The invaluable Andi photoblogged a visit to Ground Zero with her Army captain husband, who is close to his deployment date to Iraq. A true why we fight piece.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has now fully succumbed to the disease known as verbiosis bureacratitis.

The Pentagon’s long struggle over how to describe the war in Iraq moved to new ground Tuesday as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he wanted to retire the term “insurgents” in favor of “enemies of the legitimate Iraqi government.”

Ah, that adds clarity.

In his speech at the US Naval Academy this morning, President Bush outlined the three main categories of enemies of democracy in Iraq, “rejectionists, Saddamists and terrorists.” Rejectionists are the least violent threat and are increasingly being won over to participating in the democratic processes in the country.

The second group that makes up the enemy in Iraq is smaller, but more determined. It contains former regime loyalists who held positions of power under Saddam Hussein — people who still harbor dreams of returning to power. These hard-core Saddamists are trying to foment anti-democratic sentiment amongst the larger Sunni community. They lack popular support and therefore cannot stop Iraq’s democratic progress. And over time, they can be marginalized and defeated by the Iraqi people and the security forces of a free Iraq.

The third group is the smallest, but the most lethal: the terrorists affiliated with or inspired by al Qaeda . Many are foreigners who are coming to fight freedom’s progress in Iraq. This group includes terrorists from Saudi Arabia, and Syria, and Iran, and Egypt, and Sudan, and Yemen, and Libya, and other countries. Our commanders believe they’re responsible for most of the suicide bombings, and the beheadings, and the other atrocities we see on our television.

They’re led by a brutal terrorist named Zarqawi — al Qaeda’s chief of operations in Iraq — who has pledged his allegiance to Osama bin Laden. Their objective is to drive the United States and coalition forces out of Iraq, and use the vacuum that would be created by an American retreat to gain control of that country. They would then use Iraq as a base from which to launch attacks against America, and overthrow moderate governments in the Middle East, and try to establish a totalitarian Islamic empire that reaches from Indonesia to Spain. That’s their stated objective. That’s what their leadership has said.

The terrorists in Iraq are not a unified enemy. Al Qaeda and Baathists are allies of convenience who found no common cause until early 2003. Al Qaeda’s goal in Iraq is not to save Baathism, it is to kill Americans so that they will leave. They believe that they then will be in a position to establish a pure Islamic state in Iraq. Al Qaeda is not fighting for Baathists to retake the reins of government there, but so that they can do so. I wrote about this in more detail in Sept. 2003.

Here is the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq, released online by the White House.

Of course, they should have released it two years ago.

Update: Here is the transcript of the president’s speech this morning at the US Naval Academy.

This morning, in anticipation of President’s Bush’s upcoming announcements of the situation in Iraq, FoxNews interviewed Senate Armed Services Committee member Sen. Ben Nelson (D.-NE). I didn’t catch everything Sen. Nelson said, but what I did hear seemed the soul of reasonableness to me.

Nelson was asked a question about the administration’s claims that America is winning the fight against the terrorists in Iraq. Nelson responded that the administration needs to provide “the metrics” to support the claim. And that is absolutely correct. It’s easy to tell when we’re losing, but not so easy in this kind of war to tell when we’re winning, or when we’ve won.

This is not a conventional war. This kind of ceremony will never happen when fighting Islamists. But there are “metrics” that can indicate whether we are prevailing against terrorist insurgents in Iraq. Some examples: increasing turnouts at the polls for elections. This has been the case and I expect that come Dec. 15, the turnout to elect a permanent (not provisional) Iraqi government will be very high. There are already increased Sunni candidacies. (Update: Did the president channel OHC? He said at Annapolis, ” In World War II, victory came when the Empire of Japan surrendered on the deck of the USS Missouri. In Iraq, there will not be a signing ceremony on the deck of a battleship.” Heh.)

Another “metric” is the increasing number and rate that terrorists and their resources are identified to Coalition forces by Iraqi people. Another is the decreasing area of land in the country where terrorism/insurgency is active.

Obviously, an important metric is the number of capable Iraqi units able to replace American units in battle and security efforts and the rate at which Iraqi units do so. Sen. Nelson made this point as well, but he erred in apparently misunderstanding the capabilities of the Iraqi forces. He said that only about 1,000 Iraqi troops are capable, but in fact Iraqi capability is scaled according to a readiness rating of 1-4. Attaining a rating of 1 is very difficult. In fact, using the same rating standards, many US Army or Marine units would fail to attain a 1 after they return from Iraq and stand down, because of personnel transfers, worn out equipment and degradation of combat skills.

