Former war supporter William Buckley made a surprising admission in his most recent National Review column:

One can’t doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed . . . And the administration has, now, to cope with failure.

This follows up on another recent statement Buckley made, where he explained that “If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war.”

John Marshall has an interesting column that deals with Buckley’s change of mind.

And this is one of them. Michelle Malkin has a post about two-year-old brain-damaged Charlotte Wyatt, who has been perhaps sentenced to die—against the wishes of her own parents.

The parents of Charlotte Wyatt have been told that doctors are to be allowed to let their profoundly ill baby daughter die if they feel it is in her best interests. A High Court judge yesterday lifted a previous ruling that she should always be resuscitated, on the grounds that the two-year-old was now on a “downward rather than an upward trend”.

Mr Justice Hedley heard an emergency application from doctors treating her that she had developed an aggressive chest infection and was unlikely to survive any moves to keep her alive.

“Medical evidence speaks with one voice, that ventilation simply will not achieve the end for which no doubt the parents would wish,” he said. Charlotte’s condition was said to be “deteriorating” last night. Her mother, Debbie, 24, from Portsmouth, still believes that if her daughter were ventilated she would recover.

But Mr Justice Hedley said there had been a “very significant deterioration in Charlotte’s condition”. It is the fifth time he has had to make a ruling about Charlotte’s treatment.

Doctors at St Mary’s Hospital, Portsmouth, had previously argued that her life was so intolerable that if her condition worsened they should be allowed to withhold treatment. Charlotte suffers from severe lung, brain and kidney damage. But her condition improved so much that last October the judge removed a ruling allowing doctors to let her die.

Her parents have started a blog which you can check out here.

StopTheACLU wants to know, “Is this the direction America is headed? Is this where the ACLU, and the “right to die” folks will take us?”

Rottweiler Puppy:

So what’s going on? Well, since the hospital treating Charlotte were betting on her contracting a life-threatening infection last winter, and since their original dns order was granted on the assumption that she was ‘almost certainly’ going to succumb over a year ago, it really does look as though the hospital, and Judge Hedley’s, positions haven’t changed all that much. Indeed, on the strength of this, latest, ruling, it seems Hedley didn’t so much lift the dns order last October as postpone it until such a time as Charlotte actually needed resuscitating.

What’s being practiced here, then, is a kind anti-medicine, where, bizarrely, doctors dash into court at the first sign of their patient’s ill-health and demand the right to withhold life-saving treatment. You’d be hard-pushed to conceive of a situation that more aptly demonstrated the utter moral sickness at the heart of the anti-life movement.

Right Wing Nuthouse has some excellent thoughts, as does Conservative Culture, who writes:

Strange isn’t it. Doctors walk out of an execution of a convicted rapist and murder. Then there is a doctor ready to kill an infant still in the womb. But no problem, just spout “Women’s Choice.”

See also Pro Life Blogs; WizBang; BizzyBlog; and Outside The Beltway.

Truly a disturbing story. Unfortunately, this type of thing appears to be happening more and more often.

There’s an interesting new poll out that seems to indicate most people think Hillary Clinton will run for president in 2008, but not win.

According to the poll, two thirds of Americans believe Clinton will run for president, and two thirds of Americans think her campaign will end in defeat.

Interestingly enough, most people feel the same way about Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, although Rice has already indicated she’s not interesting in running.

Here’s the most intriguing part of the poll:

Twenty-seven percent of voters said they were not likely to vote for a woman candidate in 2008 no matter which party ticket she headed, according to the poll sponsored by WNBC-TV in New York City. Of that 27 percent, almost one-third said they wouldn’t back a female candidate because “women are not up to the job” while 10 percent said it was because the presidency is “a man’s job.”

I wonder if poll respondents gave those two reasons on their own, or if they had to pick from a set of answers and picked those two because they were the “best” ones.

For more info on the subject, see Theresa Moss’s informative article in a previous issue of Virtue Mag.

