TerrorWar
[Yesterday, a jumbo jet was sent by the Obama adminstration to buzz Manhattan. Thousands of people panicked on the streets and in the office buildings. Hundreds ran for shelter. What were they all afraid of? They were afraid of reliving this:]
The wind at Ground Zero during the first memorial service, September 11, 2002
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I.
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
-- Christina Rossetti
10,000 FEARED DEAD
-- Headline, New York Post, September 12, 2001
AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY I lived in Brooklyn Heights in, of course, Brooklyn. The opening of the Brooklyn Bridge on May 24 of 1883 transformed the high bluff just to the south of the bridge into America's first suburb. It became possible for affluent businessmen from the tip of Manhattan which lay just over the East River to commute across the bridge easily and build their stately mansions and townhouses high above the slapdash docks below. Growth and change would wash around the Heights in the 117 years that followed, but secure on their bluff, on their high ground, the Heights would remain a repository old and new money, power, and some of the finest examples of 19th and early 20th century homes found in New York City.
When I moved to Brooklyn Heights from the suburbs of Westport, Connecticut in the late 90s, it was a revelation to me that such a neighborhood still existed. Small side streets and cul-de-sacs were shaded over by large oaks and maple that made it cool even in the summer doldrums. Street names such as Cranberry, Orange and Pineapple let you know you were off the grid of numbered streets and avenues. Families were everywhere and the streets on evenings and on weekends were full of the one thing you rarely see in Manhattan, children.
Continued...
TO: ISLAM
FROM: AUUO! (AMERICANS UNITED UNDER OBAMA)
RE: KILLING US MORE BETTER
DEAR ISLAM,
It's 9/10 again in America! Our President has said the U.S. "is not and never will be at war with Islam." We say, "Come out, come out, wherever you are! Olly olly oxen free!"
You may have asked yourselves if, with the apotheosis of Barack Hussein Obama, the American supporters of the President of the Millennium are impatient with you. Yes, it's true. You are not fulfilling our desires which we believe we have made clear with our election and deification of Obama. So let's be clear about one thing: as supporters of Obama we thirst for death. Our death. Now that President Obama has signaled we can kill our babies, our brain dead (except if they are serving Democrats), and our too old or too sick, we'd like to move on to ourselves because, as any good Democrat will tell you, there can never be too much death for us!
We would like you, at your earliest opportunity, to slake our deaththirst - especially that of the whitest and therefore most guilty among us - by slaughtering us wholesale.
Continued...
Richard at The Belmont Club is taking a hard look at the Obama Effort in Afghanistan and wondering if the President realizes what he's getting himself into. I think he does.
I think he realizes what his needs are in Afghanistan. What he needs to do is end a war in an American defeat while being seen as "trying for a victory." To do that he has to engineer an American defeat. Iraq is already, in the public mind at least, in the win column. So how do we engineer an American defeat? It is simplicity itself. You begin, not with a "surge" but a ripple.
1) Ripple: Reinforce, but only lightly.
After all, it's not really a "surge."
2) Raise the body count: Tighten the Rules of Engagement on US forces. This loosens the Rules of Engagement for the Taliban which increases the casualties for the US.
3) Look rational: Set “goals” and a “timetable” going in. Make sure these goals cannot be achieved with the resources available in the time allowed.
4) Short Pakistan: Alienate the land power that control the supply routes. Make protecting logistics consume most of the “reinforcements.”
5) Grandstand: When the land supply routes go down, make a valiant “Kennedyesque” resupply “effort” with an airlift for a short period.
5) Look "realistic:" When your goals are not met and airlift fails, announce that you’ve given it the old college try and must regretfully withdraw.
6) Give a history lesson: Make sure you withdraw using plenty of airpower, with lots of large helicopters at the end taking off from Kabul.
The media will be more than happy to compare and contrast the fall of Saigon.
7) Triumphantly involve the UN: Announce at around the same time that your soft diplomacy has born fruit in Iran, and that Hans Blix and the Mullahs have agreed to UN-type weapons inspections of 20 square blocks of the downtown shopping district of Tehran.
8) Be heroic: Announce that the US remains committed to Afghan democracy and get the Congress to agree to fund the Afghan forces and political establishment for "as long as it takes." This can be easily rescinded at a later date as it was for the South Vietnamese.
9) Mission accomplished : Just in time for, say, a 2012 September surprise: "I brought your boys home, and we'll have enough troops for government to fill your sandbags in Fargo this spring!" Make the defeated army "your" helpful-at-home army.
10) Reallocate funding: Once you transform the army into something that fights natural disasters and not enemies, you can slash their budget to the bone. The Navy's next since there won't be any American power to project or protect. But, hey, you've just funded National Health Care so you don't care. Make sure you've got a lot of burn units near major cities. You can name them after Saul Alinsky.
[Republished from last year at this time.]
Five years in. An inch of time. Five years in and the foolish and credulous among us yearn to get out. Their feelings require it. The power of their Holy Gospel of "Imagine" compels them. Their overflowing pools of compassion for the enslavers of women, the killers of homosexuals, the beheaders of reporters, and the incinerators of men and women working quietly at their desks, rise and flood their minds until their eyes flow with crocodile tears while their mouths emit slogans scrawled on cardboard. They believe the world is run on wishes and that they will always have three more.
Like savages shambling about some campfire where all there is to eat are a few singed tubers, they paint their faces with the tatterdemalion symbols of a summer of love long sent down to rot with the worms. They clasp hands and sing songs whose lyrics are ash. "We shall... over... come." Overcome what, overcome who? Overcome their nation? Is that their dream? It is the lifelong dream of those that lead them. That much is certain.
Five years in and we see these old rotting rituals trotted out in the streets like some pagan procession of idols and shibboleths, like some furred and feathered fetish shaken against the sky by hunkering witch-doctors, to hold back the dark, to frighten off the evil spirits and graven images that trouble the sleep of the dreamers.
Five years into the most gentle war ever fought, a war fought on the cheap at every level, a war fought to avoid civilian harm rather than maximize it. Picnic on the grass at Shiloh. Walk the Western Front. Speak to the smoke of Dresden. Kneel down and peek into the ovens of Auschwitz. Sit on the stones near ground zero at Hiroshima and converse with the shadows singed into the wall. Listen to those ghost whisperers of war.
Continued...
Once there under the umbrella of "hunting down Bin Laden," it would be only a matter of time before that "mission" was declared either a success or "impossible." -- American Digest, October 4
Well, that didn't take long, did it? Obama Ponders Outreach to Elements of the Taliban
WASHINGTON — President Obama declared in an interview that the United States was not winning the war in Afghanistan and opened the door to a reconciliation process in which the American military would reach out to moderate elements of the Taliban, much as it did with Sunni militias in Iraq.
What follows is an article I wrote a month before the election on October 4.
Continued...
Left, San Francisco, August 2006. Right, New York, December,2008
Anti-semitism is not a sign, a symbol, a bullet or a gas. It is a Virus. It is the oldest known virus to infest the human soul. In those infected, the virus is clever enough to mask it's existence by renaming itself as "anti-Zionism." Through the renaming of this ancient disease as a “political problem,” infected souls can transmit the virus to their friends, families. They can spread their disease at their schools and in their their community, church, or nation. The virus is also transmitted by exchanging infected fantasies with infected ideologues. By changing it's name the disease made it possible for many to deny that they have contracted the virus, and that their souls are chancre-ridden and rotting. This facilitates the current outbreak.
Continued...
[First published: October, 2003 ]
Sections of "The First Terrorist War"
1. Calling the War By the Right Name.
2. Not Process But Victory Restores Freedom
3. Playing for Time is Playing to Lose
4. The Goal of Radical Islam is Our Destruction
5. The War of Two Religions
6. The Unspoken Role of the Ballistic Missile Submarines
7. Avoiding the Islamic War by Winning the Terrorist War
"[Arabs] were incorrigibly children of the idea, feckless and colour-blind, to whom body and spirit were for ever and inevitably opposed. Their mind was strange and dark, full of depressions and exaltations, lacking in rule, but with more of ardour and more fertile in belief than any other in the world. They were a people of starts, for whom the abstract was the strongest motive, the process of infinite courage and variety, and the end nothing. They were as unstable as water, and like water would perhaps finally prevail." -- T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom
1. Calling the War By the Right Name.
In a war, "Know your enemy" is one of the first axioms in formulating a strategy for victory. It is an axiom the United States has ignored for over two seven years. Instead we’ve seen a host of euphemisms and slogans thrown up in the belief that, having had many decades of a life where ugly things are given pretty or neutral names, Americans can no longer "bear very much reality."
In the years between September. 2001 and today, the public has had little asked of it and seen nothing happen on our soil that alarms it. All is quiet on the western front.
Foggy thinking, attractive in politics, means defeat in war. War requires "a mind of winter;" a mind that is precise, cold, and unrelenting. War requires that we call things what they are and cease to skirt issues that make us, "uncomfortable." Vague names create fluffy policies, hamstrung strategies, and wishful thinking. This is where we are drifting.
Continued...
"I find myself increasingly repulsed by Muslim practices and beliefs. Middle Eastern, African, Asian, American, the country of origin makes no difference. Women and children treated as chattel, genital mutilation, child brides, honor killings, culturally accepted pedophilia, the black drapes and head coverings, no rights, no votes, little to non-existent educational opportunities, no voice, no choices, no recourse. Persecution of homosexuals. Imprisonment, stoning and whipping for morality crimes. Lack of free speech. The foul treatment of non-Muslims in Islamic countries. The demented hatred of Jews. Sharia Law. Wahhabism. Madrasas. Blind obedience to Mullahs.Praying towards Mecca - a place on the map few will ever see. Individuality is shut down, originality and freedom of the mind discouraged. Islam pisses on human talents that fall outside the dark walls of its faith. Hell, I even dislike their dislike of dogs....
My lip curls at their love of theocracies, a willingness to subjugate themselves to the whims of dissolute rulers along side an ancient text they can’t even begin to comprehend, subsuming their divine individuality to a tide of dogmatic mandates. I have no use, or respect, for the people who follow this religion. I’m past tired of their bombing, shooting, acid throwing, coup d’etat loving, rioting asses and it looks like the rest of the world could stand a break from these murdering bastards, too.And she's just warming up.
In the news today, Feds Warn Of Terror Plot Against NYC SubwaysA Pakistani immigrant was arrested and convicted for a scheme to blow up the subway station at Herald Square in 2004. There was also a planned cyanide attack on the subways by al-Qaida operatives that authorities say was called off in 2002; another aborted al-Qaida plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge in 2003; and a plot to bomb underwater train tunnels to flood lower Manhattan, which was broken up in 2006 by several arrests overseas.
Not, alas, news to me. What It Would Take (below) is republished from American Digest from March 13, 2004. As you and yøur family give thanks tomorrow, you might want to include George W. Bush.
AN EMAIL ASKS WHAT IT MIGHT TAKE for Islamic terrorists to move to the next level in the United States. It wouldn't, as most of us realize, take all that much. Here's one approach, but only one. There are many.
The Elements:
One City: New York
Three Locations: The Brooklyn Bridge, Union Square, Penn Station
Terrorists: 4
The Equipment:
Plastique explosives ( 10-15 pounds) of good quality, preferably military, from one of the stashes hidden years ago around Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn Backpacks: 2
Ten penny nails and ball bearings: 4 pounds
Anthrax: 2 Liters from the New Jersey stash
Machine Guns: 4 (Small) with 2 extra clips each
The Time:
Late September to Early March when the weather makes wearing coats common.
Intellectual Equipment:
An understanding of the New York subway and bridge system, an understanding of symbolism in America, a willingness to die.
The Method:
For over a year after the Eleventh, I used to think about the nature of the Brooklyn Bridge, and how easy it would be to damage this 19th century structure every time I walked across it -- which was often.
On the Eleventh I stood at the Brooklyn end of the bridge handing out water bottles to the ash-shrouded ghosts that had fled across it in endless droves.
After the 11th the Brooklyn Bridge was closed except for emergency vehicles for weeks on end. After that the bridge was guarded and vehicles vetted on a random schedule for months. Sometimes the "security" went so far as to park a police car at the Brooklyn entrance.
For all I know this goes on today.
The Bridge and what it represents and, more importantly, what it controls in the way of access to and from NYC, makes for an exquisite lynchpin for a memorable workday morning in New York City. The way to work this little terrorist scenario is as follows:
Continued...
Image from Day by Day Cartoon by Chris Muir
[What follows is a slightly edited transcript of what I saw and how I felt on the 11th of September, 2001 from Brooklyn Heights in New York City. On that day I was posting to a West Coast Computer Conferencing system known as The Well. As a result, even though I was writing from Brooklyn Heights, directly across the river from the Towers, the time stamp reflects PST.
For a moving tribute that was made soon after the 11th see 911 in Pictures
For an excellent history of what has happened since see Lawhawk's 9/11: Seven Years Later]
Tue 11 Sep 01 08:07
Saw the first tower collapse from the Promeade across the river in Brooklyn. Fine white and pale yellow ash everywhere. Lower Manhattan covered in smoke with ash still drifting down.
Military jets overhead every five minutes or so.
Lower span of Brooklyn Bridge jammed with people walking out of the city, many covered with white ash. Ghosts. The Living Dead. BQE empty except for convoys of emergency vehicles.
Sirens in all directions. Ferry ships emerging from the smoke heading to the Brooklyn shore riding low in the water fully loaded.
This is monstrous.
Deaths in the thousands in New York.
