Freelance war correspondent Michael Yon doesn't explain the use of this teepee in Afghanistan except to say that it's a memorial to an American unit's war dead. MY's apparently in need of money to continue. He's still worth it. I'm still sending him some. You should too. (Uh, actually he does explain the teepee. The unit is the 2nd ID, the "Indian Head" division.)
Wonder why the, ahem, security bureaucracy failed to stop the PantyBomber from boarding the jet? Despite his own father's advance warning?
Other than for the usual reasons of its own ineptitude. Well, No Good Boyo has the explanation. Imagine you are an FBI agent on the receiving end of this: "Hello, I am a senior Nigerian banker. I have important information for you..."
Nobody with any knowledge of Texas politics is taking Democrat Farouk Shami's run for governor seriously. For one thing his incumbent opponent, Republican Rick Perry, is too popular. For another, well, when was the last time Texas had an Arab-American Muslim governor? Exactly never.
On the other hand, Shami has ten million dollars of his own money to invest in his campaign. Consequently he's getting a lot of media, free and otherwise. They all quote him saying he's from Palestine, wherever that is. It's not the Texas Palestine. Apparently he's from the West Bank, though no one is sure because he doesn't call it that.
He tells the American Task Force for Palestine, which seems to think he's a Muslim though some Texans think he's a Quaker, that he's for peace and love and equality in the Middle East. Debbie Schlussel thinks he's a clandestine Jihadi in an anti-Semitic package. She cites as partial evidence this column he wrote two years ago for the Houston Chronicle in which he implies that the nasty Israelis are forcing the poor Palestinians to ration water "while Jewish settlers cultivate lush lawns and fill their swimming pools." That's libel enough for me to be glad that Shami's chance of election is exactly nil.
UPDATE: The daily's Ken Herman did a job on Shami: "The downtrodden minority/victim role is particularly unattractive on a guy who lives in a 24,585-square-foot-home like Shami does."
Mr. B.'s big item for his and Mrs. Charm's secular Christmas celebration was Guitar Hero. When he's older he may find the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns more enlightening. Fortunately there'll be more available than the usual anti-American, anti-war movies that Hollyweird churns out:
Video "game makers aren't afraid to put players in situations where U.S. soldiers are unambiguously the good guys, while the combatants – often Muslims – are the bad guys."
Via Instapundit.
Re our secular Christmas at the rancho: This celebration of parties, presents and poinsettias has more to do with Saturnalia than Christianity. It is far older than the religious version. (Some nineteenth century Protestants found it so unnerving that they took to assuring their fellows that while they did mark the Nativity they did "not worship the tree.")
Christians still confuse the two, some of them whacking the secular version as ungodly. Well, to each his own. Mrs. C. would be lost without her favorite time of the year. And while he long ago graduated from Santa to understanding who the real gift-givers are, Mr. B. likewise would be bereft without packages to unwrap and goodies to consume. Good thing they needn't be.
Link via Power Line.
I've said it before, if we're going to dither, we should leave Afghanistan immediately. The government is more corrupt than the one in Iraq (and that's saying something) and the Afghans don't seem to want to fight. (Reminds me of South Vietnam.) We can always go back if we have to, or leave a few spec-ops behind to direct any necessary smart-bombings.
But Barry's new half-in, half-out strategy is pathetic. Especially his setting of a timetable for departure, which will only serve to put the Taliban and Al Q on notice that they can do all the free-killing of American troops they desire in the meantime. President Pantywaist has done the next worst thing to failing to decide at all. "America – we are passing through a time of great trial." No kidding. Will the last soldier out of the GWOT please close the door? Meanwhile, keep your heads down out there.
UPDATE: Military analyst Ralph Peters agrees: "Our president is setting up our military to fail." Yep and, meanwhile, sending the enemy more American targets to shoot at.
This post is as star-crossed as the docudrama it's about. Twice now, Movable Type has trashed it before I could get it on the site. Grrrr. Once more with feeling: I missed the 2006 ABC airing of this Disney film. I figured it was probably just more Hollyweird drek like Moore's crockumentary on GWB.
Apparently not. This one dared to come down on the Clintons. Whoa. And they, who have famously always depended on Hollyweird for campaign cash, couldn't keep it off the air. But they have succeeded in stopping its sale as a DVD, according to various sources including conservative talker John Ziegler. The trailer to his documentary Blocking The Path to 9/11 was compelling enough that I bought one.
Then I went to Amazon looking for a copy of the old series, just in case it was now available. Nope. But one of the reviewers there had an url to an import version. So I went there and got a copy. Amazing, you can buy the Disney production overseas or on the Web. You just can't buy it in this country or on Amazon. Well, anything Slick Willie and Hilarity (She was under fire in Bosnia!) don't want me to see is a tantalizing draw. More on all this when I've received and watched both productions.
I've read the arguments about why this Jihadi jerk shouldn't be tried in federal court in New York, but I remain unimpressed. Surely, if GWB had any plans to have him tried by a tribunal and hung, it would have been done sometime in the seven plus years he was in Gitmo. Since that didn't happen, it doesn't bother me especially that he will now be tried in a civilian court. And if he gets off? Well, then it will just have to be arranged for him to be run over by a bus.
But it's tempting to believe, as Power Line relates, that AG Holder's motive is to see KSM's lawyers run with his "treatment by the Bush administration, real and imagined, [as] the centerpiece of their defense, with the possible result that Bush, Cheney, and others may be indicted as war criminals by European countries or international courts, thereby satisfying the far left of the Democratic Party, which Obama represents."
It's still not clear to me, however, why this couldn't have happened just as easily in a military tribunal.
UPDATE: Two Bush-era lawyers have an argument for KSM's NYC trial that's much better than mine, including that such trials have already happened before:
"Many of Holder's critics appear to have forgotten that the Bush administration used civilian courts to put away dozens of terrorists, including 'shoe bomber' Richard Reid; al-Qaeda agent Jose Padilla; 'American Taliban' John Walker Lindh; the Lackawanna Six; and Zacarias Moussaoui, who was prosecuted for the same conspiracy for which Mohammed is likely to be charged. Many of these terrorists are locked in a supermax prison in Colorado, never to be seen again."
Read. The. Rest.
That's a more loaded question than it may appear. Depends on how you define what happened there. Was it a massacre in the war on terror? Then they get Purple Hearts. Or was it a lone wacko's criminal act? in which case, they don't.
You may find you have much more to lose in the long run as your target's lawyer sifts through your files in the discovery process. Much the way the National Iranian American Council has had its illegal lobbying for changes in American foreign policy apparently discovered. Why NIAC even supplies money to J Street, a supposed but thereby obviously unlikely backer of Israel. And all because NIAC sued for redress of a journalistic piece they didn't like.
Fellow OCS grad Tucker Smallwood, who I have known and argued with since college days, opined the other day on our class email list that Barry should withdraw all the regulars while sending in the advisers, accompanied by air, artillery and medevac. Just as he and I did it in Viet Nam. I agreed but, probably, for different reasons.
I also see no reason to keep regulars in that briar patch with the Taliban tar baby but, moreover, I suspect Barry is going to be another LBJ, as this indicates, another micromanager all the way to defeat. The worst problem of course is that we're really there for us, not for them. And they don't want to fight in sufficient numbers to make advising worth while. But we could just go back now and then to clean out the Taliban rat's nest. Annually, if necessary. It would certainly be cheaper in money and American lives.
If I see another headline about "the tragedy" at Fort Hood, I will vomit. It was a massacre, a terrorist attack, an example of "going Muslim" on Christians and Jews and other non-Muslims by a religious-fanatic murderer. Not some put-upon, discriminated-against, sad sack we must now feel sorry for. Piss on you, Maj. Hasan, and all your fellow-travelers.
The sorrow of the loved ones of the dead and maimed is real. But the old media manipulates us with their canned sorrow, no less than the politicians who can turn it on and off like a faucet. They couldn't care less. Most of them never served and never will. Their buddy Barry, who also never served, will come to Fort Hood today to give his version of canned sorrow. He should, instead, lead by undermining the political correctness and bureaucratic cowardice and inertia that caused this travesty. But he won't. It got him elected, after all.
UPDATE: President Pantywaist came, he saw, and he coddled. Hasan may have cracked from "stress."
The generals don't want it, but, then, they can't do the basics, either:
"The Army is so worn out and so politically correct it could not spot something seriously amiss in a major who dressed like an Arab on base even though he was American-born and bred. His openly expressed opposition to American policy in the Middle East should have gotten him cashiered, but didn’t."
And while we're at it, how about a new Congress?
