would. Christians were being purged from the country, Sunnis were on the warpath, and power was being given to a coalition of anti-American Shiites and Kurds. I predicted, with absolutely nothing to go on, that when the American death toll reached the symbolic number of 2000, pro-war Democrats and even a few Republicans would begin to wonder.

In November, President Bush’s overall approval rating (in a CNN poll) dropped to 37%, and the same poll indicated that less than 50% approve of his conduct of the war on terror, and more than half think he cannot be trusted.

Trust in the President has been undermined by a series of revelations that suggest that the White House deliberately ignored or suppressed evidence that contradicted its glib generalization about weapons of mass destruction. Taking time off from running the country, Vice President Cheney condemned any such allegations “dishonest, reprehensible… cynical and pernicious falsehoods” circulated by cynical opportunists. The rhetorical overkill is a good indication that the Vice President is beginning to be fear a collapse of the house of cards the administration so carefully stacked up in advance of the Iraq invasion.

The Democrats are certainly cynical opportunists. They have been for decades, but it hardly helps Mr. Cheney’s argument. Cynical opportunists rarely chase chimaeras; they are sharks who strike when the taste the blood in the water, and their current feeding frenzy has been aroused by a string of recent stories on the suppression of prewar intelligence, secret CIA interrogation camps, and President Bush’s proposal to bomb Al Jazeera, despite the fact that this pro-Arab television station, hardly more dishonest than CNN, would be a civilian target in a friendly country (Qatar).

Democrats are not the only cynical opportunists. Republicans have been quick to seize the patriotism issue and brand any critic, war heroes included, as cowardly ad unpatriotic. Rep. John Murtha is lumped together with Michael Moore, Pat Buchanan with Ramsey Clark. The White House debate over the invasion, we are informed, had nothing to do with facts and risk assessment and everything to do with timing: The choice was between an early invasion, which would jump-start the economy, and a later invasion that would guarantee reelection. If Senators Biden and Kennedy are cynics, what can be said of Rove and Cheney.

Setting aside the opportunism displayed by both parties, sensible Americans should be asking themselves what the allegations come down to. Even forgetful Americans must remember that the only reason we went to war is because the President and his advisors assured us that they did not merely think, they knew that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and were able to identify his mobile chemical labs. Since they were wrong, they were lying when they said they knew. It is as simple as that.

If I persuade you to buy my rural property because I know that Toyota is going to buy the land to build a plant, I am a liar and a cheat if it turns out that Toyota never intended to make an offer. If I tell the jury that I can positively identify the accused as the man I saw shoot the 711 clerk and it later turns out someone else, only vaguely resembling the defendant, committed the crime, I would forever forfeit the esteem of decent people who respect law and truth. Dr. Johnson was perfectly correct in saying of a man who makes careless assertions of fact, “Sir, he lies.”

Administration spokesmen routinely portray the President and his advisers as blindsided by events, misled by incomplete intelligence reports. There are two reasons why, in the case of Cheney and Rumsfeld, I do not accept the whitewash. First, because I and many other commentators, with nothing more to go on than media propaganda, concluded—from the beginning—that the wild tales of WMD’s were absolutely incredible. Second, because we know that neoconservatives, even before the election and well before the WMD propaganda was disseminated, had decided on the invasion, and, third, because they continue to refuse to come clean with the American people: Instead of admitting their mistake, they invent new justifications. Paul Wolfowitz, as soon as the WMD story began to unravel, admitted candidly that it was merely a pretext that permitted the President to do what he (Wolfowitz, not Bush) wanted.

To understand how these people operate, consider the treatment of US “citizen” Jose Padilla, the so-called dirty bomber. After years of keeping Padilla in illegal detention, claiming he had been planning, first, a dirty explosion, and, second, some kind of gas attack, he as now been indicted on completely new charges. Perhaps he is guilty—he is certainly an unsavory character—but that fact remains that the administration, in violating every law up to and including the Fifth Amendment, lied to the world. Challenged with the glaring discrepancy between the administration’s original accusations and the terms of the indictment, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez refuses to comment.

When Dr. Johnson wished to denounce someone for knowingly telling a falsehood, he would say, “Sir, he lies, and he knows he lies.” Ladies and gentlemen, the leaders of this administration not only lie, they know they lie.