Back in October of last year, I published an article in Virtue Magazine titled “Why They Hate Us.” In the article, I stated:

. . . government meddling in the political affairs of other nations can come to no good. The current invasion and regime change in Iraq is no exception: war supporters are loathe to admit it, but the possibility of Iraq deteriorating into a full-scale civil war is becoming more likely day by day.

Someone didn’t like that statement too much, and in a “Letter to the Editor” the following issue, this person claimed that the above statement was purely “opinion.” Furthermore, he stated:

It is the media’s view, not eyewitness, objective observations from Iraq. What we’re seeing is an attempt to get those insurgents to find that they can have a voice in a democratic nation. In that way, they will decrease in number, and violence will decrease.”

Obviously violence hasn’t decreased, so that’s strike one. Strikes two and three are the latest news reports coming out of Iraq that indicate the country is nearing the brink of civil war:

The negotiations had been mired in sectarian differences, prompting the U.S. ambassador to warn that Washington had spent too much tax-payers’ money in Iraq to tolerate sectarianism and militias in government.

Talabani summoned leaders of all sides to a summit Thursday morning to calm sectarian tension after the bombing.

“This new ugly crime comes as a warning that there is a conspiracy against the Iraqi people to spark a war among brothers,” Talabani said. “We must cooperate and work together against this danger, the danger of civil war. This is the fiercest danger because it threatens our unity and our country with a devastating civil war.”

Read the news reports. It’s becoming painfully clear that events are not going well, and all the spin and whitewashing war supporters will undoubtedly try to engage in won’t change what’s actually happening in Iraq.

From the U.K. Independent:

In a number of respects civil war in Iraq has already begun. Many of the thousand bodies a month arriving in the morgues in Baghdad are of people killed for sectarian reasons. It is no longer safe for members of the three main communities ­ the Sunni and Shia Arabs and the Kurds ­ to visit each other’s parts of the country.

“Iraq is in a Weimar period like Germany in the 1920s which will either end with the country disintegrating or in an authoritarian government taking power,” said Ghassan Atiyyah, an Iraqi political commentator.

Adam’s Blog has an interesting and extremely disturbing story on the possiblity of forced abortions in the Netherlands. It’s definitely worth checking out.

As part of a sculpture project for a design class, I recently bought several decks of playing cards. Four of the decks had fairly traditional designs and patterns on both the front and the back of the cards. The fifth deck was unique, however, since the back of the cards featured patriotic images. The American flag set over beautiful mountain scenery, the Statue of Liberty with the Stars and Stripes in the background, a bald eagle in flight—they were definitely some nifty and entertaining ipictures.

At class the next day, my art teacher stopped by to talk to me about my plans for this sculpture project. After discussing it for a while, I indicated to the teacher that I probably wouldn’t be using the deck of cards that featured those patriotic images.

My teacher completely understood. “Those have some loaded images,” he said.

Loaded images? I wondered. Is he talking about what I think he is?

Sure enough, he was. My teacher indicated he agreed with my concern that the whole “patriotic theme” is a big thing in today’s world, and that it could be kind of controversial, and that. . .

I chimed in, explaining that my decision to not use the cards was purely a design decision. While the exchange was not exceptionally notable, I did have to shake my head at the time. Since when are images of the American flag and other American icons “controversial”?

This incident appears to be a symptom of a problem that is much larger and more serious. Images and themes that aren’t controversial at all are increasingly being treated as controversial, while images and themes that should be controversial are increasingly being treated as normal and undeserving of criticism. Why do cartoons depicting Muhammad cause world-wide outrage—sparking even protests and violence—while “art shows” that feature dung and genitalia-covered pictures of the Virgin Mary receive barely a blip on the radar? Rapper Kanye West recently posed as Jesus on the cover of Rolling Stones magazine—complete with whip marks and a crown of thorns—and an art musuem in Brooklyn once displayed a figured of Jesus submerged in a jar of urine. Where is the outrage and controversy by the general public over these things?

As Pat Buchanan noted in a recent column, “What hypocrisy . . . What has happened in Europe is that the secular press, which loves to mock the beliefs and symbols of religious faith, has now insulted a deadly serious religion that answers insults with action.”