Iraqi units of battalion size with a 1 rating are capable of independent operations without US assistance. There are very few of them (maybe only one battalion and probably no more than three; it varies from month to month due to operational factors). But there are dozens of units rated 2, which is a very capable rating. Actually, the main impediment of more units achieving a 1 rating is logistical contraints, not combat training. Army Gen. George Casey said early last month,

Over the past two years, about 190,000 new Iraqi police and soldiers have been trained and equipped to conduct anti-terrorism operations, the general said. …

The new Iraqi units are ranked according to capability, the general explained, with level one indicating the ability to operate independently of U.S. and coalition assistance. Casey said few Iraqi units are now capable of operating autonomously.

“We know, because of logistics support (and) the Iraqi institutions that have to be built, it’s going to be awhile before the Iraqi military gets there,” Casey said. …

Iraqi units are becoming more proficient, Casey said. In May, there were fewer than 200 combined or independent Iraqi operations, he said. In September, there were more than 1,300 such operations, the general said.

An important point to remember is that the new Iraqi units don’t have to be as good as American forces to win. They just have to be better than the insurgent forces.

Major K., having served in Iraq and being intimately involved in this issue, explains the details.

Endnote: as for winning the struggle against Islamist terrorists generally, not only the Iraqi insurgency, Austin Bay writes more about “Defining Victory in the War on Terror: A view from the Middle East.”

Update: President Bush amplified the point about Iraqi battalion ratings in his speech at Annapolis this morning,

To achieve complete independence, an Iraqi battalion must do more than fight the enemy on its own — it must also have the ability to provide its own support elements, including logistics, airlift, intelligence, and command and control through their ministries. Not every Iraqi unit has to meet this level of capability in order for the Iraqi security forces to take the lead in the fight against the enemy. As a matter of fact, there are some battalions from NATO militaries that would not be able to meet this standard.

Actually, there are a lot of battalions in NATO that would not be able to meet this standard.

Christopher Hitchens discusses “The Perils of Withdrawal” from Iraq.

Iraq is enormously more important, geopolitically, than Afghanistan. It sits beside one of the choke-point sea lanes of the global economy, and it occupies a keystone position between the Wahhabist theocracy of Saudi Arabia and the Shiite theocracy of Iran. One may despair of the stupidity of the Bush administration’s “drug war” in Afghanistan (”just hold still while we liberate you and burn your only crop and make sure that all profits go to gangsters”), but it is a bagatelle when compared to the gigantic stakes of Iraqi oil. If anything like a federal and democratic Iraq emerged and was able to recuperate its ravaged and corrupted oil fields, it could undercut the Saudi and Iranian duopoly as well as provide a modern standard of living to a people immiserated by three decades of war and fascism. This would be a prize of historic proportions. …

How strange that the anti-war left should have forgotten all of its Marxism and superciliously ignored the fact that oil is blood: lifeblood for Iraqis and others. Under Saddam it was wholly privatized; now it can become more like a common resource. But it will need to be protected against those who would shed it and spill it without compunction, and we might as well become used to the fact. With or without a direct Anglo-American garrison, there is an overwhelming humanitarian and international and civilizational interest in defeating the Arab Khmer Rouge that threatens Mesopotamia, and if we could achieve agreement on that single point, the other disagreements would soon disclose themselves as being of a much lesser order.

Back just before the Allies invaded Iraq, there was a mostly-thoughtful article in Mother Jones called, “The Thirty-Year Itch,” that traced how American national-security interests were increasingly tied to access to Persian Gulf oil beginning explicitly during the Carter administration. (Jimmy Carter was the first president who publicly declared that America would go to war to preserve access to Gulf oil.) While the piece does fall into some moderate “neocon plot for world domination through controlling Gulf oil” (as if Carter was a neocon), it does avoid falling into the bumper sticker of claiming that Bush’s plan for Iraq was to enrich himself and his oil-company buddies. If anything, the article emphasizes that Persian Gulf oil will increase in importance to the world’s economy in years to come.