My body is trembling with sorrow and rage. I saw the first tower fall. Everyone in it would have been killed. This, all this, must be stopped. Those who have done this must be wiped out to the last.
War with whom?
Continued...
Truth: "uncool."
Nineteen-year-old Army Pfc. Aaron J. Ward, a Fort Lewis military policeman whose hometown was San Jacinto, Calif., was killed May 6 in Iraq's Anbar province when his patrol came under enemy fire. - Ranger, sub officer, MP with links to state died in war last month EDITOR'S NOTE: Each month, the P-I remembers the servicemen and servicewomen with ties to Washington who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"The American culture of cool has become a nation apart, an alternate-America..."
It was Easter Sunday in 2004 and we were two and a half years into the war. Good Friday evening was one of those nights when, in Southern California, the weather and the combine to create what are rightly called "balmy conditions." Balm, as in a kind of salve to the soul and the skin. The air is warm but not too warm. The skies are clear and the stars seem closer. My then wife and I had just seen some current comic book confection at one of the 20 screen multiplexes that are so numerous in this area that you can see the same movies 15 times within a ten mile radius.
We sat by a large sandstone and marble fountain in the stone circle between the vast theater and the vaster parking lot. It was date night and the beginning of Spring Break for the schools of Orange County. All around us kids from 11 to 18 were whooping and laughing and forming clusters of friends. They were dressed according to the upscale Goth-Surfer/Balkan Refugee dress-code common to the kid culture here on the coast. Most were too young to have tattoos or piercing, but you could see some were already planning where those lifestyle statements would go. They were slim, energetic and heedless of the future. In short, they were just reasonably rich kids in America in 2003. No different now in 2008, seven and a half years into a war they've been trained to hate or ignore.
The war was not and will probably never become these kids' concern. It isn't even something they consider outside of, perhaps, a few classroom exercises of dubious intent or merit. There is no reason they should consider war, nor do I wish that upon them. It isn't, in any real sense, their war. War isn't being asked of us or the affluent kids of Orange County, nor does it seem likely to be. Besides, war isn't what they're into.
[Note: First published on September 22, 2004 as WHY WE ARE IN IRAQ : Military Bases Are A Requirement, Democracy is Merely an Elective. Only the names have changed. The songs remain the same.]
"Did you ever get the feeling that you wanted to go?
And still get the feeling that you wanted to stay?"
-- Jimmy Durante
Resolved: To safeguard the personal and economic wellbeing of the civilized world in the 21st century, it is essential for the United States to control Iraq for strategic and tactical military purposes alone.
Let's take a step back from our always entertaining electoral circus to cast a cold eye on what needs to be done in Iraq beyond November and far beyond 2005. Don't watch the hand waving the magic wand around, watch the hand held behind the back. It holds what is going to be pulled out of the hat.
Instead of spending untold hours listening to this or that speech from the two sides of the American coin, it's more instructive to take down an atlas, turn to a spread displaying the middle-east and meditate on what needs to be done to control that section of the world.
And while you're at it here's a couple of things you can forget about:
- 1) Democracy in Iraq at all costs. Forget that "We" are in Iraq to bring the blessings of "democracy" to the people. It would be a nice gift to instill "democracy" in an Islamic state of the middle-east. We will spend a lot of money trying to achieve this. We will be sincere in our desire for it to be born. It will make our task easier in the short and long term. But "democracy" is not strictly necessary for the current strategic interests of the United States in the region.
- "Five years ago, Middle Eastern extremists were killing Israelis and Americans. Today they are killing each other. Why is it that some people persist in claiming that Israel's and America's Middle East policy is a failure?" -- Alan Chamberlain
A friend in Israel notes that, during the previous week, whenever the television news would announce a possible ceasefire between the Palestinian factions of Hamas and Fatah, her husband would shout towards the television, "No! No! Don't do it!"
Continued...The ever-expanding throng of those who want to "get out now even if we have to come back later" seem to be trial-balooning a new Middle East meme. To wit, "That troublesome region? Hah, it isn't really important. Just a bunch of Arabs and Jews bopping about. Who cares?"
The American Interest showcases this devil-may-care attitude with The Irrelevance of the Middle East by Philip Auerswald: "As the 21st century unfolds, the Middle East (leaving Israel aside for the moment) will matter less and less to the United States and to most of the rest of the world." You've got to love that aside about leaving Israel aside.
LURKING BENEATH OUR INTERNAL ARGUMENT concerning the relentless demographic expansion of Islam into the West without assimilation, is the persistent background question, "Oh, my, whatever shall WE do with THEM?"
WE are, you see, like muddlers and fiddlers since Nero, worried about THEM. Our doltish conservative muddlers and fiddlers worry about what "THEY will do to US" if we aren't very, very careful and selective about which of THEM we capture or kill while WE seek to give THEM the "gifts" of freedom and democracy. Our brave new fiddlers on the Left fiddle about worrying if THEY have enough to eat, enough to wear, enough respect, enough, in short, of the love THEY deserve for not killing US today.
Both bumbling groups may differ in the focus of their fretting, but fret they do. For the problem, as they have defined it, has to do with what is commonly stated as 'a statistically small group of Muslims around the world' who need to be dealt with in some manner so that greater Islam can get on with the historic task of being "a religion of peace and understanding." The majority of both camps of muddlers and fiddlers agree on this one thing: It isn't Islam that's the problem, just a few heretics that have gotten out of hand in their zeal to obey the will of God, and, hey, who hasn't done that from time to time?
One solution, commonly referenced as "the Left/Liberal" position is essentially "leave them alone and they'll come home. They know its for their own good." The other solution, "the Right/Conservative" position, is to force assimilation, modernization, reformation and democratic mechanisms upon Islam "for its own good."
But this conjoined pair of 'Recommendations' floats right to the top of the Surrender cesspool.
RECOMMENDATION 31: Amnesty. Amnesty proposals must be far-reaching. Any successful effort at national reconciliation must involve those in the government finding ways and means to reconcile with former bitter enemies.It would seem that to the cardboard cut-outs that fashioned this chunk of crap that the criminals who have been building bombs and shooting our soldiers must, for "the sake of the children," "world peace," or the end of Israel, or some such, be let to just walk away. What's more, Baker expects everyone to agree to this going in. No override from the executive or the legislature.RECOMMENDATION 37: Iraqi amnesty proposals must not be undercut in Washington by either the executive or the legislative branch.
Let's just suppose we, at some time in the far distant future, really do get out of Iraq. In the process, some group of criminals takes aim at a departing brigade and slaughters them by fair means or foul?
I guess that would be, from Baker's perspective, just dumb luck filed under "Shit happens."
That's the problem with all these pabulum reports and swatches of smarm oozing out of our "corridors of power" these days. There is simply no will to put some power in the proposals. Cardboard souls in empty skulls just wishing and hoping that somehow the party years will return and the American Happy World will roll along. As well it might.
For today. For, maybe, tomorrow.
But we all know, deep down, we're just waiting for the day of the bomb.
One of my more clear-headed email correspondents has a plan for a little R&R for Iraq Operations at this point in the game. To wit:
Continued...Their silence keeps me sleepless for I know:
Within the smoke their ash revolves as snow,
To settle on our skin as fading stars
Dissolve into bright dust at break of day.
Written September 4,2004 -- In another place and time.
The boy that lies in his father's lap covered with crusts of blood gazing upward at nothing, nothing at all except his own pain.
The soldier with the unlit cigarette carrying the little girl in filthy underwear with a long smear of blood across her nose and down her chin.
The child's small hand with the dry pool of blood in the palm and the small gold crucifix lying in it.
The stretcher being run past the camera carrying what might, under the burns and the blood, be a young girl.... and another, and another, and another, and another, and another....
I began to gather these images yesterday, I think. Or was it the day before? I'm not really sure. The cascade of outrages, the piling of atrocity on top of atrocity, has become so unremitting that it is sometimes difficult to know where one episode of evil ends and another begins.
Continued...THE NEW BATTLE FLAG now being waved high over the armies of Allah mustering across the world is not the banner of Muhammad, but a flag almost as ancient as the prophet, the Bloody Shirt. Among the weak in arms and courage and righteousness, the Bloody Shirt is their weapon of mass distraction; their attempt to storm the moral high ground and hold it as they wait for their reinforcements of love, peace, compassion and truce to flow in from the far corners of the world screaming "Stop this barbaric war that slaughters, for God's sake, innocent women and children!"
Harvey Logan: Rules? In a knife fight? No rules.
[Butch immediately kicks Harvey in the groin]
Butch Cassidy: Well, if there aint' going to be any rules, let's get the fight started. -- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
"You hear me talkin', hillbilly boy? I ain't through with you by a damn sight. I'ma get medieval on your ass." -- Pulp Fiction
By rote and by ritual most Americans to assert that they "Support our troops." But as we all know, yet seldom admit, America has more of the known reserves of the world's bullshit than the Saudis have oil. The truth of the matter is that far too many Americans are becoming far too interested in our troops behaving correctly than actually supporting and sustaining them. They blather support out of one orifice while spewing disdain from the other. We hear these clapped-out flatulators daily at work, on the street, and over the tube of the boobs. I don't know about you, but for me these hyperventilating hypocrites are beginning to gripe my hindquarters big time.
BUSH STATES WHAT HAS BEEN OBVIOUS FOR OVER FOUR YEARS ( Bush says fight against terror is 'World War III' ) and the ripping sound of twisting knickers and busted bodices echos across the blogosphere.
Continued...If it's a Crusade, let's start crusading....
IS WAR ALWAYS POPULAR in America? Not since the Revolutionary War. The Continental Congress had to gain support on the home front if it was to defeat the British. John Adams estimated that only one-third of the population was in favor of the Revolution at any one time, one-third was opposed, and one-third was neutral. Some of this depended upon whose army was closest.
I was out at a bar and a concert the other night. One of the party showed up, bellied up to the bar, ordered a drink and, getting it, raised his glass and said: "Here's to the 33% popularity rating." Some polite assent was noted, but I somehow forgot to touch my glass.
"I don't think popularity has much to do with it now," I said. "Getting elected may be about 'popularity,' but once you're in and can't run again it's about doing what you want with the power you've got. By my count there can't be any change in the administration or its policies until late January, 2009. I make that about three years. Three years. A lot can happen. For instance, he's got two justices on the court.
Continued...
Pay me now for not kill you then.
FOR AN INSANE THUG WHO HATES THE JEWS, Iran's president has certainly learned and lived the meaning of hutzpah. Not content to play nuclear brinksmanship with a world that could reduce his country to a glowing puff of cosmic flatulence in an afternoon, Ahmadinejad now wants to get paid for all those years Iran didn't build a nuclear weapon.
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the West should compensate Iran for its past suspension of nuclear research as a way of building trust.-- Iran demands nuclear compensationAs the article notes, "Iran's suspension of uranium enrichment two years ago - the basis of his call for compensation - had been voluntary." But really, why should that make any difference to the mind set of this man and his whole demented cohort?
This is straight from the Yassar Arafat Playbook. First you threaten to kill a lot of people and drag an entire region of the world into chaos and war.
Continued...Nobody has ever died from a cartoon. If the worst thing the Nazis ever did had been to draw cartoons of death camps instead of putting Jews in them, six million Jews would be alive today. When was the last time any country decided to kill a Muslim anywhere in the world because they felt insulted? But the Muslims have created a new international law called the "insult law." This means they have the right to kill you whenever they please, and you have no right to do anything about it. If a Muslim were walking down a street in Israel with a picture of an insulting cartoon in hand, no Israeli would threaten his life. They would be too busy celebrating the fact that it was a cartoon and not a bomb. -- Jackie Mason and Raoul Felder: The ironies of the cartoon jihadHat tip to JC for the pointer.
MICHAEL TOTTEN, reporting from Iraq, takes you on a chilling tour of one of the holding sites for Abu Ghraib during the Saddam regime. His report, The Head of the Snake, ends with these words:
The hardest thing to see was the cell used to hold children before they were murdered. My translator Alan read some of the messages carved into the wall.No sense in saying the obvious. The pictures and words that come before say it all."I was ten years old. But they changed my age to 18 for execution."
"Dear Mom and Dad. I am going to be executed by the Baath. I will not see you again."
10,725 people were killed in this one building alone. All died during torture. Formal execution actually took place in Abu Ghraib.
If I listened long enough to you,
I'd find a way to believe that it's all true.
Knowing that you lied, straight-faced, while I cried,
Still I'd look to find a reason to believe.
-- "A Reason To Believe"
IS IT TOO MUCH TO ASK that a rich and powerful organ grinder like the New York Times spend a little money and hire a "Stupidity Editor" (SE) ? No, not an internal SE, since just riding herd on the anonymous Editorial scribblers would be a full time job for at least five Pulitzer finalists, but simply an external SE to play "Katie, bar the door!" for all the gunk that consistently seeps onto the OP portion of the OP/ED page.
An old friend who works at the New York Times once confessed to me, not without a certain shame, that the overarching game plan of the Times was to become "the national newspaper of teachers and college professors." And in this they are, beyond a doubt, succeeding. But that does not mean they have to give space every other day to the kind of sludge seeping from the hyperbolic sump pumps that ceaselessly churn in the petrified forests of the Groves of Academe.
Today's seepage is entitled, in a heart warming and positive manner, We Can Live With a Nuclear Iran . It was pumped out of the fervid mind of one Barry R. Posen, a professor of political "science" at MIT. It is a soothing, calming item that, blithely overlooking the unremitting dementia that has ruled Iran for decades, purports to prove that a nuclear Iran would simply be a 'management' problem for the Western Elites to 'handle.' On the one hand, the message of the essay is "Don't worry. Be happy," while on the other it is the parallel message of "What? Me worry?"