What does the word “loaded” mean? Dictionary.com defines it as meaning, “To charge with additional meanings, implications, or emotional import: loaded the question to trick the witness.” As the example given indicates, “loaded” has a negative connotation to it that implies trickery, deceit, or dishonest motives. Is this what my teacher had in mind when he looked at these beautiful images of the Stars and Stripes, the Statue of Liberty and the bald eagle? Maybe not. Maybe when he used the phrase “loaded images,” he had a slightly different and more kind meaning in mind. But between his use of that phrase and his recognition or belief that using these images in a piece of art would be “controversial,” I can’t help but think that the negative connation was there.

Our next issue of Virtue Magazine should be coming out this Monday, if all goes according to plan. Here’s a sneak peak of some of the featured article in this upcoming issue!

The War Against Violence, by Theresa Moss

Abortion: Exit Stage Right, by Noah S. (give a warm welcome to our newest staff writer!)

Origins of the Civil War: Slavery, by Samuel Ashwood

More German Conquests: The Second World War, by Samuel Ashwood

Jesus and Buddha: Compared and Contrasted by Kelly Miller

And, of course, a lot more! So make sure to check out our latest issue due out next week!

We have here another letter to the editor, but this time it’s one I’ve written. And it’s not about the Constitution or what powers the president should or should not have; instead, it’s about Dick Cheney’s recent hunting accident.

First, you should all read the following pathetic opinion piece that appeared in my college’s newspaper today.

It’s a liberal newspaper (big surprise there, no?), so there is a lot of this kind of stuff that appears frequently, but this hatchet piece actually got me worked up enough to fire off a quick letter to the editor:

Dear Editor,

There are many things that Dick Cheney should rightfully be criticized for, including his role in starting the war in Iraq and “Plamegate.” But the recent hunting accident is not one of those things.

Tanner Kent’s Voices article in the Feb. 16th edition of the Reporter (“It Gets Worse”) appeared to be nothing more than a childish and vindictive attempt to politicize this very unfortunate incident. How about showing a little class, Tanner? Accidents happen—to everyone. Cheney shot a close friend, and he undoubtedly feels terrible about it. Your inappropiate attempt to smear Cheney over this specific incident reveals more about yourself than it does Cheney.

It seems convenient, by the way, that Tanner forgot to mention one very important fact—news reports seem to indicate that the victim of the shooting was at least partially responsible for the accident. Tanner also was apparently too busy trying to imply that Cheney was drunk to mention that law enforcement officials have ruled out alcohol as a factor in the incident.

The following is a letter to the editor that appeared in my town’s newspaper today:

I am weary of hearing every Tom, Dick and Harry criticize the president of the United States and trying to convict him of lies and other dastardly deeds. Most of the Democrats ought to be convicted of lying or misrepresenting the laws and what the president is doing. They are traitors to our country and should be treated like traitors. How can the president conduct a war successfully if he has no authority to find out what the enemy is planning? All other presidents beginning with George Washington have had these powers by virtue of being commander-in-chief and president. The USA cannot take these constitutional rights away.

I think many or all people of our country should rise up and demand that the president should be allowed all the powers and privileges he needs to conduct the war, and all people in the media or Congress be convicted of treason if they try to take these powers away. All through our history eavesdropping and other devices were used. If our privacy is hamstrung, so be it.

During World War II people couldn’t say or write one word against the war without being punished or investigated. Let us go back to that.

Unbelievable. The sad thing is, I have a feeling a lot of war supporters would agree with this sentiment, even while they have the audacity to call themselves “conservatives.” I don’t think this woman deserves to live in America; she seems better suited to living in the Soviet Union—circa 1945.

I happened to run across this picture at the Paleoconservative Youth Movement blog.

Apparently the Muslim in the picture is protesting the recent cartoon controversy, although the message on the sign (“Behead those who say Islam is violent”) is so obviously bizarre that it makes me wonder if it isn’t some sort of a joke.

If that guy is serious though . . . well, that pretty much speaks for itself.