So the murderous major tried to contact Al Q, eh? It's really not reassuring to think that our own military may be shot through with terrorist sympathizers like him, whose activities their commands and outside intelligence agencies know about, but for reasons of political correctness decline to deter. Now we know what the FBI's standard "this is not terrorism" claim is really worth.
Take it from one who knows. So the dimwit media, trying to obfuscate and excuse the Muslim major's murderous fling at Jihad, are just taking you and every other sucker down the garden path to stupidity. Grow up and realize that there really are traitors in our midst and this kind of nonsense only strengthens them.
UPDATE: It may be too late. Our society may already be too sick to survive.
Via Lone Star Times.
Want to help?
Chaplain's Fund Office
Bldg 44, 761st Tank Battalion Ave.
Fort Hood, TX 76544-5000
Checks should be made payable to COTF (Chapel's Tithes and Offerings Fund) with a note on the memo line stating "Nov. 5 Tragedy."
While our military, media and feds fall over themselves trying to pretend they have no idea why Maj. Hasan would murder and cripple 43 people, a Brit newspaper finds another supposedly-missing link to Jihad. Gee, what a surprise.
UPDATE: At least one national pol has the common sense to draw the logical conclusion.
Letting Army Maj. (and Fort Hood Jihadi) Hasan harm his PTSD and brain-injury patients is despicable:
"I will argue that political correctness led to the madness of having someone who does not believe in the legitimacy of the war in Iraq practice psychiatry by counseling some of the most severely traumatized in the Iraqi war."
Let's see some Army medical heads roll for this at Walter Reed, shall we? Lead, Barry, or resign!
Via Instapundit.
The old media is saying Army Maj. Malik Nidal Hasan killed twelve and wounded thirty-one at Fort Hood, northwest of Austin, today because he was being deployed to Iraq the war and "was upset about it." Sure. I'll bet.
The FBI, always quick to put its foot in its mouth, already is saying it was not terrorism. As if they could possibly know. Sounds like jihad to me, pure and simple. Otherwise the fool would have killed himself, eh? Rather than execute and cripple strangers.
MORE: Instapundit, as usual on any big breaking news, has a good roundup. More Jihad evidence. Naturally, pathetically, it comes from a British newspaper. Well, Fox had it, too. You know, that news service Barry-the-journalism-expert hates so much. Meanwhile, Newsweak (who else?) blames the Pentagon for overstressing troops like the noble doctor. No Jihad on their radar. Surprise, surprise.
Caption says the "reporters" are studying the inscriptions on the shovels for the ceremonial dirt-turning for a memorial tree for fallen American troops. You know, while Barry dithers about whether they need reinforcements or not. This is what the legacy media does these days instead of asking hard questions. Bush quietly met with the survivors of the fallen. Barry turns their deaths into a photo op and a tree-planting. Frankly I think he prefers them fallen. The fallen don't talk back.
Via Mudville Gazette.
A melodious little essay by a father mostly riding with his driving son across the west to Navy flight training at Pensacola, where my nephew also flew:
"Rested then, and once again on our way, a salt tang in the air, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama giving us back some sense of forward movement after a day hurling ourselves repeatedly against Texas."
Ah, yes, that repeated hurling against the broad width of the Lone Star and its several sharp points. One does that daily, just living here, even in the rolling green hills around home.
Our troops should come home now from Afghanistan rather than continue risking their lives for a doofus president who'd rather criticise Republicans and the rare unfriendly news outfit and play golf than send them reinforcements. Or, in fact, make any decision at all about their fate. What a bum. (President Pantywaist, as the Brit's Daily Telegraph calls him). Our war on terrorism clearly is over. Better to face it than continue to squander our soldiers and Marines.
Given the alleged insubordination of their commander over long-delayed reinforcements, it's not surprising to hear that the troops doubt the value of the dangers they face in Afghanistan. Especially while the Mae West president dithers over whether they need to be augmented or brought home.
Via Hot Air.
Latest news from Brook Army Medical Center in San Antonio on First Cav's LTC Tim Karcher:
"I have no legs, and I accept that. I do not accept that my lack of legs will limit me. The adventure is re-learning, so that I am not limited. Some people talk about how brave or heroic this attitude is, but for me it is simply practical. I refuse to let this keep me from living my life to the fullest, and you would too. It's not heroic, it's realistic. I admit, I look forward to moving through this adventure with others who are travelling the same path that I am. Thus far, many have helped me and guided me, and I look forward to inspiring future wounded Soldiers. Leadership doesn't stop at the hospital door."
Some would. So it's nice to hear from one whose leadership doesn't. Good luck, colonel.
Via Op-For.
I can understand why the father of a dead Marine would beg the AP not to use a photo showing his son, Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard, 21, of New Portland, Maine, wounded and dying in Afghanistan.
The father is a retired Marine first sergeant. Many military families do not trust Big Media and, I think, often with good reason. AP looks especially hypocritical because the picture (part of a slide show here which clearly does not depend on it) is not a prize winner.
On the other hand, it was taken at wide angle from a dozen feet away, it is not graphic, and the young man's face is fuzzily indistinct. You can't even tell where the RPG wounded him, though from the red mass on his lower body it appears to be his upper leg, whose big arteries bleeding out would account for his death. But none of that will ameliorate the truth that will linger in military minds: that a father's plea was ignored. And for what? Sensationalism? To energize the anti-war movement? It's not like people don't know that death happens in war.
UPDATE: The AP also was unprofessional, violating their own embed agreement with the Marines. And Some Soldier's Mom shows why my own yes-buts are beside the point. She gets in her licks about journalistic cruelty-without-an-excuse. Even the former WaPo reporter Tom Ricks is embarrassed.
"The bad news is that North Korea can hit the U.S. with nukes. The good news is that they can only hit San Francisco and Seattle."
Via Premier Betty.
It's an old rule. American soliders win a war. American politicians lose it. It's a wonder anyone serves.
When the Hildabeast runs out of chatter, this is waiting in the wings to be loaded on the B-2 and B-52.
I'm a little late to the program here, this program anyhow. But it's worth noting, and, as we see above it's not just a Marines deal, but an Army one as well. I knew we had women fighter and gunship pilots, and women medics and armed women at security checkpoints. But I was floored by Michael Yon's latest report showing an apparent woman rifleman on a Brit patrol in Afghanistan. I figured it was new. El Coqui, a commenter at Black Five, set me straight. The Brit woman was a Royal MP, along to search women suspects. EC pointed me to the Lioness program. Now we know.
Pam Geller at Atlas Shrugged does a very nice thirty-minute interview (in three segments) with former Bush admin foreign policy/UN guy John Bolton. I was surprised to learn that the guy whose toughness at the dictator's club always impressed me started out his political career supporting Barry Goldwater. I did not then do any more than stick an AU H20 sticker on my motor bike. But I shared JB's enthusiasm for the man whose political efforts led to President Reagan. Worth your time.
"The Taliban are very brave, but they are ignorant brutal men who murder locals who do not support them, and brave doesn’t stop bullets." --Michael Yon
Sounds like the Viet Cong. Hope they don't have the Cong's tenacity. So far they seem not to have. But this "good war," as the Dems used to call it, to distinguish it from their "bad war" in Iraq, has a long way to go. Yon's piece shows why. Amazes me, though, that the Brit troops have women medics and rifles. These women aren't inadvertently in combat. They are in it on purpose. Revolutionary.
If you won't miss Jacko (his best work was years ago) and Farah was never your cup of mocha nor Gov. Sanford of any particular interest, you can still keep up with the Iranian protesters as they get picked off one by one.
Iranian and some Western bloggers always have had the best reporting and aggregating on it, anyhow. Of course, the UN is useless, as always. Heck, it's the Dictator's Club. What, you thought it was the protector of humanity? Only the thug version.
South Vietnam is what this map reminds me of. Think of the red places as NVA-controlled Indian Country. Places where our forces didn't/don't go for very long. S. Warzistan on the left bottom is where that Predator's Hellfire missiles killed all those Talibani at the funeral the other day. Eighty-something. I expected to be reading of Lefty outrage about that by now. The fact I didn't sorta figures, though.This is Barry's campaign now. He campaigned for it. His Leftist pals wanted it. Now they've got it. Lotsa luck. They're sure going to need it.
I think they're all going to be very sorry before The One's first term is over. Iraq was/is the Left's hated campaign, but it's the one that made the most sense to me. Nevermind the WMDs and all that baloney. The point in going in there was/is that it's in the middle of the Jihadi swamp that needs to be drained. I also believe that whatever success we've had there had more to do with the recent Iranian uprising than anything Barry said in Cairo or anywhere else. (He's too longwinded, too on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand, to inspire anybody.) So let's see what he's going to do with Afghanistan. Wallow in the quagmire, I expect. Although that Predator strike on a funeral, of all things, was a good start. Wish we'd had more UAVs in South Vietnam. Apaches are nice, too.