While there may in some alternate universe be a cogent argument for simply kicking back and letting events in Iran unfold as they will, there's nothing resembling it in Mr. Posen's article. The unstated premise is that an Islamic nuclear weapon developed by the world's leading Radical Islamic state would forever remain specific to that state. This concept evolves from the idea that nation states are still the only social structures of significance in the 21st century. It's a tidy concept, but it is wrong. The globalization of ideology driven by instant communication and the ability of men and material to be anywhere on earth within 48 hours, makes Posen's premise of nation states as the only significant actors on the world stage quaint to say the least.
What the "What? Me worry?" intellectuals in our universities fail to see, or, seeing, fail to credit, is the fact that Islamic Fascism is a global virus which is replicating with all the speed of other viruses in the modern age. Indeed, it is currently outpacing avian flu. While it may take the resources of a state controlled by religious fanatics and fat with oil funds to create a nuclear weapon, the distribution network for such devices is already in place use them.
For example: If we can only monitor 5% of the containers coming into US ports, how many containers can Mexico monitor? Indeed, to deliver a nuclear weapon to Mexico, you don't need a container or a port of entry at all. A fast boat and a beach in the Yucatan will do quite nicely, thank you. Once that's done, you don't have to control a US port to attack the US with a nuclear weapon, or even drive it into the country. You
Continued...MISSING, SOMEHOW, from your morning newspaper: Investor's Business Daily: Saddam Had WMD
Continued...Even after the experience of the Great War, and the Depression, people on the eve of the Hitler war could not appreciate what was coming. It is only in retrospect that we understand what happened as the 1930s progressed -- when a spineless political class, eager at any price to preserve a peace that was no longer available, performed endless demeaning acts of appeasement to the Nazis; while the Nazis created additional grievances to extract more.-- David Warren, "Oncoming"This is precisely what is happening now, as we are confronted by the Islamist fanatics, whose views and demands are already being parroted by fearful “mainstream” Muslim politicians. We will do anything to preserve a peace that ceased to exist on 9/11. Not one of our prominent politicians dares even to name the enemy.
Hassan Bolkhari: "If you study European history, you will see who was the main power to hoard money and wealth, in the 19th century. In most cases, it is the Jews. Perhaps that was one of the reasons which caused Hitler to begin the anti-Semitic trend...."
FROM LGF comes this Memri video with subtitles .
It's important to watch this short video because it shows Professor Hassan Bolkhari, Iranian "mass media expert" and cultural advisor to the Iranian Education Ministry speaking calmly and in a soothing and persuasive voice to a group of what appear to be students. Among the things he is saying in explaining the deeper cultural subtext of "Tom & Jerry" is this:
Every Jew was forced to wear a yellow star on his clothing. The Jews were degraded and termed "dirty mice." Tom and Jerry was made in order to change the Europeans' perception of mice. One of terms used was "dirty mice."Now we will pass over this "Iranian expert's" stated belief that Tom & Jerry is a product of "the evil Jewish Walt Disney company." After all, the cartoon's producer MGM was also a Jewish company ( Louis B. Mayer / Walt Disney -- what's the difference, really? ). Instead, the video gives you a chilling view of the Fascist mind at work. Taking in the tone of voice, the calm demeanor, the slick look and the deadpan delivery, you might almost think this person believes every word he says. Continued...I'd like to tell you that... It should be noted that mice are very cunning... and dirty.
7. -- Increased delivery of Pizza to Pentagon
ANY QUESTIONS?
More photos from FROM the Muslim No-Cartoons-Ever Demonstration in New York .
Seriously, for serious we shall some day become about this matter, what are we to do about these children of a younger god? For, looked at from any adult perspective, children is what these acolytes of Islam are, and children is what they will remain -- growing ever stronger and more dangerous in the absence of any effective discipline -- until such time as they are instructed, in no uncertain terms, to sit down, shut up, go to their rooms and sleep off the spiritual intoxication which has become a danger to others and, most of all, themselves.
And yet, no such intervention seems readily at hand from the "leaders" of Western Civilization. With numbing regularity, we are reminded daily that Islam is the youngest of the world's monotheisms and hence, I suppose, we all need to cut it a bit of slack. We are reminded of this much as clever lawyers for adolescent school serial killers remind the juries of their clients' tender years in hopes they will ignore the bodies, the collections of weapons, and the hand-crafted web sites promising death daily to all those who will not respect their deadly dementias.
Our elected "leaders" -- interested as always in preserving the status quo ante that elected them and a smooth ride through the always approaching next elections -- are tireless in their tepid promotion of Islam as merely a moderate grouping of one billion misunderstood kids. In this our leaders' dinner party guests, vacation partners, celebrity intellectuals, pundits and entertainers join them in the maudlin plaint "What's wrong with peace, love and understanding?" It is the kind of bromide that those Krazy Kolumbine Kidz would have dismissed as "lame" and go on shooting. But consequences matter little to the private jet elite. Once you've an assured seat on a G5 you cease to inhabit a country and exist only in your own private fantasy island. The consequences of your political philosophies seldom visit this island. You can just emit gaseous slogans and fly, fly away.
Wouldn't it be refreshing for those of us left at the commercial aviation security gates to hear, just once, a bit of straight talk about Islam, the MTV religion that is devoted to getting its latest Gangsta video played in heavy rotation on the news around the world?
Just once wouldn't it be immensely gratifying to get hit with just a jot of a smidgen of the truth about this lethal spiritual confection? Just one time wouldn't you listen with rapt attention to one political pundit stepping up to the microphone and keeping it real about Islam; bringing it out from behind the smoke machine of it's current greatest hit, "A Peaceful, Loving Religion," by Cool Allah and the Gang? "Peaceful" and "Loving" might be the refrain but what we see in the videos is quite a different story. An honest politician might narrate it thus:
"Hey, kick back, relax and chill. These Muslims are just the teenagers of faith. It's a phase. We all went through it. What's a few bombings, stonings, riots, wars, clitorectomies, mass murders, honor killings, kidnappings, subway slaughters, car burnings, skyscraper demolitions, the odd beheading here and there and the fooling about with nerve gas and weapons grade plutonium? They're kids. They'll grow out of it. Love is all they need."
Continued...An excerpt from Dan Simmons' April message:
Continued...
The Time Traveler shook his head. "You've understood nothing I've said. Nothing. Athens failed in Syracuse -- and doomed their democracy -- not because they fought in the wrong place and at the wrong time, but because they weren't ruthless enough. They had grown soft since their slaughter of every combat-age man and boy on the island of Melos, the enslavement of every woman and girl there. The democratic Athenians, in regards to Syracuse, thought that once engaged they could win without absolute commitment to winning, claim victory without being as ruthless and merciless as their Spartan and Syracusan enemies. The Athenians, once defeat loomed, turned against their own generals and political leaders -- and their official soothsayers. If General Nicias or Demosthenes had survived their captivity and returned home, the people who sent them off with parades and strewn flower petals in their path would have ripped them limb from limb. They blamed their own leaders like a sun-maddened dog ripping and chewing at its own belly."I thought about this. I had no idea what the hell he was saying or how it related to the future.
"You came back in time to lecture me about Thucydides?" I said. "Athens? Syracuse? Sun-Tzu? No offense, Mr. Time Traveler, but who gives a damn?"
"It is because of these mid-flight 'Walter Mitty' adventures that I knew the morning of the massacre that the hijackers had used the Hudson River as a visual reference to guide them to Manhattan. I knew it before noon on that very day. I knew it, because I had seen it outside my window on many flights, and I too knew that as long as I followed that clearly defined river, that I could find the fabled island of Manhattan. There was no need to practice using navigation aids like GPS. Just look out the window,
Continued...There were, it is now believed, six bombs: two produced by Iran herself; two purchased from Kim Jong Il, desperate for cash to keep his movies rolling and his regime afloat; and the greatest prize: two high-yield nukes from the Russian Mafia. These broke the bank -- but oil prices were high, their target was priceless -- and money would be worthless after their use.Read what comes before and after. If you can bear it.
TO JUDGE BY NEWS AND BLOGSPHERE REACTION, you'd think an asteroid has hit the Earth and shaken the crust around the planet: Palestinian leadership hit by political earthquake. Everywhere you browse, jaws have dropped -- "I never saw it comin' ", "Whoa, Nelly!", and "Who'da thunk it?" reactions abound.
Me, I don't get all this "shock, horror, surprise." I'm not surprised for a nanosecond. I mean, really, why wouldn't Hamas win going away? They've got the will to kill and the track record. They've got the guns and the goons, and they've had them for years. They've got Jimmy Carter on deck certifying the latest Fascist election and Stephen Speilberg honoring their feelings and boosting their self-esteem. They are the cocks of the walk in the ratty strips of land bracketing Israel and they've got the money too.
Plus they ran on that winning campaign slogan that they've run on for years: "Let's just kill all the Jews now!"
This is a campaign slogan, program, policy and plan that Arabs of all stripes in
Continued...PJM News - Hamas captures majority of parliament seats ".... a devastating upset that is sure to throw Mideast peacemaking into turmoil."
Continued...
SOME GANG HAD PACKED UP most of the tall aluminum light posts in Seattle, laid them out lengthwise, and were carrying them through the streets on dog-drawn wagons. Now why do you suppose they did that?
Oil? No.Gunpowder? Yes.
Cannon barrels. The tall standing posts were smooth and hollow and made excellent cannon barrels.
The police had fled. They lived in the suburbs and they had their own families to take care of.
Things weren't that bad during the first few weeks because lots of families had supplies in the basements. Beans, baby-wipes, bottled water. The free-for-alls at the grocery stores during those first few days were amazing, predictable. What you'd expect. The strong do sometimes survive. Fights over cereal and parking lots filled with bodies, dead.
Dozens reported dead and wounded in Aspen, Colorado blasts**
Pool Coverage by Rodney G. Wentworth, ("Aspen Social Calendar"), Jack White ("Let's Ski Aspen!") and Jennifer Tiffany Beal, New York Times Spa Critic
Three explosions rocked Colorado Rocky Mountain resort town of Aspen on Monday night, leaving at least 30 people dead and 160 wounded.One blast hit the St Regis Aspen hotel, a second Olive's restaurant and the third explosion rocked the Whole Foods Supermarket in the resort town's tourist area about 7:15 p.m. local time (1715 GMT). Colorado authorities said the blasts were likely not caused by suicide
Continued...IN THE MIDST OF A GROUP HUG surrounding Feminist conscientious objector on Flickr comes this startling bit of information about what goes on during party time at Mecca. Here's how they get down!
Any questions?The following are excerpts from a rally of Iranian pilgrims in Mecca, aired on Iran's Channel 1 and Al-'Alam TV, on January 9, 2006. The speaker addresses the crowd in front of a backdrop showing the WorldTradeCenter and an American flag in flames.
TO VIEW THIS CLIP, VISIT: Iranian Pilgrims in Mecca
Crowd: "Israel is the enemy of Allah."
Man: "May the hands of the infidels be chopped off."
Crowd: "May the hands of the infidels be chopped off."
Man: "May the hands of the infidels be chopped off."
Crowd: "May the hands of the infidels be chopped off."
Man: "[Chopped off] from the land of the believers."
Crowd: "From the land of the believers."
Man: "The audience will now split into two groups: One group will settle the score with America, and the other will settle the score with Israel. This group now: Death to America!"
Crowd: "Death to America!"
Man: "Death to Israel!"
Crowd: "Death to Israel! Death to America!"
Man: "Death to America!"
Crowd: "Death to America!"
Man: "Death to America!"
Crowd: "Death to Israel! Death to America!" Death to Israel!"
Man: "All together now: Death to America! Death to Israel!"
Crowd: "Death to America! Death to Israel! Death to America! Death to Israel! Death to America! Death to Israel! Death to America! Death to Israel!"
File Under: No Semi-Bold Bush Deed Goes Comprehended
IN A SEMI-BOLD STEP: Bush to Call on Guard to Bolster Border, the President's actions prove to be too much for the stunted intellects of Congress, no matter what the party.
Example the first of what will be hundreds, Chuck-E-Cheese Hagel, who somehow passed the entrace exam for the Republican Party: "We have stretched our military as thin as we have ever seen it in modern times. And what in the world are we talking about here, sending a National Guard that we may not have any capacity to send up to or down to protect borders? That's not their role."
Not? Their? Role?
Perhaps as many as possible should phone or write to Hagel with this simple thought that even he could hope to comprehend.
"Hagel,
When you have and organization called 'The National Guard' one of the first purposes of it is to 'Guard the Nation.'
Press 2 if you wish to continue in English."
DENNIS PRAGER at Townhall this week published a column entitled: The war we are fighting needs a more accurate name which he concludes with:
We pray that there arises a strong Muslim group that is guided by the Quranic verse, "There shall be no coercion in matters of faith."But until such time, we had better understand that we are not merely fighting a war on terror, but a war against an ideology that wishes us to convert, be subject to Islamic law, or die.
Prager does not quite get around to finding "a more accurate name."
My own suggestion for Mr. Prager is taken from an essay I wrote in 2003 called "The First Terrorist War" in which I too bemoaned the weak and vacillating title "The War on Terror." Instead, I suggest that we should begin to understand this current global conflict as:
The War of Two Religions
Through the violent attacks of a Radical Islam, two religions have been brought into conflict. The first is that of Islam, a faith that at its core requires absolute submission from its adherents, and looks towards the subjugation of the world as its ultimate apotheosis. As the youngest of the monotheistic religions, Islam is at a point in its development that Christianity passed through centuries ago. And it is not with Christianity that Islam is currently at war. Islam is saving that for the mopping up phase of its current campaign. The religion that Islam has engaged is a much younger one, the religion of Freedom.