As vital as the Persian Gulf is now, its strategic importance is likely to grow exponentially in the next 20 years. Nearly one out of every three barrels of oil reserves in the world lie under just two countries: Saudi Arabia (with 259 billion barrels of proven reserves) and Iraq (112 billion). Those figures may understate Iraq’s largely unexplored reserves, which according to U.S. government estimates may hold as many as 432 billion barrels.

With supplies in many other regions, especially the United States and the North Sea, nearly exhausted, oil from Saudi Arabia and Iraq is becoming ever more critical — a fact duly noted in the administration’s National Energy Policy, released in 2001 by a White House task force. By 2020, the Gulf will supply between 54 percent and 67 percent of the world’s crude, the document said, making the region “vital to U.S. interests.” According to G. Daniel Butler, an oil-markets analyst at the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), Saudi Arabia’s production capacity will rise from its current 9.4 million barrels a day to 22.1 million over the next 17 years. Iraq, which in 2002 produced a mere 2 million barrels a day, “could easily be a double-digit producer by 2020,” says Butler.

U.S. strategists aren’t worried primarily about America’s own oil supplies; for decades, the United States has worked to diversify its sources of oil, with Venezuela, Nigeria, Mexico, and other countries growing in importance. But for Western Europe and Japan, as well as the developing industrial powers of eastern Asia, the Gulf is all-important. Whoever controls it will maintain crucial global leverage for decades to come.

Today, notes the EIA’s Butler, two-thirds of Gulf oil goes to Western industrial nations. By 2015, according to a study by the CIA’s National Intelligence Council, three-quarters of the Gulf’s oil will go to Asia, chiefly to China. China’s growing dependence on the Gulf could cause it to develop closer military and political ties with countries such as Iran and Iraq, according to the report produced by Ebel’s CSIS task force. “They have different political interests in the Gulf than we do,” Ebel says. “Is it to our advantage to have another competitor for oil in the Persian Gulf?”

Well, no, especially not when that competitor is not tied to free-trade economic philosophy. If the potential competitor was any member of the Anglosphere, or India or Japan, we wouldn’t be very concerned. But China is no friend and its appetite for oil is growing voraciously.

As other people have pointed out, the Iraq war is about oil, it’s just not about oil companies. Al Qaeda is financed by oil money. Saddam Hussein paid $25,000 to every family of suicide bombers who struck Israel, and Saudi Arabia paid major coin to them as well. Oil money finances Islamist terrorism to this day, laundered mostly through the sympathetic hands of dozens or more of Saudi royals and other wealthy Saudis.

Clearly, one major goal of the American invasion of Iraq was to divorce tyranny from petrodollars there and begin the divorce in the rest of the Middle East. There remains Iran and Saudi Arabia. Iran is an out and out terrorist state with enormous reserves of oil, though not as much as either Saudi Arabia or Iraq. Saudi Arabia’s rulers have actually made significant, concrete steps in shutting down al Qaeda inside its borders and drying up the funding stream coming from the country. But there are still great sums that make their way through private channels to al Qaeda and affiliates.

The people, said Mao Tse-Tung, are the water in which the guerrillas swim and hide and are nurtured. To defeat an insurgency you have to drain the water by turning the people toward you and away from the insurgents - by multiple means but certainly by doing things like this.

More than drainage is required, though. For while the fish still swim they are still dangerous and the hearts-and-minds part of the campaign is not quick. So the terrorists must be starved while the people are turned. And what the eat is weapons.

I reported at mid-month of the raid my son particpated in northeast of Fallujah that netted several prisoners and larges stores of terrorist weapons and explosives. Such raids are staple operations now.

Coalition forces in western Iraq have accomplished a great deal in the past week.

Iraqi Army Soldiers and U.S. Marines, Soldiers and Sailors of the 2nd Marine Division, discovered 66 weapons caches during the past week in al Anbar.

Blocks of plastic explosives, sticks of TNT, artillery and mortar rounds used in vehicle and roadside bombs along with remote detonators were found by Iraqi and U.S. Forces. Machine guns, assault and sniper rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and the munitions were also discovered.

Last Sunday, in Haqlaniyah, Iraqi Soldiers and Marines excavated more than 8,800 heavy machine gun rounds along with 150 artillery, mortar and tank rounds. Information gained from local citizens indicated that the cache was buried approximately one month ago by three carloads of terrorists working through the night.