Seventeen is the official number killed in the Iranian election protests, but one hundred fifty is closer to the truth, according to some witnesses on the ground. After today's "massacre," both totals are bound to go higher. The whole thing now looks like a repeat of Tiananmen Square.
UPDATE: So it seems. June 24. Remember the date. Although the open chest wound photo at the second link is (as stated) older--from June 20.
From what I've read so far, she was more of a bystander to the Iranian election protest than an active participant. But it's probable that her Bassij assassin singled her out because she was a woman living in a misogynistic dictatorship. There's no doubt that Neda Agha-Soltan is a martyr now--though it may be only to a failed revolution.
It may take some refreshing and repeat clicking, but this Iranian blogger's site has good photos and video of the ongoing confrontations. Nice of the regime's thugs to wear red helmets. Makes it easier to pick them out of the crowd.
Via Michael Totten, who also shares the story of freedom-fighting Nebraskan Howard Baskerville.
Three years after Hamas kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, the terrorist group that former President Jimmy Carter recently asked be removed from the U.S. terrorist list, still has not provided his family any news of his health. Let alone agreed to release him or even allow him access to the International Red Cross.
Now the Jewish Community Association of Austin is joining in a JTA e-letter campaign to urge President Obama to not forget Gilad's father, Noam, and his friends praying for Gilad's safe return as former President Carter apparently has. Especially not on this Father's Day.
Zahra Rahnavard, Mousavi's wife, has drawn Iranian women into the streets with her demands for their equal rights.
"I am not Iran's Michelle Obama. I am Zahra, the follower of Fatimah Zahra [the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad]. I respect all women who are active."
While the crazed shooter, as usual, gets the news, the dead security guard plays second fiddle. Pity. Stephen Tyrone Johns, 39, was a brave man, obviously, and well worth remembering.
Via Simply Jews.
UPDATE: The American Jewish Committee has set up a fund to raise money for his family, which includes a new child.
Back in the day, Air Force pilots used to joke about "Air Chance." Some civilians still mutter darkly about the fly-by-wire, automated Airbus, although this apparently is its first major crash with passengers. For now the proposed explanation for the disappearance of Flight 447 over the mid-Atlantic, is severe turbulence, a possible lightning strike and hail damage.
Yet airliners are designed and pilots are trained to handle weather. It's tempting, in this day of terrorism, to assume it was a bomb. Reports of simultaneous electrical failure and loss of cabin pressure suggest something like that. But they'll have to find the wreckage, and hopefully the black (actually orange) flight data and voice recorders before we will ever know the cause for certain. If then.
From Barry's loony chief of Homeland Security, the Napolitano creature whose latest warning report says we must watch out for returning veterans going postal. She must be a graduate of Penn State.
Not to mention her other warning about Americans who dare to prefer state and local power to federal. She must not have read the Constitution. Or met our Texas governor, who is a diehard Aggie and Sarah Palin supporter, although it is true that he likes federal money as much as the next governor. Yep, the Leftist lunatics have certainly taken over the federal asylum. Watch yourself out there.
White House dithering apparently ended and the U.S. Navy, taking a page from the French, has freed the American freighter captain-hostage in "a swift firefight." One which simultaneously eliminated the CO2 contribution of three of the pirates. The peace weenies probably will carp, but it sends a good and timely message.
The 9/11 generation of military veterans are taking up their GI Bills and going to college, and the nutball liberal war-protesting professors at places like Penn State are getting ready to cut them no slack. Disgusting.
Via Doug Ross @ Journal.
Well, at least one Euro was unimpressed with Barry's first around-the-world whirl, to say the least:
"So The One retired triumphant, having secured a massive contribution of 5,000 extra troops - all of them non-combatant, of course - which must really have put the wind up the Taliban, at the prospect of 5,000 more infidel cooks and bottle-washers swarming into the less hazardous regions of Afghanistan."
Not to mention his brilliant, mid-tour non-response to the North Korean missile launch:
"President Pantywaist is hopping mad and he has a strategy to cut Kim down to size: he is going to slice $1.4bn off America's missile defence programme, presumably on the calculation that Kim would feel it unsporting to hit a sitting duck, so that will spoil his fun."
Well, we already knew Barry was President Thin-skin and all that goes with that little defect. But it's nice to read some news about him for a change. Only odd that we have to go across the pond for it.
MORE: Bowing, or licking Saudi Muslim King Abdullah's boots? I say bowing, but you never know. As one commenter at the link said, we can be pleased it was not a curtsy.
This on-purpose power outage in California is ominous. Mainly for how easy it was to create. We had an outage last night at the rancho. No idea why. Just another reminder of how fragile the infrastructure really is.
Five minutes is a long time for even me to watch one of those support-the-troops videos. But this one, tipped to me by my chapter of the Army Association, is exceptionally fine.
Reading an article in the April issue of the print edition of Army Magazine, I came across a double-page (double-truck as we say in the newspaper business) photograph of six M1 Abrams tanks. They belonged to the Third Infantry Division and were in line at an assembly area in Kuwait hours before they rolled into Iraq on March 20, 2003.
I had to use a magnifying glass to read what was stenciled on the barrels of their main guns. It was probably reported at the time but it's news to me six years later. Usually, as in Vietnam, for instance, such barrel art is crude or rude. These were different. American Airlines Flight 11 was the wording on the barrel in the photo's foreground. The other Sept. 11 airliners were commemorated on the rest.
Even Arab Muslim journalists need police protection if they make a habit of writing what they see:
"...we should not be surprised if the next generation of jihadists comes not from the Gaza Strip or the mountains and mosques of Pakistan and Afghanistan, but from university campuses across the U.S."
Not that the problem is limited to U.S. university campuses.
Via Simply Jews.
The Religion of Peace is at it again. It's just changed venues. An old tale told in a new setting. Lucky us.
UPDATE: Meanwhile, this crime has become one more illustration of why American newspapers are dying. They could puff this guy - before he became a murderer in a typically-Muslim fashion - but now they not only can't report what he did on the front page but they try to excuse his method on page twenty-six. Pathetic.
I'm actually of two minds on the issue of whether Barry's client Big Media ought to be photographing the flag-draped coffins of fallen troops. On the one hand I do not like censorship, such as Barry's congressional minions are preparing to practice in forging a new law that has the effect of quashing right radio.
On the other hand, the CNN questioner at Barry's first presser put Big Media's real interest out there when he asked if the policy of not allowing photographs of the coffins could be overturned by The One: "Ed Henry with CNN, who asked the President whether he thought the arrival of American coffins at Dover should be accessible to the media to 'show America the real cost of the war....'"
If you want right radio to be allowed, then how can you argue for hiding the coffins? Well, one is free speech, the other is honoring the dead by not turning them into a political spectacle. Plus the coffin policy has been around since 1991. It was not created by Bushitler to thwart the NYTimes and Code Pink.
We didn't hear much about the Iraq elections. A few purple-finger photos, but that's all. Why? Too quiet. Besides, making a big deal about it would only make W. look good and Big Media would never do that. But the Marine, MG John Kelley, who until recently ran Al Anbar province notes that, for its people, this was the first free election of their lives.
MORE: On the other hand, there's an outside chance it could all unravel again.
Not just one special day each year, but every day. You can't fire a rocket at a daycare center without one.
Via Simply Jews.
With Barry's apparent plan to withdraw from the war on terror and the foreign jihadis, domestic jihadis could become more of a problem:
"...multiculturalism, political correctness and the greed for votes, makes our own government turn a blind eye to the poison within our ranks. I’ve written and spoken about these phenomenon myriads of times to point out that the Wahhabi/Salafi ideology is built on hate and spews a nasty political message, blatantly ignoring the spiritual message of Islam."
A long, a good read, a FrontPage forum with five women, all to one degree or another terrorism experts.
UPDATE: Need proof? How about this: Hamas burned an Israeli flag on the steps of the Minnesota state capitol on Jan. 5. What in the world are they doing in Minnesota?
Strategic retreat, indeed. B. Hussein Obama hinted at such a retreat in his interview with Al-Arabiya, looking back thirty years (the Carter administration) to a purported U.S.-Arab Golden Age. Not that the bloated Pentagon couldn't lose its spare tire, but the times certainly are not propitious for dieting. With all that battered equipment from Iraq that needs replacing. Especially not with a trillion in civilian pork already moving through the Congressional intestine. ACORN could get a few billion. The military must cut fifty-five billion.
At one level, I can understand this Illinois school district's decision to remove Veteran's Day as a school holiday. School holidays usual include a district's need to let teachers and administrators conference during the year, and there can only be so many days off. But the excuse given, that the students don't understand the meaning of Veteran's Day says more about district politics than the students.