Ever since September 11, the subtext of this war could be summed up as something like, "Suburban Jason, with his iPod, godlessness, and earring, loves to live too much to die, while Ali, raised as the 11th son of an impoverished but devout street-sweeper in Damascus, loves death too much to live." The Iranians, like bin Laden, promulgate this mythical antithesis, which, like all caricatures, has elements of truth in it. But what the Iranians, like the al Qaedists, do not fully fathom, is that Jason, upon concluding that he would lose not only his iPod and earring, but his entire family and suburb as well, is capable of conjuring up things far more frightening than anything in the 8th-century brain of Mr. Ahmadinejad. Unfortunately, the barbarity of the nightmares at Antietam, Verdun, Dresden, and Hiroshima prove that well enough.Victor Davis Hanson -- Has Ahmadinejad Miscalculated?
FROM THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION'S IRAQ INDEX: Tracking Variables of Reconstruction & Security in Post-Saddam Iraq.
- US Troops killed in hostile action in Iraq, last 6 months, from October 2005 to March 2006, in order: 81, 76, 50, 49, 43, 25.
- Iraqi military and police killed in Iraq, last 6 months, from October 2005 to March 2006, in order: 215, 176, 193, 189, 158, 193 (and the three months before that were 304, 282, 233).
- Car Bombings, last 6 months, from October 2005 to March 2006, in order: 70, 70, 70, 68, 30, 30.
- Civilians killed in Iraq, last 6 months, from October 2005 to March 2006, in order: 527, 826, 532, 732, 950, 446 (upper bound, two months before that were 2489 and 1129).
[HT: Dadmanly]
An excerpt:
Continued...HENNINGER on the return of magical thinking:
There is reason to believe that pre-9/11 thinking will in time return and prevail.Defenders of Moussaoui's life sentence say he will "rot in prison." Perhaps in a better world Zacarias Moussaoui would share a cell with Hannibal Lecter. But if our moral betters aren't going to let Saddam's torturers rot in Abu Ghraib, if they aren't going to let the CIA's most important al Qaeda captives rot in "secret" foreign prisons, they certainly aren't going to let Moussaoui rot in Florence, Colo. He will be treated more than well.
Not to mention the Moussaoui trial itself. We arrive at the end of these interminable trial circuses of procedural delay and then claim "the system works" and "justice" has been done. No, it has done damage to the normal idea of justice. He saw the game early on and made a mockery of it. Moussaoui achieved a two-year delay in his trial by demanding to interview al Qaeda detainees. But our moral betters insist that the whole lot of Guantanamo detainees be given access to this same system of justice. They would diminish and crush it.
The odds were strong, as Moussaoui's lawyers knew and the government's should have known, that 9 of 12 jurors would vote that Moussaoui's childhood was "dysfunctional" and "mitigating." This is the therapeutic vocabulary that the West has developed to explain anything in the years from the postwar period to, say, September 11.
For quite awhile after September 11, we were a people united in the war on terror. By now we have let the adrenal pleasures of political fighting over the presidency dissipate the difficult emotions of staying united against a real enemy. The war in Iraq has contributed, but you can't lay it all off on Iraq. The ambiguity of the Moussaoui jury is a portent. See "United 93." It is very difficult. It should be."
-- -- Daniel Henninger: 'United 93' and the 20th Hijacker
LURKING BENEATH OUR INTERNAL ARGUMENT concerning the relentless demographic expansion of Islam into the West without assimilation, is the persistent background question, "Oh, my, whatever shall WE do with THEM?"
WE are, you see, like muddlers and fiddlers since Nero, worried about THEM. Our doltish conservative muddlers and fiddlers worry about what "THEY will do to US" if we aren't very, very careful and selective about which of THEM we capture or kill while WE seek to give THEM the "gifts" of freedom and democracy. Our brave new fiddlers on the Left fiddle about worrying if THEY have enough to eat, enough to wear, enough respect, enough, in short, of the love THEY deserve for not killing US today.
Both bumbling groups may differ in the focus of their fretting, but fret they do. For the problem, as they have defined it, has to do with what is commonly stated as 'a statistically small group of Muslims around the world' who need to be dealt with in some manner so that greater Islam can get on with the historic task of being "a religion of peace and understanding." The majority of both camps of muddlers and fiddlers agree on this one thing: It isn't Islam that's the problem, just a few heretics that have gotten out of hand in their zeal to obey the will of God, and, hey, who hasn't done that from time to time?
One solution, commonly referenced as "the Left/Liberal" position is essentially "leave them alone and they'll come home. They know its for their own good." The other solution, "the Right/Conservative" position, is to force assimilation, modernization, reformation and democratic mechanisms upon Islam "for its own good."
The two positions agree that "something must be done." They differ only in their specifications for "a New!, Improved! Islam" that can play well with other religions and nations in the post-modern world where "business as usual" is worshipped more than any other state of affairs. Both positions, whether they focus on "giving" the benefits
Continued..."Teach your children well,
Their father's hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you'll know by."
-- Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
JEANNE DEVOTO OF bitter sanity doesn't post daily, but when she does....
A few predictions
I've been thinking that it's only a matter of time before mainstream thought in this country begins the process of lionizing Saddam Hussein. With his trial beginning, the tone of media coverage is starting to bear out my worst fears. (You wouldn't think it would be possible to admire someone who has done what Saddam has uncontestably done, but in a country where people wear Guevera t-shirts without hiding their faces, I suppose just about anything is possible.)I predict:...
Continued...
Their silence keeps me sleepless for I know:
Within the smoke their ash revolves as snow,
To settle on our skin as fading stars
Dissolve into bright dust at break of day.
At dawn a distant shudder in the earth
Disclosed the flight of fire into steel,
The shaking not of subways underground,
But screams from out of flowers forged with flame.
We stood upon the Heights like men of straw
Transfixed by flames that started in the sky,
And watched them plunging down in death’s ballet
To land among those dying deep below.
By noon the band of smoke leaned low
Upon the harbor’s skin like some dark shawl;
A pall of smoke that in its curdled crawl
Kept reaching to extend its fatal fall.
The harp strung bridge held up ten thousand souls
Who’d screaming run beneath the paws of death,
Like dusted ghosts that lived but were not sure
They lived in light or only in reprieve.
They’d writhed and spun within that storm of smoke
And stumbled out to light and clearer air,
To find upon the river’s further shore
No sanctuary other than clear air.
The sirens scraped the sky and jets carved arcs
Within a heaven empty of all hope,
And marked its epicenter with one streak
Of black on polished bone where silver stood.
By evening all their ash had settled so
That on the leaves outside my window glowed
Their souls in small bright stars until the rain
Cleaned all that could not be clean again.
We breathed the smoke that bent and crept and crawled.
We learned to hate the smoke that lingered so.
We knew that blood could only answer blood,
And so we yearned to go and not to go.
That last, lost summer faded into ash.
Their faces faded as endless autumn flowed
Through chill and heat into our winter sea
Where warships prowled in search of stones.
Within the city, shrines were our resolve.
We placed them where we stood or where they lay.
Upon our walls and trees their faces loomed
To gaze at us from time beyond repeal.
In time, their smoke and ash became but shapes
Of stories told at dinner, found in books,
Or in the comments made by magazines
For whom the "larger issues" were of note.
At first their faces faded with the rains,
The little altars thick with wax were scraped,
But now beneath clear plastic they endure
To remind us all that we’ve not yet escaped.
Their silence keeps me sleepless for I know.
FILE UNDER "AGREEABLE PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE WHO AGREE WITH YOU, HOWEVER TARDY": THE FEDERALIST PATRIOT, August 19, 2005
One closely guarded objective in securing a free Iraq is to establish a forward-deployed presence in the Middle East -- a presence that would certainly include personnel but whose primary component would be massive military-equipment depots that could be tapped for future rapid-deployment military operations in the region. This forward-base objective is critical, given that it will ensure our military presence in the heart of Jihadistan, and an ability to project force in the region quickly without having to ramp up via sea and airlift. This alone will pay rich dividends by way of maintaining peace through preparedness.
AMERICAN DIGEST, First published on September 22, 2004
WHY WE ARE IN IRAQ : Military Bases Are A Requirement, Democracy is Merely an Elective.
Resolved: To safeguard the personal and economic wellbeing of the civilized world in the 21st century, it is essential for the United States to control Iraq for strategic and tactical military purposes alone.
Continued...File under: "Suffer the Little Children."
I don't know about you but I'm especially fond of the sub-title that tells us we are spending some quality time with "The family of Ahmed Assil, the first modern-day suicide bomber."
"First modern-day suicide bomber... Sort of gives you a real head's-up notice that the wiring in all human heads is not all exactly the same, doesn't it?
"We haven't had a real-time nuclear demo since Japan, 1945, and that was with one of the prototypes. We've never had a real-time nuclear demo live on TV, but it is on their scheduling. What we can't face is that the next time, many more than 3,000 will die and a lot of the dead will be our children. Just what do you think our mood will be the morning after they slaughter not only thousands of adults at their desks like they did on the 11th, but thousands of our children as well?"
-- In conversation, July, 2004
THE RUTHLESS DEDICATION OF OUR ENEMIES TO OUR DESTRUCTION was written across our sky with two pillars of flame and smoke in our largest city. We've seen that dedication continue, punctuated by car bombs, mortars, and random attacks against our soldiers. We've seen it continue in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Spain, Russia, Italy and England.
Our unluckiest citizens have had their heads severed from their bodies as pilot episodes of what promises to be a long running reality television series in which American heads are held up, to our horror and for the delight of those many millions that support those that take the heads. The message beyond this madness is that they
Continued...
San Diego, California. August 6th, 11:36AM
THE TECATE TRUCK was just like all the other Tecate Beer trucks that went back and forth daily at the border crossing, except that it was not owned by Tecate. The driver of that truck spoke fluent Spanish and the truck was always loaded with Tecate. In time the US border guards got used to it. The difference was that this truck had, at its center, a narrow, hollow space shielded with thin sheets of lead so that no ambient radiation would escape.
It had cost The Base over $150,000 to convert the truck at a garage in Ensenada a year before. That was little enough when it came to securing the device which had cost the same group more than $10 million in Russia in 1997. In any event, the truck did its job and passed without incident over the border and into the United States at Tecate, California on August 6th. Dates were important to The Base, and this date was especially significant. After all, what could be more significant than the day on which Hiroshima was destroyed?
After clearing the border the Tecate Truck followed Highway 94 north to it's merge with Highway 8 at La Mesa, California, and then drove west towards Highway 5. It pulled off the road at a rest stop where it picked up a technician in a Tecate uniform who was carrying a case with the necessary electronics and a couple of weapons. After that, the two men followed the road thought the heart of San Diego. It got off the freeway in downtown and quickly made its way to the intersection of North Harbor Drive and West Broadway. It's total travel time from the border to downtown San Diego was just over an hour. It was running close to schedule. It was about 11:30 in the morning.
The truck pulled over and parked along North Harbor drive and the technician took out some binoculars and scanned the harbor beyond the Navy Region Southwest Complex whose entrance was less than 100 yards away. Intelligence was correct. The USS Ronald Reagan was in its home port and riding comfortably at anchor.
The technician opened his case and took a wire that ran from the back of the truck along the floorboards. He plugged it into a jack in the simple switching device in the case. He looked at the driver and smiled. The driver smiled back. They both began to recite a prayer in Arabic while looking over the San Diego harbor. At some point in the prayer, without really thinking about it, the technician threw the switch. In the next instant, at the intersection of North Harbor Drive and West Broadway in San Diego, California on a warm August morning, a miniature version of the Sun appeared on the surface of the Earth.
Continued...
The Killer
There'll be the breaking of the ancient
western code
Your private life will suddenly explode
There'll be phantoms
There'll be fires on the road
and a white man dancing
You'll see a woman
hanging upside down
her features covered by her fallen gown
and all the lousy little poets
coming round
tryin' to sound like Charlie Manson
and the white man dancin'.
Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St Paul
Give me Christ
or give me Hiroshima
Destroy another fetus now
We don't like children anyhow
I've seen the future, baby:
it is murder.
No, whether this man had explicit help from other Jihadists or not, today we smelt the first Islamist cordite wafting through downtown Seattle, felt the first piece of Jihadi shrapnel in our flesh. Jews have been first in the line of fire elsewhere; today they were the first fallen on Seattle's battlefield. They will not be the last; the baby killers and torturers of children have promised us that. -- AskMom: Fear and Pandering in Seattle
The AskMom, for now, writes for me.
Heard of a van that is loaded with weapons
packed up and ready to go
Heard of some gravesites, out by the highway
a place where nobody knows
The sound of gunfire, off in the distance
I'm getting used to it now
Lived in a brownstone, lived in the ghetto
I've lived all over this town
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco
this ain't no fooling around
No time for dancing, or lovey dovey
I ain't got time for that now
Transmit the message, to the receiver
hope for an answer some day
I got three passports, couple of visas
don't even know my real name
High on a hillside, trucks are loading
everything's ready to roll
I sleep in the daytime, I work in the nightime
I might not ever get home
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco
this ain't no fooling around
This ain't no mudd club, or C. B. G. B.
