DISCLAIMER: This is just a lame attempt at humor. There’s nothing to sell here. RightWing Professor is quite right in chastising me for not putting a notice on this site that the new one is up and running and that I’m not using this one anymore.

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OK, I was a complete slug yesterday and didn’t even turn the ‘puter on. I will post the few pics that turned out and write some more about the conference this evening.

Huge kudos to Andi and special thanks to the Greyhawks who moderated a most unruly bunch of bloggers/commenters on the live chat. Anybody know if the transcript is available somewhere? I couldn’t walk, chew gum and keep up with JP.

Most everyone has heard that JP will not be at the conference. Something about a new kid, the Olsen Twins, or an “American Idol” tryout – whatever… He has decided to send a doppelganger to take his place, and I got a chance to meet the replacement and get to know him a little. I think the little guy will do OK.

I showed “JP” out to the deck since it was such a nice day. He was quite ebullient about the surroundings and made a lot of noise suggesting that he was happy. I couldn’t be sure – he doesn’t seem to speak any language I’ve ever heard.

Since he’d been on the road for a while and could probably use some refreshment, I decided to lay out some chow. We had some of the good kibble and he got to use the best water dish. Nothing’s too good for my guests. That seemed to be a wise decision as he really opened up after filling his little tummy. He started jumping up-and-down and wobbling around. I asked if he needed to use the yard, but he declined and just squeaked.

We were having a great time when suddenly the little bugger darted towards my Milkbone. I don’t know about you, but I’ll share my kibble, my water, my chew toys and stuff, but nobody messes with the milkbones! We had a brief discussion about “house rules” and I think I got my point across.

Well, one thing I know for sure – JP made this one in his own image and smell. Jeeeesh! Good thing we didn’t eat the anything out of the garbage. I believe he’s going to win any contest with CJ in this odoriferous category.

Funky smells aside, the wee “JP” is a laugh riot! I haven’t a clue what he’s talking about, but the way he says things with those grunts, squeaks, burps, farts and insane music is bound to have us all in stitches on the 22nd.

What’s he going to be like on the pub crawl? Register here if you haven’t already and come enjoy the event.

For many, Iraq is no longer a war whose prognosis is to be judged empirically. It has instead transmogrified into a powerful symbol that apparently must serve deeply held, but preconceived, beliefs–the deceptions of Mr. Bush, the folly of a neoconservative cabal, the necessary comeuppance of the American imperium, or the greed of an oil-hungry U.S.

Why are so many people obsessed with proving Bush & Co. wrong? Or, perhaps just obsessed with proving themselves right?

In sum, after talking to our soldiers in Iraq and our planners in Washington, what seems to me most inexplicable is the war over the war–not the purported absence of a plan, but that the more we are winning in the field, the more we are losing it at home.

This is a great read. The text is in the extended entry.

At War With Ourselves
We’re winning in Iraq. Let’s not lose at home.

BY VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Wednesday, March 1, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

Last week the golden dome of the Askariya shrine in Samarra was blown apart. Sectarian riots followed, and reprisals and deaths ensued. Thugs and criminals came out of the woodwork to foment further violence. But instead of the apocalypse of an ensuing civil war, a curfew was enforced. Iraqi security forces stepped in with some success. Shaken Sunni and Shiite leaders appeared on television to urge restraint, and there appeared at least the semblance of reconciliation that may soon presage a viable coalition government.

But here at home you would have thought that our own capitol dome had exploded. Indeed, Americans more than the Iraqis needed such advice for calm to quiet our own frenzy. Almost before the golden shards of the mosque hit the pavement, pundits wrote off the war as lost–as we heard the tired metaphors of “final straw” and “camel’s back” mindlessly repeated. The long-anticipated civil strife among Shiites and Sunnis, we were assured, was not merely imminent, but already well upon us. Then the great civil war sort of fizzled out; our own frenzy subsided; and now exhausted we await next week’s new prescription of doom–apparently the hyped-up story of Arabs at our ports. That the Iraqi security forces are becoming bigger and better, that we have witnessed three successful elections, and that hundreds of brave American soldiers have died to get us to the brink of seeing an Iraqi government emerge was forgotten in a 24-hour news cycle.

Few observers suggested that the Samarra bombing of a holy mosque by radical Muslims might be a sign of the terrorists’ desperation–killers who have not, and cannot, defeat the U.S. military. After the furor over Danish cartoons, French rioting and Iranian nuclear perfidy, the entire world is turning on radical Islam and the terrorists feel keenly this rising tide of opposition on the frontline in Iraq.

True, the Sunni Triangle, unlike southern Iraq and Kurdistan, is often inhospitable to the forces of reconstruction–but hardly lost to jihadists and militias as we are told. There is a disturbing sameness to our acrimony at home, as we recall all the links in this chain of America hysteria from the brouhaha over George Bush’s flight suit to purported flushed Korans at Guantanamo Bay. Each time we are lectured that the looting, Abu Ghraib, the embalming of Uday and Qusay, the demeaning oral exam of Saddam, unarmored Humvees, inadequate body armor or the latest catastrophe has squandered our victory, the unimpressed U.S. military simply goes about what it does best–defeating the terrorists and training the Iraqi military to serve a democratic government. They stay focused in this long war, while our pundits prepare the next controversy.

The second-guessing of 2003 still daily obsesses us: We should have had better intelligence; we could have kept the Iraqi military intact; we would have been better off deploying more troops. Had our forefathers embraced such a suicidal and reactionary wartime mentality, Americans would have still torn each other apart over Valley Forge years later on the eve of Yorktown–or refought Pearl Harbor even as they steamed out to Okinawa.