Yesterday near Habbaniyah, four complete mortar systems, including their aiming sites and instruction manuals were found. At the same location, more than a dozen remote detonators for roadside bombs were also found. Thirteen men were detained at the site for further questioning.

Caches were found and destroyed from Fallujah to al Qa’im. Many of these weapons and explosive cache sites were located after receiving information from local citizens. Local citizens frequently speak to a passing patrol or by call local tips lines, while others cache sites are found during the course of clearing operations.

Now that even Iraqis in western Iraq are providing tips to the coalition forces, one wonders where the terrorists will find succor.

Indeed, while the pond is being drained the fish are starving. Skeptics may scoff that Saddam’s regime left behind so many guns and bombs that it’s just playing whack-a-mole to shut one cache down. Maybe, but I doubt it.

One thing that weapons stores cannot efficiently be is dispersed. Movement of arms and ammunition is labor heavy and for the terrorists, manpower intensive. Efficiency of scale rises rapidly when the materiel is depoted. ALso, it is almost impossible to keep accurate inventories of dispersed stores and dispersed locales invariably require frequent relocation as risk assessments wax and wane. As well, security risks increase dramatically when storage locations are multiplied because not all areas are equally secure from observation by unfriendly locals.

So these seizures hurt the terrorists badly, and the more stores are seized the worse the hurt gets. Usually the seizures are accompanied by taking terrorists prisoners or killing those who resist. That the formerly secure locations are being given up by locals means that the terrorists know they can’t establish another arms cache in the area. Yet if another location was both more secure and more convenient they would have placed their cache there to begin with.

Eventually, even if the supply chain of arms is uninterrupted, the management problem at the receiving and using end can become maddening. Increased detection and seizures of caches make supply-protection even more critical and that drives terrorists to de-centralize arms storage. But that badly decreases the effectiveness of using the arms, making it difficult to mass arms-power and devote manpower to transportation and security when manpower is being attritted away by raids and apprehension. And more seizure reports here.

It’s not the body count that is the best indicator of success in starving the fish, it’s the seizure count.

Armed Liberal makes a point over at WOC that didn’t grab me yesterday when the news of the guilty pleas by US Congressman Randy Cunningham broke: Cunningham, one of the most highly decorated wartime pilots the US Navy ever had, “systematically” subverted the “military procurement process for cash.”

It boggles the mind to think that a combat-wounded Navy officer, a bona fide war hero, would descend to the depths of selling out his brothers and sisters in arms for lucre. My son - and hundreds of thousands of other fathers’ sons - depend on the integrity of the procurement system literally for their lives.

I started to write here about what would make a man of Cunningham’s achievements and distinction decide to sell out and commit such felonies - other than from simple greed, that is. But no, it is a futile task and meaningless. I do not attempt to understand. I do not want to understand. What he did was a disgusting, reprehensible series of acts of betrayals. I don’t care why he did it. I want to see him doing hard time for it.

No, he should not be cut a break because of his wartime service. It is precisely his service that makes his crimes so condemnable. He rode his wartime record into Congress, anyway, so IMO his service has already been amply rewarded in the civil sector.

No longer to be Randy “Duke” Cunningham. Randy, thy nickname now is Judas.

Via Captain’s Quarters,

Hollywood finally has decided to make a movie about the Iraq War that actually depicts the US forces as the protagonists. Does this news come from the American media? No, we get to find out about it from the UK, and Michelle Malkin:

ANGERED by negative portrayals of the conflict in Iraq, Bruce Willis, the Hollywood star, is to make a pro-war film in which American soldiers will be depicted as brave fighters for freedom and democracy.
It will be based on the exploits of the heavily decorated members of Deuce Four, the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry, which has spent the past year battling insurgents in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul. …

My predictions: the Hollywood establishment will hate it and so will most professional reviewers. It will make make a big pile of money as the movie-going public votes with their wallets.

US Representative Randy “Duke” Cunningham, (R-Calif. 5oth) resigned today from the US House. His resignation immediately followed his pleads of guilty …

… in a San Diego federal court to accepting bribes and violating tax laws in the sale of his home two years ago to a defense contractor.

Cunningham entered pleas in U.S. District Court to charges of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud and tax evasion for underreporting his income in 2004. He answered, “Yes, Your Honor” when asked by U.S. District Judge Larry Burns if he had accepted cash in exchange for his performance of official duties.