I ain't got time for that now
Trouble in transit, got through the roadblock
we blended in with the crowd
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines
I know that ain't allowed
We dress like students, we dress like housewives
or in a suit and a tie
I changed my hairstyle so many times now
don't know what I look like!
You make me shiver, I feel so tender
we make a pretty good team
Don't get exhausted, I'll do some driving
you ought to get you some sleep
Get you instructions, follow directions
then you should change your address
Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day
whatever you think is best
Burned all my notebooks, what good are notebooks?
They won't help me survive
My chest is aching, burns like a furnace
the burning keeps me alive
And remember kids, "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." -- Leon Trotsky
What have I been doing for days? Here And here. And here.
What's more, I may have to travel. Give me a plane and I'm gone now.
But, as I say, I will be back, but in the meantime: "The Terrible Ifs Accumulate."
LAST MONTH Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit was taken to task for a time because of his standard catch-phrase, "Don't you know there's a war on?" To his critics it would seem as if this question, from sheer repetition, was a weak reed to use in criticizing others. In a way it is, but what is more interesting is the obvious answer to that question.
That answer , to judge by the rolling defeatism of the last week or so, is "No, most Americans evidently do not know that there's a war on." At least in the sense that the war that's on affects their daily life. As the steady drip of drivel continues unabated from the left, and as no real sacrifice shows up in the lives of vast numbers of Americans, it can clearly be seen that, in fact, there really is no war on at all in the sense that most would understand it.
Continued...A RESPONSE TO DANIEL HENNINGER'S :"Ghost Busters" in the Wall Street Journal:
"Iraq is just like Vietnam except: We occupy Hanoi. We've captured Ho Chi Minh.
The North Vietnamese have just held a free and democratic election. The North Vietnamese are working on a new constitution. Yes, Iraq is just like Vietnam." -- Art Fougner - Flushing, N.Y.
Pointer from The Anchoress.
SEPTEMBER, 2005: MARK STEYN notes in Terror war all but forgotten on home front
"Four years ago, I thought the "war on terror" was a viable concept. .... Of course, since then we've had the shabby habit of presidents declaring a "war on drugs" and a "war on poverty" and, with hindsight, that corruption of language has allowed Americans to slip the war on terror into the same category -- not a war in the sense that a war on Fiji or Belgium is a war, but just one of those vaguely ineffectual aspirational things that don't really impinge on you that much except for the odd pointless gesture -- like the shoe-removing ritual before you board a flight at Poughkeepsie. The "war on terror" label has outlived whatever usefulness it had."
OCTOBER, 2003: AMERICAN DIGEST notes in The First Terrorist War
"To say we are "involved" in a "war on terror" and to repeat this phrase ad infinitum extends our decades old infatuation with euphemism
Continued...WHILE PRESIDENT BUSH continues to field inane questions from the likes of Helen Thomas, and appear here and there about the land armed with standard soundbites, it falls, as it often does, to Britain's Tony Blair to articulate in a deeper and more meaningful way just what the stakes are in The First Terrorist War. Today 10 Downing released the transcript of Foreign Policy Speech I; the first of three speeches Blair will make on this issue in the near future: "In the second he will outline the importance of a broad global alliance to achieve our common goals and in the third he will say how the international institutions need radical reform to make them capable of implementing such an agenda."
This is an excerpt, but I commend the entire text to you as the definitive answer to "Why we fight:"
There is an interesting debate going on inside government today about how to counter extremism in British communities. Ministers have been advised never to use the term "Islamist extremist". It will give offence. It is true. It will. There are those - perfectly decent-minded people - who say the extremists who commit these acts of terrorism are not true Muslims. And, of course, they are right. They are no more proper Muslims than the Protestant bigot who murders a Catholic in Northern Ireland is a proper Christian. But, unfortunately, he is still a "Protestant" bigot. To say his religion is irrelevant is both completely to misunderstand his motive and to refuse to face up to the strain of extremism within his religion that has given rise to it....
This is not a clash between civilisations. It is a clash about civilisation. It is the age-old battle between progress and reaction, between those who embrace and see opportunity in the modern world and those who reject its existence; between optimism and hope on the one hand; and pessimism and fear on the other. And in the era of globalisation where nations depend on each other and where our security is held in common or not at all, the outcome of this clash between extremism and progress is utterly determinative of our future here in Britain. We can no more opt out of this struggle than we can opt out of the climate changing around us. Inaction, pushing the responsibility on to America, deluding ourselves that this terrorism is an isolated series of individual incidents rather than a global movement and would go away if only we were more sensitive to its pretensions; this too is a policy.� It is just that; it is a policy that is profoundly, fundamentally wrong.
ALAN BROMLEY proposes some bold new Gitmo rules--
Continued...THE HEADLINE SAYS Operation Swarmer Expected to Last Days. And there will be as many nights too.
The announced use of aircraft centers on helicopters:
The U.S. command in Baghdad said it was the largest number of aircraft used to insert troops and the largest number of troops inserted by air, although larger numbers of troops overall have been involved in previous operations.
In recent months U.S. forces have routinely used helicopters to insert troops during operations against insurgent strongholds, especially in the Euphrates River valley between Baghdad and the Syrian border. U.S. warplanes are always in the air, ready to strike targets under direction from troops on the ground.
A Pentagon spokesman underscored that "no bombs, missiles or other ordnance were fired from the helicopters."
Now it goes without saying that air support is always close at hand for this kind of operation, but exactly what sort of air support might it be?
Well, without a lot of fanfare, this sort of air support is back in Iraq:
Spooky's Back: "Good Night and Good Luck"
Lethal 'flying gunships' returning to Iraq
What sort of weapon is "Spooky?" Let's just say you don't want to be on the wrong side below this platform: AC-130H Spectre "Spooky"
Armament: two M61 20mm Vulcan cannons with 3,000 rounds; one L60 40mm Bofors cannon with 256 rounds; one M102 105mm howitzer with 100 rounds; one 25mm GAU-12 Gatling gun (1,800 rounds per minute); one L60 40mm Bofors cannon (100 shots per minute); one M102 105mm cannon (6-10 rounds per minute)
And it loves to work nights.
02/25/05 - Marines with 1st Platoon, Alpha Company, 2nd Tank Battalion, provide security while other Marines use bulldozers to build a barrier berm along the Iraqi-Syrian border south of Husaybuh, Iraq, on Feb. 25, 2005. The Marines are currently engaged in security and stabilization operations in the Al Anbar Province, Iraq. DoD photo by Lance Cpl. Christopher G. Graham, U.S. Marine Corps. (Released)
DefenseLINK Multimedia Gallery - military pictures, clip art, sound clips and video clips
Berms ()the building up and the taking down) were a consideration in March of 2003 along the Kuwait/Iraq border.
For weeks the whispered plan had been that, come the invasion, border berms, ditches and fences of electrified wire would be reduced at dozens of places by huge Army bulldozers simultaneously ripping away in the dark, with the entire army swarming through at dawn. It was said a mock-up had been built in the desert and assaulted again and again with 62-ton Caterpillar D9 Dozers. Their operators wore night vision goggles as they kicked over high berms and filled in deep ditches and blasted through fences in the dark.
--McGraw-Hill Construction | ENR -Border Berms Cleared To Make Way For U.S. Invasion Of Iraq
THE BRAVE AND BRILLIANT MICHAEL YON continues his on the spot reports from the war with:The Battle for Mosul.
Continued...THE BRILLIANT, BRAVE AND AMAZING Michael Yon continues with his upclose and personal reports from Iraq. One is from a town where things seem to have improved in many major ways, not the least of which are in terms of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness:
Once in Dohuk, American soldiers removed helmets and body armor, and carried only their weapons. The commander set them free, with orders to return later that day. I walked with some soldiers to a department store where we passed by the kiddie rides outside. The storefront may well have been in Colorado Springs, or Munich. There were big push-carts for the adults, and little carts for the children.[Be sure to take note of Yon's photographs of the market.]Inside the store was a grocery section, where the people smiled, fresh canteloupes smelled sweet, the apples red and green and yellow. There were oranges, bananas, and more. Nearly half a year had passed since I had seen such things.
Another report is from from Mosul where things are quite different and the "tactics" of the men called "insurgents" continue:
Recently, an insurgent hid behind a child in order to attack Americans. The tactic came as no surprise to the soldiers here. Terrorists routinely play wounded or feign their surrender in order to get close enough to launch an attack on Coalition or Iraqi Forces. In January I wrote about one bomber who grabbed the hand of a small child while she was playing on a sidewalk. Smiling, he walked with the child in hand, approaching some Iraqi police, and exploded. Americans standing close by were unharmed.Tell me again about the "heroism" of Muslim terrorists. Tell me again about the need to "understand" them.
JUAN COLE BELIEVES OUR ".... enemy is four guys in a gymn (sic) in Leeds."
Michael Totten's refresher course in the war has a number of graphic photos proving him, as always, dead wrong.
"Mama, mama," cried Hadeel, 24. "They have just executed my husband in front of my eyes. Please help me. They just shot him in the head. Please help me, mama."You can read the rest if you are in the mood to be sick to your stomach.A male voice then told Alloussi, a prominent Iraqi gynaecologist: "We have killed him and now we shall kill your daughter as well."
She begged for the young woman's life, promising to hand over gold, cash and a valuable building if her captors would set her free. But the line went dead.
Two bags containing the bodies of her daughter and son-in-law, graduates in medicine who had taken internships at al-Qaem hospital close to Iraq's border with Syria, were dumped near their Baghdad home 48 hours later. Alloussi's daughter had been shot in the heart. -- Rebels kill Iraqi women as 'betrayers' of Islam - Sunday Times - Times Online
Dave Weigel's got questions about Gunner Palace
Why do I have to go the movies to see video of soldiers in Iraq? The TVs blaring over our desks in the office had been playing nothing but human interest stories all week - Terri Schiavo, Robert Blake, Scott Peterson, some missing girl in Florida (why is it ALWAYS Florida?) Stories of euthenasia and murder in small-town America and Hollywood. I could expect to hear about this stuff in times of peace. But we have 150,000 soldiers risking their lives for us 24/7 in Iraq and Afghanistan. They're shooting it out with snipers, busting down doors, arresting assassins, quelling riots, handing out candy to schoolkids, cuddling babies at orphanages, Hummering down to the Baghdad airport's McDonalds to get a precious Big Mac. In what twisted universe is this not interesting? What the hell convinces TV producers that this stuff is less interesting than the latest frigging Amber alert for some frigging mullet kin in Bumbleshit, Broward County?Cruel. But fair.
"We have ruled the world before, and by Allah, the day will come when we will rule the entire world again. The day will come when we will rule America. The day will come when we will rule Britain and the entire world -- except for the Jews. The Jews will not enjoy a life of tranquility under our rule, because they are treacherous by nature, as they have been throughout history. The day will come when everything will be relived [likely relieved -EV] of the Jews -- even the stones and trees which were harmed by them. Listen to the Prophet Muhammad, who tells you about the evil end that awaits Jews. The stones and trees will want the Muslims to finish off every Jew." -- Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris
Well, at least we can't say we weren't warned.
[POST AND LINK pulled by reader request. See comments. He's right.]
DECORATED IRAQ TANK PLATOON LEADER NEIL PRAKASH guides us to ARMOR GEDDON: Fallujah THE Movie
Nerts to Harrison Ford and his movie. Here's the REAL deal on Fallujah. U.S. ARMY's TF2-2IN created it. Combat Engineer - SPC Ronald Camp edited it. S2 blessed off on it. Jonathan Hanson is hosting it. Thanks.Soundtrack: SepulteraSPC Camp of 82nd Engineers. Helluva job with the music, footage and timing. Oh and good job fighting in Fallujah too, Soldier.
Crystal Method: Trip Like I Do, Name of the Game
Fatboy Slim/Steppenwolfe: Magic Carpet Ride
Torrent connections and other downloads can be found @ RedSix's Downloads
I'm also hosting a 50 Megabyte Quicktime download at THIS LOCATION. It's a looong download so place it in the background and posses yourself of patience.
While you wait you could do worse that read Prakash's stunning descriptions for a tanker's fighting life in Iraq at ARMOR GEDDON
It is, quite simply, the best first-hand writing available on what it's like inside a 21st century battle.
IN A HASTILY CONVENED NEWS CONFERENCE this morning, President George W. Bush announced that the Prisoner of War Camp at Guantanamo, Cuba, had been closed last night and all its prisoners transferred by Executive Order via the private Gulfstream fleets of George Soros and Amnesty International to Neverland Ranch in California.
Continued...PORETTO @ ETERNITY ROAD has just about had it up to here with the whiners and the wimps in We The Carping,
Continued...It is ritualistic for most Americans to assert that they "Support our troops," but the truth of the matter is that far too many Americans are becoming far too interested in making sure our troops are behaving correctly than actually supporting and sustaining them. Knowing well that nice guys finish last, it is past time for Americans to ask themselves how 'nice' they want to be in fighting the Terrorist War.
How frustrating to be an American soldier in Iraq and know that strategy, tactics, and the rules of engagement seem to always be subordinate to politics. But because the American people must always support America's wars, this frustration must be accepted. Victory in a democratic society emerges from the people's will to pursue it.
At the moment, our political and moral considerations hamper the battle to expunge Islamic Totalitarianism, and victory is a word not often heard from our leadership. Instead, one gets the impression that the President and his core group would prefer it if Americans and the world began to think of the Iraq stage of the Terrorist War as a kind of Tsunami relief effort with guns. This is not a condition that can be sustained for an indefinite period.