It's probably also a clue as to why Illinois (along with Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri) provides only twenty-two percent of the military's recruit-age men (aged eighteen to twenty-four), according to this 2007 2008 study. Not as bad as the Northeast, which comprises just thirteen percent of the total, but only a bit more than half the forty-three percent from the South, which leads the nation.
The usual so-called artists, Hollyweird and their television clones still insist they are "speaking truth to power" when they satirize Judeo-Christianity. You know, Piss Christ, and etc. I'm still waiting to see them do something truly breathtaking, like take on Islam and Mohammad. Good luck with that. This legal crimp on free speech will make it harder than ever. And hard ain't in it for those guys. They always take the easy way.
No, in my support of the IDF, I haven't forgotten the innocents of Gaza. Namely the children who suffered and died during the late unpleasantness. But it's not enough to say they were the victims of the fighting, which Hamas started and continued even after the IDF took them under fire. Hamas, and the PLO before it, have long sacrificed the children of Gaza and the West Bank in the name of a higher hate. They call it jihad. But it's really much older. It's Moloch, the child destroyer, come again.
MORE: Meanwhile, the unilateral IDF truce in Gaza isn't open-ended. If fired upon, they fire back.
This is Instapundit's somewhat surprising advice for any Jew or their supporters who feel threatened by these mad Musslemen and their scum supporters who invade Jewish neighborhoods with threatening anti-Semitic demos. Fortunately most of this is going on in Britain, Australia and Canada. Gun laws are rather restrictive there. Not so here. Of course the laws differ from state to state on when you're allowed to shoot somebody. Generally speaking the perp has to be stealing or destroying your property on your property. But if it makes people feel better just to have some .45 Long Colts handy for use, it works for me.
MORE: Thou Shalt Not Kill? Try Nehemiah, chapter four, verse fourteen.
Black Five has a good video on the men and women of the IDF which, inronically, uses an anti-war song to show how much we have in common with them: liberal democracy, professional military, and many of the same enemies.
MORE: While you're at it, send them something via PayPal. In other words, support the IDF.
Life in Mullah land. It ain't like Disney World, where adulterers get hotel rooms. Well, not in Iran.
Those strange, floppy "shower cap" helmet covers that IDF infantry wear were introduced in 2006 as a way to cut the contours of an ordinary helmet when seen by a sniper or other enemy soldier in urban as well as rural terrain. It's said they were also a reaction to the Israeli use of new U.S. Kevlar helmets, which were too Nazi-like in appearance for the Israelis. Curiously enough the mitznefet, or "clown hat," as the cover is called in Hebrew, even has an ancient Jewish religious significance.
You can believe Al Reuters, which never stops shilling for the jihadis, when it says the school was a hiding place for refugees frightened from their homes. Or you can take the IDF's word, which is that it was another Hamas ammo dump with an active mortar tube and rocket launcher. I've made my choice.
U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney, a goggle-eyed Democrat harridan with a fright-wig hairdo, has always been pathetic to everyone except, apparently, the Georgians who keep sending her to Congress. Pity she does not sleep with the fishes today off Gaza. Unfortunately, the Israeli navy did not slice in two and sink but only damaged the boat she was using to aid Hamas, in a publicity stunt for her wellknown anti-Semitism. Funny how, whenever the terrorists are under attack, the anti-Semites, anti-democrats, and anti-Americans come out of the woodwork to fist-punch the air and otherwise support them. If only Hamas would take McKinney and her clones permanently.
UPDATE: Ceasefire is in the daily's headlines, put together last night although Israel had rejected the idea well before midnight. It comports with the frontpage picture yesterday of the handful of Hamas-supporting protestors outside the Texas capitol. Dead Jews aren't news, as Ralph Peters says, only besieged terrorists. Meanwhile the local Jewish Community Assoc. sent out an email of moral support while cautioning that, in times like these, "anti-Jewish attitudes, expressions and activity [bring] an added risk to Jewish communal institutions."
The Dutch Left has issued a new position paper that stands multiculturalism on its head:
"We have to stop the existence of parallel societies within our society."
The issue, of course, is Islam, the least tolerant "parallel society" of all. The question: is it too late?
Via Instapundit.
Not just giving the oil ticks a good case of really well-deserved gas, but giving the rest of us really cheap gas. Going to be a good year ahead for a driving vacation or three.
Via Sonia-Belle
Boy, you can almost hear the Islamic and South American oil ticks sweat. Gotta find a new source of payment for their bomb vests and naval exercises with the Soviets, er, Russians. Not to mention the Russians, themselves. Heh.
It's good news, of course, for our side. Oil is down about seventy percent since July. I filled up the rancho-mobile yesterday for under twenty bucks. At one dollar seventy-nine a gallon, it was easy.
When I read of the Islamic terrorists attacking an Hasidic Chabad Center in Mumbai, India, I thought of Chabad House at the UT campus where I enjoyed a Passover seder with another likewise-unattached journalist, and a few young bachelor musicians, one very humid spring night more than twenty years ago.
It's not hard to imagine that place being invaded by Muslims with grenades and AKs or for them to find people like Rabbi Holzberg and his wife. I'm sure they were as welcoming as the Chabad Lubavitchers of Austin and, of course, they paid for it with their lives. There's a story now that the attackers cased the Mumbai center in advance, where they must have met the young couple they would later slay. The Austin rebbe, whose name I don't remember, led our all-male seder (the women cooked and served) in so many toasts and regaled us with so many scholarly jokes that the evening still is a warm, alcoholic blur. But I don't recall the food being as bad as Roger Simon remembers the cuisine at his daughter's Chabad Sunday School in Los Angeles. The Austin ones did then and still do the outreach to Jews and non-Jews that Roger, and some of his commenters, speak of here, which makes them vulnerable.
The Seablogger points to his own and some other recent posts on the logic of Al Q eventually setting off a nuke in D.C. Seems right to me, especially since they have a history of second tries on missed targets and they pretty much failed on their first big D.C. strike in 2001. On the other hand, does the sea-attack "commando" assault on Mumbai, India, not portend a similar strike on the ports of Miami, Boston or San Francisco?
UPDATE: The Jews and Israelis taken hostage in Mumbai were tortured before they were slain.
MORE: More, nonspecific, support for the nuke idea. But the report's lack of specificity regarding the "terrorists" is pathetic.
Independent correspondent Michael Yon on Bush's major achievement with little to no Dem help:
"I'm with the 10th Mountain Division, and about half of the guys I'm with haven't fired their weapons on this tour and they've been here eight months. And the place we're at, South Baghdad, used to be one of the worst places in Iraq. And now there's nothing going on."
Glad to see our troops did it before Barry and Hairplugs Joe could foul it up. The Afghan campaign will be enough for them.
President-elect Barry backtracks a bit on Iran at his first news conference since the election:
"Iran's development of a nuclear weapon I believe is unacceptable. And we have to mount a international effort to prevent that from happening. Iran's support of terrorist organizations I think is something that has to cease."
No talk at all of welcoming the loudmouth Iranian dictator to the White House. But these are still early days.
MORE: Barry's apologizing already for a careless joke. That was fast.
Possibly the best, via Jay Nordlinger at National Review Online, in a remark about Reagan:
"Reagan spent his entire life standing up to the bully. From boyhood on, he interposed himself between the bully and the innocent. He stood up to the bullies in his schools. He stood up to the Communists in Hollywood, and to the coercive unions. He stood up to the student radicals and their abettors. He stood up to the Soviets. He simply stood up.
"In the world today are a lot of bullies to stand up to: al-Qaeda, the mullahs, the North Koreans, the Chinese Communists, the Castro brothers, Chávez. John McCain will almost certainly do it. Barack Obama will almost certainly not."
No surprise here. If you were on active duty would you want to be commanded by a guy (Barry) who pointedly never served, and was seconded by (Biden) a Vietnam War draft-dodger? I'm reminded of scifi writer Robert Heinlein's conception: only veterans should be allowed to vote and only mothers should be eligible for office. Works for me.
Via BlackFive.
Barry's sole executive experience, funneling $100 million in foundation charity, cobbled together by former terrorist Bill Ayers, to radical education groups, rarely gets mentioned by his presidential campaign or the Big Media. Oddly enough. It's finally being explored in the WSJ. Now, maybe, the WaPo and NYT will get around to it--but I won't hold my breath. They're only interested in Cindy McCain's onetime drug problems.
Via Instapundit.
Sarah, in her capacity as governor of Alaska, sends off the "Arctic Wolves," of the Alaska National Guard, including her 19-year-old son, to duty with the Stryker Brigade in Iraq. She'll speak in Vienna, Ohio, tomorrow. More positive stuff on her here. The negative is easy to find as the "save Barry" news frenzy continues.