Make no mistake, this was admission of corruption of a most serious kind. Cunningham could be sentenced on Feb. 27 to up to 10 years in prison for his crimes involving millions of dollars of transactions.

Cunningham is a bona fide hero of the Vietnam war, where he became America’s first fighter ace of the conflict. All in all,

Cunningham became one of the most highly decorated U.S. Navy pilots in the Vietnam War. … [H]e received the Navy Cross, two Silver Stars, fifteen Air Medals, and the Purple Heart.

The dogfight in which he scored his fifth aerial victory has become a classic study of air combat and was recently featured in The History Channel’s documentary, “Greatest Air Battles.”

Update: Leopold Stotch is enraged.

Glenn Reynolds quotes Jon Henke of The QandO Blog:

So, after 2 years of debating Iraq policy, the Democrats have decided that training Iraqi security forces to take over and reducing US deployments as they do—”as Iraq stands up, we will stand down”—is the best course in Iraq? And this epiphany, Richard Cohen writes, may have “pointed the administration and the country toward a realistic and modestly hopeful course on Iraq.” . . .

This was the strategy Bush enunciated in August of 2003, September of 2003, May of 2004, and many other times. It was the strategy outlined in this May 2004 “Fact Sheet: The Transition to Iraqi Self-Government”.

The Democrats have not come up with a new Iraq Policy. They’ve jumped onboard the Bush administration’s existing policy, with the novel new suggestion that we stay the course…but try harder.

Like I said.

Glenn adds,

Personally, I think that letting them pretend they’re suggesting something novel is a small price to pay for bringing them onboard, if that’s what it accomplishes. I suspect the White House will feel the same way.

Except that during campaign 2006 the White House won’t feel that way any more (if they even feel that way now).

My sermon for this Sunday, the first Sunday of Advent, is online.

CNN on Black Friday sales: “Holiday shopping season has flat start; ShopperTrak says sales edged lower to $8 billion on the day after Thanksgiving.”

ABC News: “Wal-Mart signals strong start to holiday season.”

Photographic proof that the New York Times has died.

American Forces Information Service:

Relative Confirms Oct. 14 Raid Killed Zarqawi Confidant

BAGHDAD, Nov. 26, 2005 – A family member and coalition sources have confirmed that Oct. 14 raids killed a close confidant of fugitive Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, military officials reported today.
Bilal Mahmud Awad Shebah, also known as Abu Ubaydah, reportedly met weekly with Zarqawi, officials said.

Although intelligence assessments indicated at the time that Abu Ubaydah had been killed in the raids north of Ramadi, officials said, analysts could not then determine his death with certainty.

In late November, coalition forces received information from knowledgeable sources and a close family member of Abu Ubaydah, claiming independently that Zarqawi’s confidant was killed in the raids.

Detained al Qaeda members say Abu Ubaydah served as an “executive secretary” for Zarqawi, meeting with the terrorist leader frequently, serving as his messenger and gatekeeper, and screening all messages and requests for meetings. Detainees also claim he provided Zarqawi with safe house locations and used intimidation and death threats to gain the cooperation of the Iraqi people to support al Qaeda in Iraq terrorist activity, detainees. During the course of the raids, conducted on the eve of Iraq’s constitutional referendum, several weapons caches, containing mortar rounds, small arms and ammunition, were found and destroyed. Bombs made from mortar rounds also were planted along the road leading to the safe houses as a defense against incoming vehicle or foot traffic.

Coalition forces were engaged by small-arms fire upon their arrival to the suspected terrorist location and immediately returned fire. Combining the ground attack with the use of close-air support, the terrorists’ hideout locations were destroyed. No coalition forces were injured or killed during the raids.

(From a Multinational Force Iraq news release.)

Related Article:
Coalition Detains 24 Terrorists, Kills 12 Others, in Ramadi Raids

So far American media outlets are using the AFIS news releasewith no new information. Based on Ubaydah’s job description in the release, this makes him a very highly-placed al Qaeda in Iraq officer. He basically served the same role to Zarqawi that Martin Bormann served for Adolf Hitler.

It’s bad enough that former Minister of Defense of Canada Paul Hellyer gave a September speech in which he said that “UFOs are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head.” He then claimed that the Bush administration was willing to risk intergalactic war and was developing bases and weapons to fight it with.

Now it seems Republican Sen. Arlen Specter has chimed in. The Washington Times reports, “Specter proposes increase in aliens.”