We need to stop pretending. The goal of the Terrorist War must shift from the oft-trumpeted plan of "implanting democracy and bringing freedom" to one of unconditional victory over Islamic Totalitarianism. While "giving the gift of democracy" is a comforting and warm notion on which to run for re-election, it does nothing to achieve victory, since it denies that victory is a goal. Instead, according to the prevailing message being repeated ad nauseum from the administration, "democracy and freedom" are the goals of this war. This is sheer propaganda.
For the most likely cause of genocide today is frustration: if we cannot move the Arab/Muslim societies towards tolerance faster than the most intolerant among them can obtain nuclear weapons, we will have to destroy the Arab world, utterly, because the simple fact is that once Iran or the jihadis or similarly fanatical and nihilistic parts of the Muslim world obtain the power to destroy the Jews, or the Americans, they will do so -- Caerdroia: "The Darkness, Whispering" 01/04/06Continued...
ALLAH AKBAR!Taliban is blamed for beheading teacher: "Armed men decapitated Malim Abdul Habib in his home in the town of Qalat late Tuesday and forced his wife and children to watch, said Ali Khail, a provincial government spokesman. The assailant did not harm the other relatives, he said."
What exactly does this show tell you?
LAYING ASIDE THE VELVET GLOVES, BUSH TODAY PUT A COUPLE OF SHOTS ACROSS THE BOW OF THE MEDIAS' "GOOD SHIP LOLLYPOP" in the President's Radio Address. [Emphasis added]
Yesterday the existence of this secret program was revealed in media reports, after being improperly provided to news organizations. As a result, our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk. Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies, and endangers our country.This is a heartening tone and the statement is made stronger since it is based, as so many things in the quisling media is not, on facts.As the 9/11 Commission pointed out, it was clear that terrorists inside the United States were communicating with terrorists abroad before the September the 11th attacks, and the commission criticized our nation's inability to uncover links between terrorists here at home and terrorists abroad. Two of the terrorist hijackers who flew a jet into the Pentagon, Nawaf al Hamzi and Khalid al Mihdhar, communicated while they were in the United States to other members of al Qaeda who were overseas. But we didn't know they were here, until it was too late.
The authorization I gave the National Security Agency after September the 11th helped address that problem in a way that is fully consistent with my constitutional responsibilities and authorities. The activities I have authorized make it more likely that killers like these 9/11 hijackers will be identified and located in time. And the activities conducted under this authorization have helped detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks in the United States and abroad.
Reaction among the bad Americans in the political class was swift and predictable with one notable drooler spewing the phrase "King George Bush." One is tempted to ask what part of the title "Commander in Chief" that particular idiot failed to understand but since ambition is his first and second language the answer is "all of it."
In general, the revelation of the program with the all too tedious play it has been given in order to hump some New York Times scribblers latest forgettable tome in the bookstores is one with the flatulent and ceaseless debate over "torture." Just the irritating background buzz of those who are out of power and rightly so.
The problem with the Liberal Left, the Devolved Democrats, and the Morally Stripmined Media is that when it comes to the phrase, "All's fair in love and war," their "philosophy" won't let them take that thought beyond the word "love." They're the experts when it comes to making all love fair but cannot understand the necessities of war. That's why they should be left alone to run the condom programs while the grown-ups run the army. Indeed, if they keep behaving and speaking as they do, the country will probably see to that over the next few election cycles.
In the meantime, I hope the slack-jawed members of the fifth estate will take careful note of the sentences "the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk. Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies, and endangers our country, " and ask themselves if the Judith Miller incarceration earlier this year was an anomaly, or if she was just warming up the cells.
For those that need a brilliant and condensed version of why Al-Qaeda remains very much alive, I commend them to Dan Darling's Al-Qaeda: The Scope of the Threat at Winds of Change. Those that believe the road of the Terror War is either already too long or will soon be ended need this sobering assessment of the reach and the depth of our enemy.
So if you want to make the argument popular among both paleocons and liberal isolationists alike that if we just pull out of the Middle East and stopped supporting the region's governments that the whole problem of terrorism would go away. My answer to such a charge would be that's fine, just understand that in doing so you're not only basically sayingContinued...
In the sphere-wide wave about the Rumsfeld set-up by an embed, everyone is looking hard at the reporter's self-promoting email. The sentences that reveal the reporter's plan to make the news and not just report it are:
Before hand we worked on questions to ask Rumsfeld about the appalling lack of armor their vehicles going into combat have. While waiting for the VIP, I went and found the Sgt. in charge of the microphone for the question and answer session and made sure he knew to get my guys out of the crowd.That seems pretty clear, even though Editor and Publisher seemed unable to quote it directly for their readers yesterday. Then again, as Donald Sensing notes in the best wrap-up on this issue, they can't get their minds around what might be wrong in using a soldier to shill for a reporter.
But another sentence struck me in the next paragraph of the email:
... I have been trying to get this story out for weeks- as soon as I found out I would be on an unarmored truck [Emphasis added.]I find this confession-in-passing even more revealing of the mind-set of this reporter. The state of armor on vehicles and elsewhere in Iraq has hardly been Continued...
Donald Sensing cycles back to something that bears repeating:
Not understanding the intentional lethality of battle is a very common misperception among people of the comfortable classes such as Mrs. Joel - for example, the graduate students I had dinner with one night just after the air campaign began against the Afghan Taliban. They apparently thought that our bombing was a form of posturing, a symbolic display, intended to yield psychological, not lethal, effects on the enemy.One guest said that the bombing "wouldn't intimidate" the Taliban.
"We're not trying to intimidate them," I said.
"Then why are we bombing them?" came the question.
"To kill them," I answered. There was a long silence at the table. The concept seemed not to have occurred to them. -- One Hand Clapping
As we witness our irreconcilable party of bitterness and defeat retreat from our shared comity through their eagerness to pillory our troops and equate our enemies as, in the words of Chris Matthews of MSNBC, "a rival, I mean they're not bad guys especially, just people who just disagree with us," we are reminded on the same day of the depravity they champion.
We are reminded by an execution a woman at the hands of animals. A woman whose video-taped execution was termed "too upsetting" to be viewed by Al-Jazerra. Too upsetting to be viewed? This from an Arab institution that has no qualms about airing in an endless loop war footage of shootings in mosques? That displays the dismembered remains of Americans hung like slabs of meat on bridges? From whence comes this new found daintiness and delicacy in an institution that both before and after this footage will be only too pleased to wallow in blood and offal?
May I suggest that it is too upsetting not because of the content, but because of what it reveals about the corrupted souls of our enemy, the friends and primary audience of Al-Jazerra. It is too "upsetting" because it does not advance the aspriations of Islamic jihad, but shows all too vividly what this religious disease looks like inside its rotted interior.
The video of this woman's slaughter, placed next to the beheading video of Nick Berg and the mass executions of children in Beslan, completes the trifecta of terror.
Last July, I wrote:
Our unluckiest citizens have had their heads severed from their bodies as pilot episodes of what promises to be a long running reality television series in which American heads are held up, to our horror and for the delight of those many millions that support those that take the heads. The message beyond this madness is that they would be pleased to extend this television series to 300 million beheadings in which each of us would have his "star" turn. Our enemy has not yet taken a woman or a child for a beheading, but both clearly on their programming schedule. -- American Digest: The Sacrifice and the ReckoningThis was written early last July. And now we are there. And it is only the very beginning. All this, and fresh horrors yet unknown except in the insect minds of those we fight, will be repeated and repeated until so common they are unworthy of comment at all, or until those that commit and relish them are expunged.
Who was Mrs. Hassan, the woman kidnapped, tortured for weeks and finally killed yesterday? There have been thousands of stories about her background published, but in the end, this from a young Iraqi woman in Baghdad, is the single brief testament that answers "Who was she?"
Late yesterday evening, my wife finally came home from an exceedingly long day at work. As she walked towards the door I said, as husbands will, "At last. How was your day?"She was my English teacher
In the memory of my teacher and a fellow aid worker colleague Mrs. M. HassanMrs. Hassan was my English teacher in The British Council in Baghdad in Al-Wazirya district, I remember her years ago with her Irish accent telling me it's not Important how many words I must learn but the pronunciation of the words I already knew must be perfected.
Mrs. Hassan speak s perfect Arabic and she has a heart of gold,
she's been kidnapped todaykilled by (men in pajamas), turn Iraq upside down andsave herfind them.
-- Baghdad Dweller Blog Archive She was my English teacher
She paused and looked at me, "I'm not complaining. I wasn't killed for doing my job. I wasn't killed."
Why take your nuke to town when just standing on the other side of the fence gets you all the way there?
Time Magazine is roiling the blogsphere with its warning of terrorist nukes to be smuggled into Mexico and from there into the the United States
Sharif al-Masri, an Egyptian who was captured in late August near Pakistan's border with Iran and Afghanistan, has told his interrogators of "al-Qaeda's interest in moving nuclear materials from Europe to either the U.S. or Mexico," according to a report circulating among U.S. government officials.And they would "carry material into the U.S.?" The question that occurs to me in that statement is: Why would they bother?Masri also said al-Qaeda has considered plans to "smuggle nuclear materials to Mexico, then operatives would carry material into the U.S.," according to the report, parts of which were read to TIME. Masri says his family, seeking refuge from al-Qaeda hunters, is now in Iran.
Once you have smuggled a nuclear weapon into Mexico what reason would you have to take another, bigger risk and try and get it across the border into the United States?
Wouldn't it be much simpler and more straightforward just to take the bomb to Juarez, get as close to the border as possible, and then detonate the device. Given the right set of conditions you could achieve your terrorist aims and never have to set foot in the United States. Why risk two security rings when you can risk only one?
Detonating a nuclear weapon in Juarez, Mexico is the same thing as detonating one in El Paso, Texas:
Walk seven blocks south from the heart of downtown El Paso and you’re on the bridge that empties into Avenida Juárez, the tourism center of Juárez, and you’re a few blocks from the city’s cathedral and main plaza. Nowhere else in the world are two major cities of two different countries so closely connected — or so easy to visit from either side. --El Paso Tourist Guide
What would be the advantages of Juarez/El Paso from a nuclear terrorist's point of view? There are several:
- 1) A combined population of around 2.5 million people. Casualties would be high.
- 2) A regional manufacturing center using cheap labor and access to the US market has drawn in GM, Sony, and many other plants and factories. Especially popular are plants that can operate with less regulation in Mexico than in the US, particularly chemical plants. The economic consequences would be dire.
- 3) Right on the north-eastern nub of El Paso, about 7 miles from the border, you have the US Army's Fort Bliss.
Fort Bliss is the home of the Air Defense Artillery Center of Excellence and is responsible for air defense artillery training of U.S. soldiers and various allied nation soldiers. It also the home of seven Forces Command warfighting units - the 32d Army Air and Missile Defense Command, 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, 31st Air Defense Artillery Brigade, the 108th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, 35th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, the 204th MI Battalion, and the 978th Military Police Company. .... With 1.1 million acres, this post is bigger than the state of Rhode Island and can accommodate every weapon system in the Army. Excellent ranges and training area, coupled with the third longest runway in the nation, make Fort Bliss a premiere facility for training, mobilization and deploying combat forces. -- Global Security.Org
Needless to say, a nuclear "event" could have severe consequences for the base.
- 4) El Paso is Texas, the home state of the President of the United States and a deep red state as well. This would be a propaganda coup of the first order. The symbolism would not be missed by those who wish America harm.
All of which goes to show that the security of the United States doesn't start at the border, but south of the border, down Mexico way. I don't know what Homeland Security is doing about this, but if I was in the organization, I'd be very concerned about the ports of Mexico right now and be looking very hard at truck traffic coming north towards El Paso.
Then, of course, there's the Canadian border.
For some years now we have been hearing the clarion calls for the Islamic "Moderates" to speak out. This oft-repeated request has gone out from a wide-spectrum of voices here and abroad. But it would seem that the standard response is that "We hear very little from Islamic Moderates about Terrorism."
I think this is utterly wrong. I think we have been hearing a great deal from the "Islamic Moderates" over the last three years. In fact, we hear from them constantly.
The problem is not that we do not hear from the "Moderates," but with our current assumption of exactly what "Moderate" means. We've been, indeed, entirely too conservative in our understanding of "Islamic moderates."
In the brave new world of "Radical Islam," a conservative Muslim would be one who seeks to live in peace with those of other faiths, does not look for a global or even regional theocracy, and in general would just like to get on with life in a peaceful, diverse, tolerant society. And while it is true that there has not been a lot of speaking out from this group, there has still been some and we can assume it is not a total loss. Fear of Islamic moderates probably mutes an otherwise large segment of the Islamic population.
In contrast, an "Islamic Moderate" currently means those members of the Islamic faith committed to a regional caliphate and willing to use conventional terrorism to achieve these aims. This includes beheadings, mass murder, random bombing of civilian targets, infiltration of Iraq, Afghanistan, New York, Cleveland, etc. to kill Americans and other unbelievers with conventional arms and explosives. At the moment, these moderates are being extremely vocal and noisy in Iraq. This moderate group has been extremely vociferous in the past few years and, if the present is any guide, will continue to speak out with explosives, arms and manifestos until they either triumph or are eliminated.
Virtually silent at present, are the "Islamic Radicals" who seek to achieve a global caliphate through the use of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons to kill unbelievers wholesale. We hear them every so often in the current safe haven of Iran where plutonium futures are traded with the cheers of "Death to America." We hear less from the dispersed members of this cult with the exception of intermittent claims on Muslim websites that, yes, they have a nuclear bomb and they are going to use it.