The Falling Man: In memoriam, September 11, 2001.
So runs my dream, but what am I? An infant crying in the night, An infant crying for the light, And with no language but a cry. --Lord Tennyson
It wasn't as good as Palin's, alas. Thank goodness she's on the same ticket, which is more than enough for some previous Mac doubters. Because, after all, she wouldn't be there without Mac's vision and wisdom.
But I enjoyed watching and hearing him. The establishment media covers him so rarely--and never his wealthy wife, a genuinely interesting and admirable person. The POW stuff, which the big-whoop media meisters are bound to complain about, as they always do (it must make them nervous since few of them have served) was powerful and he has the right to use it. It was a good exemplar of the fundamental difference between him and his opponent, and of his brand of patriotism. It also demonstrates, as he suggested, why he is not at all the war-monger the Dems like to paint him. At the same time it shows why our enemies will have to be wary of his resolve, making him much less likely to have to widen the war we're already in.
UPDATE: It seems that Mac's speech outdrew Baby Barry's on teevee viewers. Good for him. And reading the speech, at the link above, I've changed my mind. It was better than Palin's. He knows more. How could it not have been? A young independent more or less agrees.
Chet Richards, one of the guardians of the theories and memory of the late, great Air Force fighter-pilot and military strategist John Boyd questions this contention of Charlie Martin's in American Thinker re Mac's choice of Sarah Palin for veep. Martin uses the term too loosely, suggests CR who says it's too early to tell. CR's claim that the pick was predictable, however, is probably unique. No one else I know of expected Mac to pick a woman. I think the old Navy fighter pilot, indeed, has generally been inside Baby Barry's OODA Loop for some time now with his sharp, quickly-produced teevee ads. Whether he can stay there remains to be seen.
Newt Gingrich on Sarah: "Palin will make mistakes. The news media and the Obama researchers will find things to attack. But if she stays relaxed and continues to be authentically who she has been for 44 years, the country is going to love her..." Except, maybe, the Left, which is terrified of her. And now, in her own words.
The incomparable Mark Steyn weighs in on the relative "experience" of Baby Barry vs Gov. Palin:
"Sarah Palin and Barack Obama are more or less the same age, but Governor Palin has run a state and a town and a commercial fishing operation, whereas (to reprise a famous line on the Rev Jackson) Senator Obama ain't run nothin' but his mouth. She's done the stuff he's merely a poseur about."
Read it and weep, Dems. Your historic moment done come and gone. Just like in '04. Heh.
One job she'll have to give up when she's vice president: commander of the Alaska National Guard. Which, with the permanently-active, round-the-clock 49th Missile Defense Battalion, is a heckuva lot more important than you might imagine--especially since Russian has resumed bomber patrols.
UPDATE: Good background here on pdf, on missile defense operations, thanks to BlackFive.
The Hilarity Clintonistas are gobsmacked. They should be. So is Reagan's old political director, Ed Rollins. He should be, too. Forget the nattering MSM. They get no votes and, increasingly, influence none.
Via Fresh Bilge.
Some old school conservatives worry she will take Mac down in flames like Ferraro was blamed for doing to Mondale years ago. But Mondale was running against the Reagan juggernaut, not the lightweight B. Hussein Obama. They also fear the MSM will ridicule her. But, hey, the MSM--whose poll results are lower than Congress and lawyers--has proved it's already in the tank for Barry.
Sarah's light years ahead of Dan Quayle, who didn't stop Daddy Bush. Sarah will do us all proud, and not tell lies about being under sniper fire like Hilarity did. At the end of the day, however, Quayle proves that the veep pick is a concern for only about forty-eight to seventy-two hours. After that it's back to comparing the nominees, not their veep choices.
MORE: In the meantime, however, ten good reasons why Sarah is a great choice.
My OCS class email group is largely silent this morning, despite an exhortatory email about the still altogether-mysterious B. Hussein Obama from our one participating African-American. Most of the class are Republicans, and would not be moved by such rhetoric in any case, but no doubt wish to be polite and not rain on our old friend's understandably-enthusiastic parade. In the privacy of the voting booth, however, I have little doubt that most of us will, like the majority of the American voting population, vote against BHO. I only wonder how hard he will be crushed. Significantly, I think, which might be why Mac put out a one-time congratulatory tee-vee ad last night. Pretty classy of McCain, considering BHO has almost no class at all.
It's not what you think, what you've read or heard thus far from the MSM. Independent journalist ace Michael Totten calls it the truth. As with most truths, it's long and complicated, but it's worth the read and consideration. Truth or not, the Russians don't seem to like it one bit, because Michael's site seems to be under cyber-attack. I'm categorizing this under The War, as I have all my posts about the Russian invasion of Georgia, because Russia supports the Syrians and Iranians, two countries who support the terrorists we are fighting.
MORE: One Georgian woman's tale, from BlackFive, which will update Michael's link if it changes.
Debka says so, but, well, that's Debka, only marginally reliable. But the AP also is saying the U.S. Navy will take its next part of the humanitarian sealift into P'oti, where the Russians are entrenched and insisting they will search any arriving ship. Civil Georgia, however, says the Navy hasn't decided whether to go there rather than to Batumi, where the USS McFaul delivered its aid. And Georgian Daily says the American embassy in Tbilisi, at any rate, is demurring. U.S. European Command has nothing on the subject.
UPDATE: Confrontation averted: The USCG cutter Dallas went to Batumi, instead, and the Mount Whitney will go there next. But that doesn't stop The Guardian from phonying up a dispute.
U.S. Navy destroyer McFaul has arrived at the Georgian port of Batumi, well south of the port at Poti where Russian troops remain, eliminating any possible confrontation. The AP, which has a reporter on board, says the McFaul unloaded fifty-five tons of humanitarian aid such as blankets and food, which were ferried ashore for the Georgian refugees the Russian invasion created. The Georgian news media confirms the arrival, but says seventy tons went ashore. AP says the McFaul is the first of five ships to come.
I spent much of the beach trip this week using a laptop to keep up with the Georgian situation, via the few new media reporters and many bloggers on or near the scene (most of their links available here at Black Five, scroll down), and came to a few unhappy conclusions. It seems obvious the Russians are there to stay. At the very least they will keep on burning, raping, killing and looting as it suits them and their mercenary pals. At the worst they may decide to used massed artillery/rockets to reduce Tbilisi to rubble.
Militarily, there is next to nothing we can do, unless we want to risk nuclear war. Bush's and McCain's continued demands for withdrawal only serve to make us look impotent. We really aren't, not totally. But anything we do will be risky--including the dispatch of three U.S. Navy vessels with humanitarian aid, due to arrive next week. Signing up Poland for anti-missile interceptors (thankfully not to be installed for two more years, providing a breather there) seems to have gotten the Russians to consider arming Syria with more potent missiles against Israel, and may yet provoke them to openly aid Iran in its pursuit of nukes.
One good thing is that Russians really aren't as powerful as they seem. Their arsenal is old, and poorly maintained, although they seem to have many more tactical nukes than we do, making conventional warfare with them even more risky. But theirs is no longer a command economy. It is a market one. If customers for the oil and gas on which their economy almost entirely depends, find new suppliers, they will be very weak, indeed. Yet, still, they will have those nukes.
Apparently, this is intended as a monument to enlightened health care, something, for that matter, that any small Texas chamber of commerce might like as a tourist draw. Well, maybe. But it might actually be a message Czar Pooti Poot is trying to send to the world--after his rape of Georgia--about what he and his sock-puppet president have in mind for the rest of us.
Via Simply Jews.
It's good to see this report that at least some Georgian soldiers, including a few in desert camo who apparently are from the brigade we returned from Iraq, are still defending their country. They seem to be doing this in the defense of the capital city, according to Georgian Ambassador to the U.S. Vasil Sikharulidze.
This is an idea advocated by John Nagl at Small Wars Journal which makes a lot of sense to this old Army advisor in Vietnam. The role has never been more important, as American counterinsurgency advisors have helped turn around the Iraq campaign and could do the same in Afghanistan. In any case, they will be the last Americans assigned, assisting and training the indigenous armies we leave behind to defend their own countries.
But, as in Vietnam, where the effort was later termed "the other war," as if it wasn't very important, it seems today's Army is being even more ad hoc about it. I got pulled out of a cav regiment for a job advising a couple of companies of Regional Forces and Popular Forces militia known as the Rough-Puffs. We did some training for them, but, with little experience and limited language skills, we hardly ever actually advised the SVN lieutenants and sergeants who ran the patrols and night ambushes. They were usually older and had more combat experience than we did.
