Ann Coulter on the Iraq war, April 17, 2003:
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In 1985,
Muslim terrorists hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro and threatened to kill the passengers and crew unless fifty imprisoned Palestinians were relesed by Israel. The terrorists doused American and British women with gasoline and taunted them with matches. They forced passengers to hold live grenades. When their demands were not met, the terrorists shot a wheelchair-bound American, Leon Klinghoffer, and forced other passengers at gunpoint to throw him overboard in his wheelchair.
… the Italian and Egyptian governments made a deal with the terrorists, offering the release of the Palestinians and safe passage to Tunisia !] to end the ordeal. The Americans were not… pleased.
So Oliver North conceived of an operation to get the terrorists back. North found out the terrorists were still [in Egypt]
Working with Israeli intelligence, North ascertained the precise EgyptAir flight that would carry the terrorists out of Egypt. He devised a plan to intercept the plane, modeled on the military’s interception of Yamamoto, mastermind of Pearl Harbor [WWII].
President Reagan was briefed on the daring plan - along with copious warnings from timorous State Department officials that the Europeans might have their feelings [hurt], America would look like a cowboy, and it would only strengthen the hard-hardliners in Egypt. Asked if the operation should proceed, Reagan said, “***Good God! They’ve murdered an American here. Let’s get on with it.” ***
Admiral Frank Kelso, the officer in charge of America’s Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean, ordered his men to carry out the mission. In no time flat, Tomcat fighters had taken off from the U.S. aircraft carrier Saratoga. Guided by Hawkeyes, the Tomcats caught up with the EgyptAir flight. The fighters stealthily trailed their target in total darkness, their lights off, even in the cockpit. The American pilots flew so close to the EgyptAir flight, they used flashlights to read the plane’s tail number. Then the Tomcats swooped in, surrounded the EgyptAir flight, and forced it to fly to a NATO base on Sicily controlled by the United States. The New York Post headline the next day was, “GOT EM.” And then Abul Abbas was released by the Europeans and given safe haven to Iraq under Saddam Husssein - whom liberals have assured us was not harboring terrorists.
Republicans keep catching terrorists and liberals keep sending them back. If there is a parable of how liberals support the enemy, this is it. Admiral Kelso, whose men carried out the dauntless EgyptAir interception, was cashiered out of the navy because of Tailhook…
To jog the memory of the horror that was Tailhook, Lieutenant Paul Coughlin, the officer who made the most lurid allegations, accused a
lack Marine of molesting her. But she kept identifying different lack males as the perpetrator. Liberals managed to put their concern for racist accusations against lacks on the back burner in this case. (When liberals get going, the ironies never end.) Though Admiral Kelso was cleared of any wrongdoing after an official navy investigation, liberals still wanted him punished. Former representative Patricia Schroeder… engaged in a hysterical witchhunt of Kelso, marching with her fellow termagants to the Senate to demand that their colleagues deny Kelso retirement with four stars. The New York Times editorialized against Kelso.
The Left’s relentless attacks on Oliver North hardly require elaboration. He was investigated, charged with a crime, indicted by Lawrence Walsh, and his Senate campaign was destroyed. Al Gore compared North’s supporters to Down
yndrome children. Now Democrats are demanding that Europeans be let into Iraq so they can release some more terrorists, while liberals do their part at home, carving up the colonels and admirals who capture the people who murder Americans.
“The Plan” [for the war in Iraq] (Nov 2003)
The Democrats’ new method of opposing the war on terrorism while pretending not to oppose the war on terrorism is to keep demanding that Bush produce a “plan”. Senator John Kerry said the difference in how he would have prosecuted the war in Iraq is: “I would have planned.” Yes, the invasion of Iraq was the usual unplanned, spur-of-the-minute thing that took eighteen months of discussion
[Coulter lists numerous Democrats’ complaints against the president in this matter of a “plan”]… The Democrats’ incessant demand for a “plan” tends to suggest there is something called “The Plan” which would magically prevent bad things from ever happening - especially something as totally unexpected as violence in the Middle East. Violence in the Middle East constantly comes as a bolt out of the blue to liberals. We’re at war with Islamic lunatics. They enjoy blowing things up and killing people. What further insights do liberals have to impart about this war? Bush said deposing Saddam Hussein and building a democracy in Iraq was an essential part of the war on terrorism. He did not say that invading Iraq would instantly end all Muslim violence and rainy days that make liberals blue… [F]ewer troops have been killed by hostile fire since the end of major combat in Iraq than civilians were murdered in Washington, D.C last year (239 deaths in Iraq compared with 262 murders in the U.S. capital)… How long before we just give up and pull out of that hellish quagmire known as Washington, D.C.?
*** The Democrats’ conception of a “plan” is like the liberal fantasy that there’s a room somewhere full of unlimited amounts of “free” money that we could just give to teachers and hospitals and poor people and AIDS sufferers and the homeless, if only the bad, greedy Republicans would give us the key to that wonderful room. Republicans should claim the [Iraq war] “plan” is in that room, in lockbox.***
It’s interesting that after we’ve finally gotten liberals to give up on seven decades of trying to plan an economy, now they want to plan a war…
*** Needless to say, the Democrats have no actual plan of their own, unless “surrender” counts as a plan. ***
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This is a technique to make it harder to think and as we slowly awoke and realized we had been manipulated and needed to get our bearings we found that saying anything, however innocuous, in plain English was suddenly a legally actioanble offense under random, unpredictable circumstances. That might go over in some places but not here. The confusion, frustration and suspicion this brought about means we have lived in a dark haze of forbidden, repressed emotions which we wouldn’t have ever thought of having in our lives if it weren’t for the years of public mind manipulation we just went through. Of course, if we say, “What is this petition for?”, no matter how innocently, we are met with a blast of rage and vague loaded questions: “Isn’t love worth something? Do you have to hate everyone? Why must we reject all that’s beautiful?” until a crowd starts to form. Even saying, “I’m on my way to church, where are you going?” can be an opener to an emotional dragging-over-the-coals that just wouldn’t have happened back when people conversed by asking and answering factual questions.