Whether or not they actually have that bomb is open to question. What is not is their devotion to using it as soon as possible.
Under these conditions, it strikes me that as long as we are hearing from the "Islamic moderates' " through propaganda and through weapons we need not be too worried.
It is when these "moderate voices" fall silent that we need to look out for the big and booming voice of the Radical Islam. But by that time, it is my sad opinion we will be, once again, in a reactive mode.
Chester @ The Adventures of Chester is doing a first-rate job of blending breaking news and commentary on the Battle of Fallujah.
Chester's "About" states "Former Marine officer who participated in the Iraqi campaign. BA in Int'l Relations from Duke. Now work in finance in Texas."
And as always, the always excellent Belmont Club. \
I suppose it is too much to ask MSM to stop calling these animals "insurgents." It is, however, clarifying to know that as it is with the killers of children in Russia, so it is with their "brothers" in Iraq.
INSURGENTS TARGET CHILDREN OF RAMADICAMP RAMADI, Iraq --An Army unit assigned to I Marine Expeditionary Force, discovered and defused an explosive-laden youth center in Ramadi Nov. 4, which was rigged by insurgents to detonate and potentially kill dozens of Iraqi children. They also discovered more than two tons of explosives hidden in a mosque.
Resolved: To safeguard the personal and economic wellbeing of the civilized world in the 21st century, it is essential for the United States to control Iraq for strategic and tactical military purposes alone.
Let's take a step back from our always entertaining electoral circus to cast a cold eye on what needs to be done in Iraq beyond November and far beyond 2005. Don't watch the hand waving the magic wand around, watch the hand held behind the back. It holds what is going to be pulled out of the hat.
Instead of spending untold hours listening to this or that speech from the two sides of the American coin, it's more instructive to take down an atlas, turn to a spread displaying the middle-east and meditate on what needs to be done to control that section of the world.
And while you're at it here's a couple of things you can forget about:
- 1) Democracy in Iraq at all costs. Forget that "We" are in Iraq to bring the blessings of "democracy" to the people. It would be a nice gift to instill "democracy" in an Islamic state of the middle-east. We will spend a lot of money trying to achieve this. We will be sincere in our desire for it to be born. It will make our task easier in the short and long term. But "democracy" is not strictly necessary for the current strategic interests of the United States in the region.
- 2) Troops home "sooner" or "later." Forget the idea that our troops are coming home any time soon. We are going to be in Iraq for the long haul. The only question is "how many troops will be stationed there?"
That answer turns on the general approach to fighting the war. That current strategy and tactics employed in Iraq are being driven by political needs in the United States is an obvious statement. Our current restrained approach will not, nor is it designed to, continue long past November 2 of this year. If you would
Continued...
A more detailed translation of the threats made against America by OBL comes from MEMRI: Latest News
The tape of Osama bin Laden that was aired on Al-Jazeera(1) on Friday, October 29th included a specific threat to "each U.S. state," designed to influence the outcome of the upcoming election against George W. Bush. The U.S. media in general mistranslated the words "ay wilaya" (which means "each U.S. state")(2) to mean a "country" or "nation" other than the U.S., while in fact the threat was directed specifically at each individual U.S. state. This suggests some knowledge by bin Laden of the U.S. electoral college system. In a section of his speech in which he harshly criticized George W. Bush, bin Laden stated: "Any U.S. state that does not toy with our security automatically guarantees its own security."Continued...
The Bazaar of Violence in Iraq
John Robb @ Global Guerrillas casts a cold eye on the business of terrorism in Iraq in GUERRILLA ENTREPRENEURS.
In this item as well as others he's written in the past and linked to this essay, Robb lays out the "economics" of the war as seen from the other side. Often lost in the emotional back and forth about the battles in Iraq are the sheer business details that allow it to go forward. Some bullet points are:
Continued...A few days after writing, The Meeting , [below] I received a mysterious email from what looked, at first glance, like a Hotmail account, but whose headers pointed to a point of origin somewhere inside the "pentagon.mil" domain. The subject line read: "A Far More Plausible Scenario."
Whether it is "a more plausible scenario"or not, I will leave to my readers. Still, it does have an ending more chilling than any I could have imagined. And when you find conclusions that outstrip your imaginations, it is always a sign you are looking at something that just might have a grain of truth at the core.
Date: xx/xx/2002 Place: A cave in Tora Bora
The scene is lit by a four Coleman lanterns in the corners of the cave. In the center is a blindfolded figure in native Arab garb. Even bound to the chair, he exhibits defiance. He's surrounded by Special Forces troops. One is taking the picture that's going to buy him a new boat back home.
All of them snap to attention as a crisp "Ten-hut!" comes from up the cave towards the entrance. Even the trained eyes of the Special Forces Ops widen slightly when they see who is there.
"Sir!" they all snap salutes.
"Good job men", he answers. "Is the prisoner secure?"
"Sir,yes Sir!" they all answer with hardened pride.
"Excellent. Consider yourselves all promoted. Now leave us for a minute."
"But, sir...."
"No buts soldier. I'll assume you're right up the tunnel if I need you. I have some personal messages I need to pass on".
With a knowing, but restrained, smirk, the soldiers file out.
The visitor waits until the footsteps fade down the tunnel. "So", he begins, "we finally have you."
The prisoner doesn't react, but you can sense a black seething from beneath the blindfold. The visitor reaches forward, and pulls it off.
"Come on Osama, did you really think we wouldn't find you? You know, Uncle Sam gets really, really mad when you do live up to your end of the deal."
Continued...We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
-- Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
"We haven't had a real-time nuclear demo since Japan, 1945, and that was with one of the prototypes. We've never had a real-time nuclear demo live on TV, but it is on their scheduling. What we can't face is that the next time, many more than 3,000 will die and a lot of the dead will be our children. Just what do you think our mood will be the morning after they slaughter not only thousands of adults at their desks like they did on the 11th, but thousands of our children as well?"
-- In conversation, July, 2004
THE RUTHLESS DEDICATION OF OUR ENEMIES TO OUR DESTRUCTION was written across our sky with two pillars of flame and smoke in our largest city. We've seen that dedication continue, punctuated by car bombs, mortars, and random attacks against our soldiers.
Our unluckiest citizens have had their heads severed from their bodies as pilot episodes of what promises to be a long running reality television series in which American heads are held up, to our horror and for the delight of those many millions that support those that take the heads. The message beyond this madness is that they would be pleased to extend this television series to 300 million beheadings in which each of us would have his "star" turn. Our enemy has not yet taken a woman or a child for a beheading, but both clearly on their programming schedule.
All these things we know. We know the nature and goals of our enemy well. Our army is at the ready and in the field. And yet we hesitate.
We hesitate because we are having an election in which we think the outcome will somehow determine what actions our enemy will pursue. We are a foolish people grown fat and fearful during the long peace.
We stay our hand and hobble our warriors and walk on wrapped in our suburban slumber. Our President and the man who would be President cruise about the country on buses or play electric guitars surrounded by doting egoists whose own celebrity removes them from the sense of their doom.
The party in power shambles about speaking in color codes and hushed words of warning. The party that yearns for power forms lines in front of our cinema
Continued...A lot of money and energy has gone into patrolling rivers in the last half of the 20th century, as if it is important. Well, when it is all you've got, I guess you'd think it was important. To me, what matters to the present and the future are the river patrols of today.
Photo by Zack Frank
"A Marine attached to the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit watches the shores as his watercraft patrols the Euphrates River outside Forward Operating Base Iskandariyah, Iraq, Oct. 1, 2004. The Marine is with Small Craft Company, attached to Battalion Landing Team 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines. The 24th MEU is currently conducting security and stability operations in Northern Babil province. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Zachary R. Frank" -- DefendAmerica Photo Essay - Patrolling the Euphrates
"I got numerous individuals on the road. Do you want me to take those out?"
"Take 'em out."
"Oh, dude...." From Americandaughter.com:
U.S. Special Forces "Ninja" night stalkers on the ground in Fallujah during the night discovered a meeting at a protected mosque of followers of cleric Al-Sadyr. A mission to attack coalition forces with machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and road-side bombs was being planned by the insurgents in the mosque. The Special Forces Ninjas called in an air strike request to Air Force fighter jets and AWAC aircraft on patrol.
Video here:Missile Attack
Pointer via: Matthew Heidt @ Froggy Ruminations who notes:
I kind of doubt that a ground asset was involved in painting this band of miscreants, because the urban terrain would necessitate a position of sufficient height to allow for target identification and yet remain outside of the casualty radius of the munitions deployed (which was fairly significant). It probably was a TF-160 guy in an AH-6 "Little Bird" that called the shot.
There are so many moments and passages that illuminate and inspire in Bill Whittle's long essay, "DETERRENCE" at Eject! Eject! Eject!, that the only reasonable thing to do is to just point you towards it.
In case you feel you really don't have the time take in this small excerpt and see if you still feel that way.
Continued...Ladies, President Bush has freed the women of Afghanistan, and shut down the state-run rape and torture of women in Iraq. And for every one of those women who was raped and tortured to death, remember that half the entire country lived in daily fear of being spotted by some Baathist pig with too much time on his hands as he hid behind the tinted windows of his limousine, cruising the streets of Baghdad or Mosul or Basrah looking for a little fun.
Senator Kerry, on the other hand, has not only said, he has promised that he will do no such thing.
SENATOR KERRY: But we also have to be smart, Jim. And smart means not diverting your attention from the real war on terror in Afghanistan against Osama bin Laden and taking if off to Iraq where the 9/11 Commission confirms there was no connection to 9/11 itself and Saddam Hussein, and where the reason for going to war was weapons of mass destruction, not the removal of Saddam Hussein.
For reasons other than those I proposed in Yes, Virginia, There WILL Be a Draft, David Hackworth also sees a draft in '05 or '06: Uncle Sam Will Soon Want Your Kids
Right now -- with both our regular and Reserve soldiers stretched beyond the breaking point -- our all-volunteer force is tapping out. If our overseas troop commitments continue at the present rate or climb higher, there won't be enough Army and Marine grunts to do the job. And thin, overworked units, from Special Forces teams to infantry battalions, lose fights.Yes. I'm aware discussing the inevitability of the Draft gives aid and comfort to the Kerry camp and the other members of a party unfit to rule at any level. At the same time, simply running about insisting that there are no plans for a draft, there will be no plans for a draft, and there will never be a draft is nothing but a temporary position taken only for political gain.Clearly, this war against worldwide, hardcore Islamic believers will be a massive military marathon, the longest and most far-flung in our country's history. By Christmas, more troops could be needed not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but wherever the radical Islamic movement is growing stronger, from the Horn of Africa to Morocco, Kenya, Somalia, Yemen and across Europe -- remember Spain?! -- to Asia.
Accordingly, we need to bring our ground-fighting and support units to about the strength they were before the Soviet Union imploded, especially since the proper ratio of counterinsurgent-to-insurgent in places like the Middle East should be around 15 to 1. You don't have to be a Ph.D. in military personnel to conclude we need more boots on the ground.
Where I diverge from Hackworth's position is in his insistence that, no matter what, increasing military needs in numerous other countries will stimulate this situation.
It's obvious that a Kerry administration would initiate an across the board pull-back from foreign adventures to something like the Sept. 10 status-quo-ante of troop deployment. What is not so obvious is that a continuing Bush Administration might be far too gun-shy to expand operations outside of Iraq but look to consolidate and control that country alone. This is not entirely unwise from a strategic and tactical perspective since it allows the US to keep Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran in check and to checkmate them if the need arises.
In neither case do we see the overwhelming need for a draft. In the first, we simply regroup and make a lot of members of the National Guard feel happy and safe -- for a while. In the latter case, we muddle through with the forces on hand.
What changes the equation above is, as I argue in the article linked above, a second devastating attack on the United States homeland with large numbers of American men, women and (especially) children killed.
In that case, Hackworth's draft comes about by default. Right after a very large surge in enlistments.
Then again we might see a surge in the oft-cited but now vanished "Kerry Peace-Corpesque Civilian Corps," since a large job on the global scale would involve decontaminating highly irradiated sites in the Middle-East.
" The victim gasped loudly as blood poured from his neck. His killer held up the head at one point, and placed it on top of the body. " -- The killing of Eugene Armstrong
Year upon year in the world's darkest woods
On the dirt at the foot of the ancient trees,
Tangles and brambles and dead brush increase
Which the sunlight can never seize.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by book, chant and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
Our ash that descends in our clearest of skies?
Our leapers that swam down the stones?
Best answered by bombs from mid-heaven at prayer,
Bringing that fire which hollows the bones.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by book, chant and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
If their god decrees war, war shall prevail.
This lesson is written in stone.
No dreams will defer, nor wishes erase,
The hate that is burnished on bone.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by book, chant and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
Only by fire is fascism finished.
This sin is demanded that your line may live.
Only through fire is freedom reborn.
Each generation pulls the sword from the stone.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by book, chant and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
Their silence keeps me sleepless for I know
Within the smoke their ash revolves as snow,
To settle on our skin as fading stars
Dissolve into pure dust at break of day.
At dawn a distant shudder in the earth
Disclosed the fold of fire into steel,
The rumbles not of crossings underground
But screams from out of flowers built from flame.
We stood upon the Heights like men of straw
Transfixed by flames that started in the sky,
And watched them plunging down in death�s ballet
To land among those dying deep below.
By noon the band of smoke leaned low
Upon the harbor�s skin like some dark shawl,
A pall of smoke that in its curdled crawl
Kept reaching to extend its fatal fall.