I was one of the lucky ones who attended the Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg where many of our instructors were Special Forces though we were not. The current advisory crop apparently has less training and one of the same disadvantages, i.e. being outside normal channels, making the assignment no plum for careerists. Advisory work in Vietnam was not even considered command time for line promotion. An Advisory Corps, with permanent units with esprit, etc., could change that.
It also might improve on what me and my five-man team of two officers and three NCOs primarily did. We mainly called in artillery, airstrikes and medevac as needed. Artillery was useful, if the regular unit guns we called were good. Air strikes were, then, usually flown by F4 Phantoms and were often inaccurate. American medevacs, however, were prized, as the SVN troops were afraid of their own medical corps. Our dustoffs would land in the midst of a fight at night. The SVNs would come, if at all, only in the day. Their soldiers also knew their doctors would quickly amputate a wounded limb, which American docs would try to save.
The Internet, of course, is a superlative resource for all deployed soldiers which we would have loved to have had forty years ago, so the current crop of advisors is luckier, in that way, for things such as this nice collection of advisor advice available with one click.
The Russian Bear, ever diligent in its campaign to destroy little Georgia despite various ceasefire agreements, prefers to start forest fires, with incendiaries dropped from helicopters, in the southern part of the country. Smokey would be appalled, as we all are. In Afghanistan they left brightly colored mines behind to attract and punish children. Brave Russians. So manly. At least they haven't been reported to be doing that again. Yet.
UPDATE: Bad enough that they set the fires. Now they're refusing to allow putting them out. The Soviet Union Russians, of course, claim innocence, all around. But don't they always?
Somewhat, anyhow. We couldn't go to the nuclear mattresses with Russia over its rape of Georgia, so we did the next best things.
Independent journalism ace Michael Totten is "in Baku, Azerbaijan, and heading to Georgia in two days." These are shameful times to be an American, having to sit by and watch the rape of Georgia. Totten's work won't change that, but at least it will give focus to it. I contribute to his work, and enjoy his eye for detail. You should consider contributing, as well, at the link above.
Via Instapundit.
UPDATE: Totten's first report from Tbilisi is a good 'un. And he's promised another one.
Are the Russians still in Gori, or have they left Gori? Have they agreed to leave Gori, or have they refused to leave Gori? The MSM is all over the place on those questions, trying to be authoritative when they obviously have no idea what is going on. Probably because the Pentagon, despite repositioning spy satellites to see what's going on, doesn't know, either.
Via Small Wars Journal.
The Russian army is robbing travelers on Georgian highways, extracting bribes for "unhindered" passage--until they encounter the next roadblock, of course.
Still pretty expensive, but less than the $113 it's at now, and much less than its peak of $147. Yesss. Now, how can Pooti make it go up again? You can bet that he wants to do it, via Russia's continued rape of Georgia. Fire on our humanitarian air- and sealift, maybe?
He isn't called Vlad the Invader for nothing.
Not marching in front of the Russian embassy, that's for sure. Where's International ANSWER? Not holding street-corner pressers. Whatever happened to "No Blood for Oil" and "Putin lied, Georgians died?" Anti-war.com, deep into its summer fundraising, is even questioning the reality of Georgian democracy. Oh, excuse me, I forgot. All these folks are not opposed to war. They're just on the other side.
"...we’re a modern country, but we weren’t prepared for a long war. That’s a key – a lifeline – something comparable to the Berlin airlift. We also need secure communications, a monitored ceasefire that can be monitored by international monitors..." --Georgian president Saakashvili.
We have plenty of troops, and aircraft, pretty close by (i.e., in Iraq) but, alas, a good reason not to act. Then, again, as in 1948, our credibility is on the line. Do we have the luxury of not acting?
UPDATE: Bush, apparently, decides to help. Sends first cargo plane with relief supplies, and ships are next.
Military historian Victor Davis Hanson succinctly wraps up the Russian bear's aims and abilities, and why, under the present circumstances, we really can't do anything very impressive to stop it. Grrrr.
MORE: The bear, indeed, is on the march, and we will pay for our inattention, and Bush's amazing naivete about the mass-murderer he likes to call Pooti. If nothing else, the Georgian invasion and rape should be another nail in the coffin of Baby Barry's soft-power ambitions.
Tank rounds, fighter-bomber ordnance and artillery shells are supposed to be used on concentrations of enemy soldiers, but the Russians have long preferred to loose them on civilians, as well. This slide show from RFE/RL Georgian News Service shows a burning apartment building in Gori from several angles, and also an interview with one of the tenants who says many were killed. It's Chechnya all over again. The purpose seems to be to terrify the population and, possibly, demoralize the Georgian troops who must fear for their families as they fight the bear.
One more very good reason not to vote for Baby Barry. He'd just throw it all away:
"The Iraqis aren't yet confident enough to stand entirely on their own; al Qaeda's savagery still imposes too much fear, while Iran is training terrorists next door. In counterinsurgency, the people must know they are protected. Gen. Petraeus has proven that intimidation can be defeated by placing American soldiers among the population."
Worth the read, from fav author Bing West.
"But we will defend the freedom of our country, the independence of our country – with our teeth, to the last drop of blood. God bless each of us. God bless the freedom of Georgia. God bless our soldiers, our heroes. Long live Georgia." --Georgian president Saakashvili.
The first of many brave words we can expect to hear as the Russians, emboldened by oil and gas profits, reclaim their empire.
UPDATE: Russia will "stop" with conditions, including Saakashvili's resignation. AP says Bush demanded withdrawal and, "hours later" Russian President Dmitri Medvedev ordered a halt. But that's too simple, not to mention unbelievable. How long will it take for the truth to come out? Not to mention for gluing the Smiley Face back on the bear?
The best joke I've seen is that the Russians won't make it past Macon, let alone enter Atlanta. But the Russian invasion of the other Georgia, our ally on the other side of the world which sent two thousand troops to Iraq, really isn't funny. It's quite a bit of food for thought. It seems obvious to me that we will do nothing, other than prattle about condemnation and seek meaningless resolutions from the Dictator's Club.
Not because our military is weak, despite its being well committed already, but because our society is weak, and has no stomach for war with Russia, whatever they do with Georgia, Ukraine or any of their other former "colonies." As to all that, Richard Fernandez, author of the Belmont Club blog, and his stalwart commenters are among the best sources available on what's happening and what it is all likely to mean in the future. See also this column by military writer Ralph Peters.
There seemed to be surprise mixed in with the anger that Baby Barry ignored the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan--other than the ones specifically vetted for him, black ones for the most part--and skipped the wounded in Germany altogether, during his world tour to create ad spots for his fall campaign. But there shouldn't be any surprise. His own party is doing the best it can to hold down the voting of soldiers overseas. They apparently understand that not many of them would vote Democrat.
There's a lot of teeth gnashing in the conservative blogosphere over BB's tap dancing around the question of whether he should have backed the surge, given its success in Iraq. I watched the cBS video here and, though I don't care much for his politics, I have to say his answer is no more than what any politician, who didn't wish to step down from his earlier judgement, would do. He didn't put down the troops, as some are suggesting. He acknowleged their success, he just questioned the surge strategy itself.
On the contrary, the shift in military strategy, from large unit fighting to establishing lasting community security was almost more important than the additional manpower. As Mac says it's definitely the way to win in Afghanistan, as well. It's just harder there because the people have fewer resources to fall back on, and the terrain is more difficult, with communities more isolated. And with advisers like Gen. McPeak, Barry might just go back to trying to win cheaply, with bombing.
UPDATE: This, however (scroll to the bottom of the post) is a lie, plain and simple. Why it's called a gaffe is beyond me. Politicians tell gaffes. Ordinary people tell lies. But to me, Baby Barry told a lie, to make himself look good. Instead, he looks very, very bad. See if you don't agree.
The MSM, falling all over itself, as usual, to play pattycake with Baby Barry, is quoting one version of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki's alleged translation of his alleged praise for BB's withdraw-from-Iraq-in-sixteen-months pitch.
But, wouldn't you know it, there are at least two other alleged translated versions, each with a different emphasis and different caveats. The original one has no caveats. I thought the CIA was the gang that couldn't shoot straight? I know it's heresy to say so (possibly even, gasp, racist) but I still don't believe BB is going to win the presidency. So save your breath Maliki, assuming you, uh, actually said anything at all.
But I got to admit I like it that the Europeans and other foreigners are falling all over themselves to swoon at BB's feet--and I'll bet that, secretly, Mac does, too. Because if there's one thing that will absolutely undercut an American politician who wants to be president, man, that is it.