There is a more disturbing element to these self-serving, always evolving pronouncements of the “my perfect war, but your disastrous peace” syndrome. Conservatives who insisted that we needed more initial troops are often the same ones who now decry that too much money has been spent in Iraq. Liberals who chant “no blood for oil” lament that we unnecessarily ratcheted up the global price of petroleum. Progressives who charge that we are imperialists also indict us for being naively idealistic in thinking democracy could take root in post-Baathist Iraq and providing aid of a magnitude not seen since the Marshall Plan. For many, Iraq is no longer a war whose prognosis is to be judged empirically. It has instead transmogrified into a powerful symbol that apparently must serve deeply held, but preconceived, beliefs–the deceptions of Mr. Bush, the folly of a neoconservative cabal, the necessary comeuppance of the American imperium, or the greed of an oil-hungry U.S.

If many are determined to see the Iraqi war as lost without a plan, it hardly seems so to 130,000 U.S. soldiers still over there. They explain to visitors that they have always had a design: defeat the Islamic terrorists; train a competent Iraqi military; and provide requisite time for a democratic Iraqi government to garner public support away from the Islamists. We point fingers at each other; soldiers under fire point to their achievements: Largely because they fight jihadists over there, there has not been another 9/11 here. Because Saddam is gone, reform is not just confined to Iraq, but taking hold in Lebanon, Egypt and the Gulf. We hear the military is nearly ruined after conducting two wars and staying on to birth two democracies; its soldiers feel that they are more experienced and lethal, and on the verge of pulling off the nearly impossible: offering a people terrorized from nightmarish oppression something other than the false choice of dictatorship or theocracy–and making the U.S. safer for the effort.

The secretary of defense, like officers in Iraq, did not welcome the war, but felt that it needed to be fought and will be won. Soldiers and civilian planners express confidence in eventual success, but with awareness of often having only difficult and more difficult choices after Sept. 11. Put too many troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we earn the wages of imperialism, or create a costly footprint that is hard to erase, or engender a dependency among the very ones in whom we wish to ensure self-reliance. Yet deploy too few troops, and instability arises in Kabul and Baghdad, as the Islamists lose their fear of American power and turn on the vulnerable we seek to protect.

In sum, after talking to our soldiers in Iraq and our planners in Washington, what seems to me most inexplicable is the war over the war–not the purported absence of a plan, but that the more we are winning in the field, the more we are losing it at home.

Mr. Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and the author most recently of “A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War” (Random House, 2005).

I accepted Andi’s invitation to be one of five to “live blog” the 2006 Milblog Conference in D.C. on April 22nd (and I was very honored to have been asked!) but now I’m not sure I’ll be able to even function, let alone concentrate on what’s being said and done. Look at the firepower that’s going to be there!!!!!!

Pre-registration for military ends tomorrow (2/15) and then it’s open for everyone. Head on over to the site and register if you’re interested in meeting the big dogs and some wee pups.

I may have to drink heavily before the show. I know JP has offered to buy the first 20 rounds.

Xposted at the other site, too.

Thanks for all the comments you guys left on the previous posts! I’m really glad you followed the link from the blogger site. I’m still trying to figure out how to update the template here and use the editor, and go through a whole lot more emails than I expected. I’ll catch up sometime.

I went on a cruise last week and had a great time. I took a gazzillion pics but most of them are boring. Here are a few that aren’t too bad.

I don’t know what a “dushi” is, but this sign in an alley in Aruba makes me think that I don’t want to sing karaoke there.

I think this sign was on a street in Curacao. Would foreign drugs make a good gift?

Check out the last “special” dish. Eeeewwwwww!

There’s always a stick-in-the-mud.

A little advertising for the Woodbridge Kart Club. This portal was close to the gangway and provided an irresistible opportunity for one of the traveling gang.

What started out as a beautiful day, turned into an equally wonderful night! We again occupied ALL FOUR CORNERS in front of Walter Reed.

First arrivals. Some flags always go up.

Constructing the MOAB (Mother of All Banners) in the church parking lot.

Manning the Mother of All Banners

Occupying the corner formerly held by commies.

I don’t know why I can’t get the next picture to move down. No matter how many CR or breaks I enter, they just disappear and the pic moves back up.

Jesse introducing Rob to “Osama on a Stick”

Rob trying to get passing cars to take a whack at Osama

Rob describes to Osama the kind of death he would wreak on the terrorist’s sorry ass.

Jesse and Rob took Osama down to say “Hi” to the commies. They didn’t want to play.

Tom’s turn to torment the Terrorist

Pinkos waaaay down the block. Check out “Princess” and his cool wheels.

Losers Pity Party

Hero confronts the commies.

Cool sign.

Protest Warriors and Pretzles.

More cool signs.

Fans of Heroes celebrating on “New Management” corner.

A spirited cheerleader. We have a group of very lovely young ladies who scream “hooray!” and such every time a horn honks or someone waves or shouts. They’re such a trip!

Maica and JustANobody

BillF taking notes on the night.

Shot across Georgia Ave. with Tom the RedHunter in foreground.

April from Texas and Concretebob
This is the bus from Fran O’Brien’s.
I apologize for the terrible formatting and lack of content. I’ll figure how to use this editor at some point.
By the time you read this I will be snockered with a few dozen friends somewhere in the Caribbean.
I’ll be back on Feb. 13.