A Plague on Both Their Houses
by Patrick J. Buchanan

Gen. William Odom has called the Iraq War the greatest strategic blunder in the history of the United States. Final returns are not yet in, but he may not be far off.

In invading Iraq, we attacked and occupied a country of 25 million that had not attacked us, did not threaten us, did not want war with us—to strip it of weapons we now know it did not have.

Even if, as most believed, Saddam had chemical or biological wapons, there was no evidence he intended the suicidal use of such weapons on U.S. troops in Kuwait, or to hand them over to al-Qaida to use on America, risking massive retaliation. Saddam was never a suicide bomber. He was always a survivor.

After 9-11, we couldn’t take the chance, countered the War Party. Nonsense. We take the chance every day with Iran and North Korea, far more powerful nations, as we did every day of the Cold War against a nuclear-armed Russia and China. They had missiles and WMD. But, like Saddam, they were deterred.

Yet President Bush, prodded by a cabal of neoconservatives who, for their own motives, had been plotting war on Iraq for years, invaded. History will hold him accountable for the consequences.

On the credit side, he liberated the Iraqis from a murderous tyrant. But the cost is high and rising: 17,000 U.S. dead and wounded—i.e., the eradication of an entire American division -- $200 billion, the diversion of priceless assets from the fight against al-Qaida, rampant anti-Americanism in the Islamic world, the shattering of our alliances, the division of our nation, and the prospect of a U.S. defeat by Iraqi insurgents and terrorists.

Another cost must be added after a week in which Harry Reid and Co. accused President Bush of lying us into war, Republicans accused Democrats of cutting and running, and Rep. John Murtha accused Bush and Cheney of being chicken-hawks who dodged the draft in Vietnam.

Our leaders are behaving like the leaders of the late and unlamented French Third Republic.

But if Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are responsible for the war and its consequences, so, too, are the potential Democratic nominees: Kerry, Edwards, Clinton, Biden and Bayh. In October 2002, because the country was cheering a commander in chief beating a war drum, they voted Bush a blank check to take us to war. In the fall of 2005, with the people souring on the war, they voted for a timetable to get out.

We were deceived, we were misled, we were lied to, they wail. One only awaits their explanation that they were brainwashed by a C student. The Democratic Party is a poodle of public opinion, unfit to lead the nation.

But if we were stampeded into this war, we must not let ourselves be stampeded out of Iraq by a Democratic Party in panic, scrambling to get out in front of its base. For the cost of retreat and defeat may be far more calamitous than the costs of the present war.

There are at present four exit strategies:

A. The John McCain strategy of sending 10,000 more U.S. troops, taking as long as needed to train the Iraqi army and staying as long as necessary to achieve victory.

B. The Bush strategy of “Stay the Course,” with the present complement of forces staying as long as it takes to win.

C. The exit strategy envisioned in the bipartisan resolution in the Senate last week that passed with 79 votes, calling for Bush to give the Congress benchmarks of success, leading to withdrawal.

D. The Democratic option, supported by all but five Democratic senators, to set benchmarks and a timetable for getting out.

The McCain option is a non-starter, for it is non-credible. Adding 10,000 troops to the 160,000 there will not pacify a Sunni Triangle of 5 million. U.S. opposition to the war is near 60 percent. And if Bush refused to send the troops McCain has wanted for two years, he will not do so now that his support is evaporating. The failure to listen to Gen. Shinseki in 2002 was an irremediable blunder.

As for the Bush policy of “Stay the Course,” with support for the war crumbling in Congress and the country and no light at the end of the tunnel, it is unsustainable. On the other hand, a House resolution, engineered by Republicans, calling for immediate withdrawal was backed by only three members. Cut and run is not an option.

However, there exists a bipartisan consensus for Iraqification—the transfer of political authority in Baghdad and responsibility for the war to the Iraqis. All that remains in dispute is the timetable.

As for the ugliness and acrimony of Washington, it reflects the rage, resentment and shame of men who know they made a horrible mistake, thousands have suffered and died for it, and worse may be yet to come. The truth is both parties failed America. What the Greatest Generation won, the baby boomers are frittering away.