While New Yorkers and the feds still argue about what to do with the hole in the ground in lower Manhattan, a memorial has finally been raised in Texas to the flight crews who were among the first to die on that terrible morning that still resonates in the mind's eye of most Americans. It's complicated, and a bit strange, the statue at Grapevine, just outside Dallas-Fort Worth International, but it holds your attention.
Their readership/viewership declines every year, in part because they're widely and quite correctly perceived as politically skewed Democrat. But, as usual, the Old Media is deaf to the criticism, so they're suffering no shame at their announced plans to staff BB's upcoming "world tour" big time, while continuing to shoo Mac away as, uh, too old, too boring, too Republican.
Afterall, now that the Iraq campaign is essentially over (no thanks to them or the Dems), they can safely leave the Green Zone hotel to have a look around as BB sings his get-out-now tune. The Old Media poobahs also gave preferential treatment to John Kerry, their ersatz war hero, in 2004, and we all saw how well that worked out--for him and for them--but my guess is they really didn't catch on. They're insulated by their exorbitant pay and the adulation of their peers, which makes them pretty slow when it comes to reality.
It's the way to win the Afghanistan campaign, McCain says, logically enough...
"...if I’m elected President, I will turn around the war in Afghanistan, just as we have turned around the war in Iraq, with a comprehensive strategy for victory."
...versus Baby Barry's unserious preference to abandon Iraq in favor of hunting down (the quite probably already dead) Osama bin Forgotten.
Via Belmont Club.
Better not to dwell on the terrorist scum the Israeli government released to get back what they hoped--until they saw their coffins--might be two living soldiers. But the child (and father) victims of the terrorist creature known as the baby killer are worth remembering. Lone Star Times has a moving memorial.
What, before Baby Barry could make his first trip there in more than two years? Before the Dems could cut and run? Independent correspondent Michael Yon says so. His colleague Michael Totten says it is all but over, and that we won. But this is the Middle East, not middle Europe. So minor violence could still occur, maybe even something spectacular. But basically, they insist, it's all over, and we and the Iraqi people won it. Yay!
Via Instapundit.
UPDATE: Even StrategyPage agrees the campaign is basically over. Now, they say, let the corruption begin. But I agree with Instapundit, I can live with that.
A real baby killer goes free, while two soldiers of the right come home dead, two years after they were captured patrolling the Israel-Lebanon border. But revenge will come, too, and it will be sweet.
Via Simply Jews.
I don't watch television much. Television, as someone said the other day, is for losers. So I didn't watch the president's news conference. So I didn't get the sound of all the word fumbling that he normally commits--although he's nowhere near as vacuous as Baby Barry. But in the transcript, which the White House makes available in these glorious Internet days when one is no longer hostage to whatever the newspapers are willing to print of it, or whatever the teevee and radio folks are willing to air of it, Bush reads pretty good--inspiring, even, unless you hate him as some do.
For one thing, he delivers the most succinct summary of the how of the war on terrorism that I've read in a long time, and there's another good one on just how the oil companies are trying to take advantage of $140 a barrel oil by seeking more supply. Then there's his take, repeated several times to similar questions, about how the American people are smart enough to adjust their own driving and thermostats without the nanny state's help. Lord, yes. How could they not be? All in all, he sounds pretty confident to me, not at all the shell-shocked lightweight the Seablogger encountered on the tube. Maybe there's a lesson here. Read the transcript, people. You've finally got it available whenever you want it. So read it.
The daily's print edition has a compelling story (which, disgustingly, you have to dig for on their Web site!) about Iraq campaign widow Taryn Davis, who lives down the road in Buda. Her Web site for her American Widows Project is a poignant look at what these women (and a few men) are going through. What, for instance, do you do now with the Silver Star? This form of grief, it appears to me, is similar to growing old. Forgetting to bathe more than once a week, for instance.
Nice to see that the cops are taking this seriously, even if the pols often act as if there's nothing to worry about. Maybe not, but, then again, maybe so. Helps to know what's going on down at the local mosque, just in case.
Via The Fat Guy.
My list, mainly compiled from the choices at the post here and also the ones from the commenters there (they didn't mention Twelve O'Clock High or Ran, but they're my favorites):
10. The Lighthorsemen
9. Glory
8. Twelve O'Clock High
7. The Great Escape
6. Run Silent, Run Deep
5. Fort Apache
4. Bridge Over The River Kwai
3. Zulu
2. Ran
1. Das Boot
According to war correspondent Michael Yon, it's to grow up to be an American soldier. Photo of U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Fred Hampton, of Lexington, Ky., kneeling to talk with an Iraqi boy in Sadr City, June 20. Credit: U.S. Air Force Tech Sgt. Cohen Young, Joint Combat Camera Center Iraq.
Cool new advertising campaign from group of Afghanistan and Iraq campaign veterans to counter the anti-war bilge of MoveOn.org. But something tells me there'll be a vets for peace campaign to counter this one before long. May the best ad campaigns win! Though I'd prefer this one.
Via Instapundit
North Korea's masters just can't contain themselves--like Hamas previously came unglued--over the thrilling thought of Baby Barry as president of the USA. Like Osama's 2004 quasi-endorsement of John Kerry, the Nork move should be a consideration for all but the terminally Obama-indoctrinated.
Via Soobdujour
Ever wonder where the Palestinians, Lebanese, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc., and the other rage boys get the flags they burn in their so-called spontaneous demos? Well, look no further than right here for the explanation. Just another of terrorism's commercial opportunities.
Via Treppenwitz
Of course the Dems are going to run ads attacking Mac. The Repubs sure are going to run them attacking Baby Barry. But do the Dems have to lie so blatantly? They're still retailing that distortion of Mac's hundred years comment regarding Iraq. Beyond that, however, this anti-military ad--courtesy of TFG--with the Uma Thurmann look-alike saying McCain can't have her precious baby boy, is quite a hoot. Just wait until Alex grows up a little and sees the G.I. Joe action figures at the supermarket, then figures out that half the guys at his pre-school are playing with plastic soldiers or watching Power Ranger videos. Scream your head off, mom, and forbid all you want. That will just make him more inclined to enlist when he's eighteen. As he should, if he's got any gumption.
UPDATE: NYTimes "fact checks" the ad, at least debunking the lie, but then inserting its own dubious ad calling Iraq "an overwhelmingly unpopular war." No surprise that the video is a product of MoveOn.org, the same folks who libeled Gen. Petraeus in a full-page NYT ad. But MoveOn's partner in it, according to the NYT, is a shocker: the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees. Good grief.
MORE: Don Surber suggests little Alex's side of the conversation, via Doug Ross @ Journal:
"Hi John McCain."
"This is Alex."
"I realize you cannot pick your family."
"But sheesh."
"What a dingbat I have for a mother."
"She's a loon."
"Single mom."
"Eats seaweed."
"Calls the dog her 'animal companion.'"
"Doesn't bathe because soap is made from oil and she wants to reduce her carbon footprint."
"You can see why she's a single mom."
"Fortunately, Dad was a regular guy."
"An Alex P. Keaton type."
"Maybe that's how I got my name."
"Look, about this Iraq thing."
"Can I sign up now?"
"I know I'm little and all and way underage."
"But you gotta save me. She's a loon."
No, the imperial court won't like it. But, it seems, as Ace says, there were just too many pieces of the corpus missing. Yet it amazes me, and it should you, too, just how much time our guys take in identifying a group of Tangos (and their surrounding environment) before opening up on them with a Hellfire missile followed by thirty millimeter from high in the night sky.
Baby Barry and Mac apparently can't agree on the formats for more than a few "debates," as contrived as the "debates" have been in the past and likely will continue to be. Baby Barry's got the money and, so far, the polls and so he has no reason to give Mac anything. Can't blame him for that. As for Mac, well, some of the Seablogger's pessimism is starting to rub off on me. Mac the moderate better get off it and start explaining why he champions the Iraq campaign and why the rest of us better suck it up, too. There are good arguments, but he needs to make them and not try to duck the whole thing. Starting here, where even the Dem thinktankers agree, would be a good idea.
Baby Barry loves it, the Supremes ignoring precedent to hand out Constitutional rights to alien enemies captured abroad. McCain is appalled, and he's not alone.
"'The Nation will live to regret what the Court ha[s] done today,' Justice Antonin Scalia writes in his dissent in Boumediene v. Bush. Fred Thompson thinks so, too.
I immediately thought of President Lincoln, who suspended habeus corpus for every American during the Civil War, and the South hadn't even knocked down any buildings with thousands of people in them.
UPDATE: All hail the imperial court. It's for sure the jihadis will. In practical terms, however, it could boil down to our troops taking a lot fewer prisoners. They're not likely to jeopardize their own lives to keep the imperial court happy.