The harp strung bridge held up ten thousand souls
Who�d screaming run beneath the paws of death,
As dusted ghosts that lived but were not sure
They lived in light or only in reprieve.
They'�d writhed and spun within a storm of smoke
And stumbled out to light and clearer air,
To find upon the river�s further shore
That sanctuary is not savored but secured.
The sirens scraped the sky and jets carved arcs
Within a heaven empty of all hope,
And marked its epicenter with one streak
Of black on polished bone where silver stood.
By evening all their ash had settled so
That on the leaves outside my window glowed
Their souls in small bright stars until the rain
Cleaned all that could not be clean again.
We breathed the smoke that bent and crept and crawled.
We learned to hate the smoke that lingered so.
We knew that blood could only answer blood,
And so we yearned to go and not to go.
That last, lost summer faded into ash
Their faces faded as endless autumn flowed
Through chill and heat into the winter sea
Where warships prowled in search of stones.
Within the city, shrines were our resolve.
We placed them where we stood or where they lay.
Upon our bricks and stones their faces loomed
To gaze at us from times beyond repeal.
In time, their ash and smoke became the shapes
Of stories told at dinner, found in books,
Or in the comments made by magazines
For whom the larger issues were of worth.
At first their faces faded with the rains,
The little altars thick with wax were scraped,
But now beneath clear plastic they endure
To remind those passing that we�ve not escaped.
Their silence keeps me sleepless for I know.
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LinkIf the Founders agree with you, you are following in the footsteps of the Founders. If the Founders disagree - they would have changed their minds. Americans have spent two centuries learning to play this blithe little game, great sport of a wonderfully Jesuitical nature, and has allowed each of the various modern American ideologies to craft its own Founders and its own Old Republic. - Unqualified Reservations: Secession, liberty, and dictatorship
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can't be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can't hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps,
the people march:
"Where to? what next?
-- Carl Sandburg: The People Yes
Apparently, Hitler could not avoid the fact that he believed what he was doing was for the great benefit of Germany. The winner of an election cannot be dissuaded from that belief until he is deposed. Hitler himself is not so interesting as is the ways in which he represents the ambitions of the 20th century. I wonder how different he is from any other such leader, and how different the German people are from us. Yeah, now I do actually wonder. Like most other folks who have studied Hitler's Germany, I scratch my head wondering how London, Washington, Paris and Moscow could have been so blind.
For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post has offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to "those powerful few": Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and â at first â even the paperâs own reporters and editors. The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its health care reporting and editorial staff." -- Washington Post sells access, $25,000Churchill: Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?
Socialite: My goodness, Mr. Churchill... Well, I suppose... we would have to discuss terms, of course...
Churchill: Would you sleep with me for five pounds?
Socialite: Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!
Churchill: Madam, we've already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.
The 87,492 page bill -- official designated as the American Patriotic Renewal Act of 2009 for Carbon Reduction, Energy Independence, Heathy Climate, Sustainable Job Growth, Adorable Puppies, and Earthly Paradise -- is a keystone in President Obama's first year legislative agenda, and was originally anticipated to get swift congressional passage. Instead, it faced a unexpectedly tough vote in the House last week after coal state Democrats complained it would place an unfair economic burden on their home districts. "I am as interested in reversing global climate change as anyone, but I fail to see how increasing taxes and random machete attacks on Ohio coal producers alone will solve the problem," said Marcy Kaptur (D-OH). "Come on people, there are plenty of other industries who deserve machete attacks too."
At over 2,280 meters above sea level (nearly 7,480 feet), the capital city of Chaghcharan has no factories, few cars or motorbikes, and air that is fresh and dry (and thin). Yet these are the lowlands. For about six months out of the year, the mountains around us could just as well be blanketed under a hundred miles of snow. When the snows arrive in about November, the place is socked in. The nearest paved road is about 380km (236 miles) away at Herat. Tens of thousands of people in the surrounding mountains and in this lowland are cut off from the world. There is nowhere to go but here. None of the Afghans have internet access, but there are cell phones. Even the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), run by the Lithuanians, becomes isolated other than by virtue of the gravel airstrip. They sometimes go several weeks without a flight. The place might as well be a spaceship, isolated first by the snows, then by the floods from the melting. This is a common story in Afghanistan. -- Lithuanians on the Moon
It is easy enough to see why progressive doctrine should be attractive to our masters. Tyrannical ambition is nothing new, and throughout human history it has nearly always presented itself to men in the guise of idealism. We are all inclined to meddle in other people's business; we are all inclined to think that we know better; and higher education tends to inflate our vanity and to make us more inclined to lord it over those who are less well-instructed. Never for a moment does a Barack Obama stop to ask whether depriving us of responsibility for our own well-being is demeaning. He and his supporters know that they know better, and their putative wisdom in this regard constitutes for them an absolute claim to rule. The logic unfolding within the progressive impulse requires that there be a class of Guardians empowered to supervise our lives in every particular, and to an ever-increasing degree this is the reality with which we live. -- Paul Rahe: Obama's tyrannical ambition
Fruit, I now understand, causes within people a diabolical disorientation, and that disorientation spreads into every aspect of humanity. Fruit captivates the attention and leads to painful mishaps. Fruit causes aggression, which leads to war. It inspires prostration and adoration, which leads to idolatry and misplaced allegiances. Fruit flummoxes a man’s ability to reason, impacting his marriage and his daughter’s self-esteem and future lumbar health. Fruit maketh a woman into a blithe-and-brainless spirit, content to bounce from car-to-car like a well-flicked pinball. These people go out into the world. They write books. They teach. They govern nations. They program network television. -- The Anchoress — A First Things Blog
Presto-the beleaguered, more moral liberal must be given greater leeway, employ sometimes questionable means, since his ends are the more exalted. Yes, Al Gore gets to fly private, and have a few extra rooms in his mansion, but he is sacrificing on the planetâs behalf, and needs a more ample footprint than the rest of us to save us from ourselves. Who cares if George Bushâs Texas ranch house has a lighter footprint than Goreâs mansion, given that Bush thwarted Kyoto and Gore promoted it? Yes, Timothy Geithner skipped a few thousands in taxes, but who wouldnât if you were trying to reformulate an entire tax code to level the playing field? Yes, Bill slipped up with Monica, but Monicas come and go-a womanâs right to chose simply cannot. Yes, Eliot Spitzer had a bothersome desire for young prostitutes, but he was a crusader against Wall Street greed. And yes, the previously mentioned John Edwards was campaigning to the left of Clinton and Obama, and thus his âproblemsâ deserved some sort gestation, given his voice on the behalf of the poor.
The Bad Moose crowd at night is prone to motorcycles and tattoos. There are very few drinks with umbrellas in them in evidence. There is a contingent of very large males enamored of high-fives and bottled beer, and some women who might have danced around a pole previously. The bartender works alone, whirling like a dervish, is dressed like a vampire, has some metal in the face and tattoos on the skin, and could probably clear the room in 15 seconds flat. And she's a girl. -- Sippican Cottage: Money (Still) Changes Everything
The calculus of political correctness is like roshambo, the "rock-paper-scissors" game. Different identity groups hold specific levels of power over others when their battles play out in the media. To wit: Black beats white. Gay beats white. Black beats gay.
Don't ask why. It just is.But who then makes The Rules?, asks the Belmont Club in Carnival of grotesques:
If Poets were the unacknowledged legislators of Shelley's world, then who are unacknowledged legislators of ours? If Shelley's commentary remains valid then the true authors of Breitbart's Laws are the Carnival of Grotesques collectively referred to as popular culture. They make the rules to which we subconsciously conform. Its members are household names. And the measure of its quality can be deduced from the fact that Lavandeira occupies an honored position in this assembly. And that's why Andrew Breitbart can write seriously about this creature, and the reason why anyone, in spite of himself should read it. Perez Hilton is about us. He is a measure of the circumference to which our outlook has shrunk.
Here is a handy-dandy way to determine whether the failure to order some exam or treatment constitutes rationing: If the patient were the president, would he get it? If he'd get it and you wouldn't, it's rationing. -- Michael Kinsley
The flight down to Florida was an eternity. We cruised at 250 knots indicated, giving us about 315 knots of ground speed at 15,000'. The miles didn't click by like I am use to them clicking by in a fighter at MACH .94. We were burning fuel at a rate of 40,000 pounds per hour or 130 pounds per mile, or one gallon every length of the fuselage! The vibration in the cockpit was mild, compared to down below and to the rear of the fuselage where it reminded me of that football game I had as a child where you turned it on and the players vibrated around the board. -- Alva Review/Courier HT Rick @ Brutally Honest
Another day, another day of internecine Muslim slaughter in Iraq. To put things in perspective, if a proportionate mass killing had occurred in the US, it would equal 2000 American dead. Pundits and academics and scribblers of every kind will write millions of words trying to explain these killings. Some will blame Iran. Some will blame Al-Qaeda. Some will blame Bush. Yet such things happen regularly in Iraq and in almost every nation where Mohammed hangs his ragged turban. Muslim killing Muslim began when Islam began. It will end when the last two Muslims strangle each other with their own intestines.
If any man in Guantanamo Bay prison had been found in [Michael Jackson's] condition there would be cries for a war crimes prosecution. But since Jackson succumbed to that most socially acceptable and lucrative of ends, death by celebrity, the real question is whether anyone — anyone at all, bar some fall guy — will be found guilty of anything....
One might be forgiven for imagining that the elite media system actually works quite well: that it can keep a secret when it wants to; that secrets only leak when it is convenient. When massive liquidity problems impend, when tax bills disguised as climate change fixes are introduced in the dead of the night, when totally incompetent people are foisted on an unsuspecting public, it can hide the information quite effectively. If these horrible autopsy results are real then I hope it starts a fire that doesn't stop until everyone associated with this incident burns down. Here's one slogan from the sixties that hasn't gone out of date. Burn, baby, burn. It isn't that I like Michael Jackson particularly, but no human being should be beset by bloodsuckers this bad. -- Belmont Club Night of the living dead
I don't know how, but I am now in my sixties. I keep telling myself not to feel so much sorrow for what is happening now, since I have the easy way out. Every time I almost let go, the figurehead utters something about being a nation of laws or international law and I'm sucked right back in. I read this yesterday morning, it helped yesterday -- "For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace."-Romans. Hmmm, it just helped again. Nonetheless, I'll do all in my power to stand against America's enemies, domestic and foreign.
In contemporary Canada we also face tyranny, but of a sort that we have brought upon ourselves in ways no Czechs, no Persians, ever did. There is no regime in Ottawa that seized power by violence, and imposed the "politically correct" ideology on us from a party manifesto. The advance of this tyranny -- of the Nanny State and all its trappings -- has been accomplished in plain view, by incremental advances, with our co-operation. -- David Warren
The card table bohemian Marxists loomed large now on the radar screen. I saw them watching the bum they had hired directly across the street, and eying me. And here I was, right in front of them; I was the person they were touting on all those flyers. I was the worker who they would emancipate. I've been a body shop mechanic, and a janitor, and a housepainter, and a welder, and a factory hand, and a starving artist, and a laborer, and every other damn thing. If I sneeze at the wrong time I could still lose a finger or two at work.... They sized me up, and pulled their hands back in, and let me pass by without saying anything. -- Sippican Cottage: Gimme Some (More) Of That Old Time Religion
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
The rise to power and fame of the real lowbrows explains a lot. It even points to an answer of sorts. Because we've all been intimidated by the Cult of Nice not to contradict anybody who comes out with a really stupid, destructive idea. We can no longer call a really stupid idea what it is. I know that I censor myself all the time. We have been taught to keep our mouths shut when a word in time might make a real difference. We have allowed the national conversation to be dumbed down.
Here's my resolution for July Fourth: From now on I'm going to call idiocy idiotic. Not nastily, but as clearly as I can. It is high time for normal, intelligent common sense to become acceptable again. I'm happy to have a respectful argument with anyone who disagrees with me. But I'm going to start saying the magic words:
That's really dumb! That's really ignorant! You haven't thought about that much, have you? Have you ever considered another side of that batty idea?
The process through which a principal is captured by his servants is familiar to students of bureaucracy and even business. Once capture is consummated, the master and servant exchange places. The enterprise is run thereafter not for the benefit of the principal, but for those of the agents, such as when a country is run for the benefit of a government, or when a government is run for the benefit of its officials. In the case of Jackson, he may have been working -- and made to keep working -- for the benefit of the vast swarm of creditors, suppliers and hangers-on who attached themselves like parasites to failing host.
But how many people, reflecting on the King of Pop’s fantasies, will ask themselves whether subprime mortgages, unfunded social security or borrowing our way out of debt makes any more sense than that last shot of Demerol? On a day when the House has passed the climate change bill, wouldn’t it be good to ask how much of what the public is being made spend is for the public’s own benefit, and how much for the continued livelihood of the armies of special pleaders who surround society with their policy pills and needles? Good, but unlikely. It is far easier to believe in promises and rely feel-good nostrums than it is to look in the mirror, even though we know what it will show. Jackson’s death when it came, wasn’t a surprise; probably not even to him. And the crash of public policy fantasy, when it arrives, will not be wholly unexpected.
Obama Foodorama The Obama Foodorama: Everything From Arugula To Waffles. An archive of Obama Food Art, White House recipes, White House Kitchen Garden info, Ag Policy Commentary & Food Politics, and an exploration of the Folk Foodways of the Obama White House. Scroll the sidebar for clickable stories. No public comments....HT: neo-neocon Obama Foodorama: gag me with a spoon
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