Whassa matter - no jobs on Mars?

Oops!

BERLIN — A multimillion-dollar campaign to boost Germans’ low self-confidence has backfired after it emerged that its slogan was coined by the Nazis.

The $34 million “Du Bist Deutschland — You Are Germany” — campaign was devised to inspire Germans to stop moaning and do something good for their country.

Beethoven, Einstein and the sports stars Franz Beckenbauer and Michael Schumacher have been cited in advertisements encouraging Germans to take more pride in their homeland.

But a historian from Ludwigshafen has provoked an uproar with his discovery that the same “Du Bist Deutschland” cry was used at Nazi rallies in the 1930s.

Stefan Morz uncovered photographs of a 1935 Nazi convention in which soldiers display a banner reading, in Gothic script, “Denn Du Bist Deutschland (Because You Are Germany).” The slogan was topped with the head of Adolf Hitler. Leading Nazis such as Hermann Goring and Joseph Goebbels attended the event.

Exactly two months ago, former Minister of Defense of Canada Paul Hellyer, who served from 1963-67 (so how old is he today, I wonder) gave a speech in which he said that “UFOs are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head.” He then claimed that the Bush administration was willing to risk intergalactic war and was developing bases and weapons to fight it with.

Here’s Hellyer’s key sentence, though:

“The secrecy involved in all matters pertaining to the Roswell incident was unparalled. The classification was, from the outset, above top secret, so the vast majority of U.S. officials and politicians, let alone a mere allied minister of defence, were never in-the-loop.”

Did anyone in his audience note that Hellyer admitted he had no inside information about the topic?

Hellyer warned, “The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning. He stated, “The Bush administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide.”

No, it’s to seize the moon’s oil and create opportunities to sign no-bid contract with Halliburton.

For the first time in my life I arose before dawn on the day after Thanksgiving to hit the stores at opening time. My quest was for a $378 notebook computer and a $150 desktop machine, both at Best Buy and neither requiring rebates; those were the out-the-door prices.

And they weren’t even for me; I was buying them on behalf of my father (with his money, my gift-giving is not that extravagant).

Best Buy would open at 5 a.m. I arrived at 4:45 and the line stretched all the way around the building to the rear. I didn’t even bother.

An Orlando, Fla., TV station reported, “Some shoppers waited for as long as seven hours to be the first in the doors for bargains.” Maybe in Florida, but the temps here last night were sveral degrees below freezing. I am sure, though, that there were people in line by 3 a.m.

Retailers call this day Black Friday because it often is the day of the year when their annual profit figure moves from red to black. It used to be the largest single retail day of the year, but no longer.

While the day after Thanksgiving officially starts the holiday shopping season, it is no longer the busiest shopping day. Last year, it was Saturday, Dec. 18, a week before Christmas.

Last year, the Thanksgiving weekend rush accounted for only 9.2 percent of holiday sales. The busiest week was from Dec. 12 through Dec. 18, which garnered 22.5 percent of holiday sales, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers.

Some marketing analysts think that the high costs of gasoline and home heating will make shoppers pull back from spending at the same level as a year ago.

Note: some of you may recognize that I posted this originally one year ago. I started to put together another photo-essay of what I am thankful for when I realized I can’t say it better now than I did then. I changed one photo, though, near the end.

Little girls who wear braces but still smile

Sons who grow up to honorable manhood

The Missoula Children’s Theater

High school sports events

Good music and the people who make it …

… especially American-born music.

The interstate highway system

The saving love of God

Pioneer women, who actually settled the country - the men only occupied it.

That this man and his peers lived when they did

For all those who labor in the healing arts and sciences (this is Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin)

For Boy Scout leaders and Eagle Scouts

And for goofy Girl Scout parties, too!

That America went to the moon and I got to watch it live on TV …

… and for private dreamers who made the moon come true, and will again.

That I lived to see another day in 1998

For Christmas mornings

For the magnificence of this land

For those who build our country …

… and who just go to work each day

For the heroes of our home soil …

… who lifted our hearts in darkened days

For sacrifices of past generations …

… and of the present one (Lance Cpl. Stephen Sensing, USMC, near Fallujah, Iraq, 5 Nov. 2005)

For the hearts of American GIs - past …

… and present …

… who fight for freedom …

… and bear the scars on their souls.

“The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time. The hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.” Thomas Jefferson