Videos of the world's most expensive warplane show how its Marine version becomes a short-takeoff, vertical landing (like a helicopter) single-engine fighter, Wednesday at Lockheed's plant up in Fort Worth.
Via Instapundit
The contest between Barry and John McCain may do-si-do around many an ancillary issue, but Thomas Sowell says the only one of importance is dealing with a nuclear Iran--the world's chief sponsor of terrorism. Voting for McCain, the only man with experience in war as well as peace, is therefore a no-brainer. Makes sense to me.
"The U.S. military has more combat aircraft and pilots than infantry squads," Bing West in 2005's No True Glory.
Glad to see a version of the Vietnam-era bill pass. Sorry to see it was the one predicted to lower retention rates by sixteen percent. But that's the Dems for you. They'll interfere with the war if they can find a way. Meanwhile Dumbocrat veterans (yep, there are some, hard as it might be to fathom) are whacking McCain for not voting for it. Even Barry, the I-never-served-and-never-will candidate, had the nerve to question Mac's committment to his fellow soldiers. Mac smacked Barry back good. The benefits were actually more generous in Mac's bill, which did not pass, but increased with length of service, negating the retention problem.
Barry's crowd has some retrenching to do. They've long been throwing around the sixty-percent-oppose-the-Iraq-campaign poll figure as a justification for their cut-and-run views. But some recent polling shows a sharp rise to fifty-three percent saying the U.S. will succeed in reaching its goals in Iraq. Even CBS admits this could "alter the dynamics of races up and down the ballot." I've never been a fan of polling, which is hampered as never before by changes in the way Americans use their phones. The polls were predicting Kerry would beat Bush right up until election day 2004. But if you live by the polls, Dems, you gotta die by them, too.
To hear the media tell it, Israel's checkpoints don't do much more than harrass the long-suffering Palestinians. The Palis are always trying to get the "peace process" to eliminate the security checkpoints. They usually fail because every so often, another suicide bomber tries to get through, like the 20-year-old Arab man wearing five pipe bombs who was shot and killed by the IDF at a Samaria checkpoint last night.
Afterall, he's getting away with murder in Iraq, and the Bush administration and Congress ain't doing nothin', while Barry talks about a sit-down to understand Mahmoud's pain.
UPDATE: So, when Bush does the only thing he ever does about this matter, i.e. talk, he manages to enrage Barry, Hilarity, Nancy, etc. For why? Because they won't do anything, either, and don't like to be reminded. Such unanimity.
I was waiting for a good moment to buy Michael Yon's book about Iraq, and Michael Totten's revealing review is the one. The fact that the book is already in its second printing and currently No. 167 on Amazon's bestseller list also is encouraging.
MORE: Cobb has an interesting take on it, from quotes from Yon's changed-his-mind-on-Iraq publisher, to Cobb's angry responses to some commenters. As he says: lead, follow or get the hell out of the way.
"...of all the well-meaning desires projected on Senator Obama, the hope that he would decisively improve relations with the world’s Muslims is the least realistic."
So much for the world healer routine. Worth a read and a chuckle. Via Southern Appeal.
UPDATE: On the other hand, Hamas explicitly wants him elected and he doesn't appear exercised enough about it to denounce the idea.
Good news from the recruiters: "All military services met or exceeded their monthly recruiting goals in April, with the Marine Corps signing 142 percent of the number it was looking for, the Pentagon said."
It isn't popular and that's why someone needs to do it. Stand up for President Bush. And VDH is just the guy to do it. Like him, I could wish, however, for a more forceful defense of Dubya's wartime and other policies by the president himself: April's 5 percent unemployment was lower than March; more than 95 percent of mortgages are not in foreclosure; 0.6 percent growth is not a recession; the stock market is sky-high; and the Maliki government finally is moving the Iraqi government in the right direction. The arguments are on your side, George.
The (in)famous banner, subject of so many lies (which some of the commenters here repeat) and MSM sneers since 2004, was created for and addressed to the crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln only, according to one who was there. Of course if "CVN 72" had been added to it in the first place, there'd have been no confusion possible.
The really amazing thing about King's latest, unthinking putdown of the troops--"...if you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don't, then you've got, the Army, Iraq..."--isn't that he is repeating another famous fool, John Kerry. It's that he's so dumb that he imagines you can a) get in the Army without being able to read, and b) that you could do the job the Army wants without being able to read. I've enjoyed some of King's books. But none of them taught me anything important. It really does surprise me, however, that he could write any of them while being such a moron.
UPDATE: Air Force veteran takes him on, too. And Doug Ross @ Journal, too: "The Dead Zone known as Stephen King's brain."
Hollyweird either does it again: "[M]ust we be tricked into sitting through another America-as-root-of-all-evil message?" Or it doesn't: "Iron Man is not a pacifist movie, and it bends over backwards to be pro-military and pro-government, even in the midst of speeches about how weapons are evil." It's a battle of the reviews. You decide. Not me. I already hate the sticky floors, and Mr. B. has enough fantasy in his life as it is.
President Bush is basically a nice guy, which he proved more than once when he was governor of Texas. Which, of course, is way too nice for the rude, undereducated, overmedicated slugs of the MSM. So it's always a pleasure to see it when he cuts loose on a supercilious one with both barrels.
Via The Fat Guy
Even Darth Vader might find this new Navy warship a troubling shock. Imagine an Islamist pirate's reaction to the speedy trimaran hull and slab-sided stealth configuration.
Time magazine once again proves why I was wise to stop subscribing to and reading it years ago.
Via Instapundit
I remember the pathetic MSM speculation about how the Army transportation reservist's reported capture four years ago might have been made to cover up his desertion to get away from the war which the media still works so hard to undermine. The homecoming for Maupin, with its miles of yellow ribbon, was impressive, as was the memorial service at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati. It was, obviously, not just for him alone, but for all the ones who gave all.
When you look at the contrast between him and his opposition...
"Some say John McCain's character was formed in a North Vietnamese prison. I say those people should take a gander at what John chose to do--voluntarily. Being a carrier pilot requires aptitude, intelligence, skill, knowledge, discernment, and courage of a kind rarely found anywhere but in a poem of Homer's or a half gallon of Dewar's. I look from John McCain to what the opposition has to offer. There's Ms. Smarty-Pantsuit, the Bosnia-Under-Sniper-Fire poster gal, former prominent Washington hostess, and now the JV senator from the state that brought you Eliot Spitzer and Bear Stearns. And there's the happy-talk boy wonder, the plaster Balthazar in the Cook County political crèche, whose policy pronouncements sound like a walk through Greenwich Village in 1968: 'Change, man? Got any spare change? Change?'"
...you just gotta laugh! Hoot! Snicker.
Well, she won Pennsylvania. Democrat Pennsylvania, that is. Not the entire state's electorate by any means. The MSM, whose practitioners are almost enitrely Democrats, seems to like people to forget that part. I think she would be somewhat harder for McCain to beat than Barry--if she was noiminated--but not that much harder. As usual in the past three presidential races, the Democrats have produced the most colorful nominees. But also the least electable.
MORE: Priceless expose of Barry's unrepentent, wouldbe terroristic, Leftist pals. The Rev. God damn America is no fluke. Part II of the expose.
Bill Roggio, embed blogger/journalist in Iraq, for instance: Fair play? From the NYTimes? You've got to be kidding.
Via Instapundit
Whatever Nancy Pelosi intended to stop the general from saying, it doesn't seem to have worked. He poked Iran in the eye several times. Will we do anything more? Remains to be seen, I suppose. It all certainly sounds as complicated as Viet Nam ever was, though, obviously, with more potential immediate impact on our daily lives, and not nearly as out-of-control. Hope and change, it seems, are already in progress--without, of course, Barry and his dictator-loving advisors and their back-to-the-Saddam-era intentions.
Never got to fly in one of these, the only bomber that can do barrel rolls. But I got to sit in one on the ramp at Dyess outside Abilene in the 1980s and interview the crews who even then were calling it the Bone, for B-One. This was when the MSM was chewing on the Air Force over the B-1B's various avionics problems. Nobody's carping about them today. They are the premier bombing platform for Afghanistan and Iraq, sending the B-52s and B-2s home to sit and wait for something to do, as David Noland details in the current issue of Air&Space Magazine.
UPDATE: An onboard fire in a B-1B landing at a base in Quatar on April 4 was the fifth aircraft fire in one of the bombers since 1990. This time, the crew escaped unharmed.
One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist, as the famous relativist's line goes. In this case the one man speaking of Saman Kareem Ahmad is U.S. Army General David Petraeus, and the other "man," so to speak, are the incompetent bureaucrats of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. Michael Totten explains.
Good flicker. I was lucky to see it before the owners of LiveLeak misplaced their gonads and took it down. Threats, they say. I am not surprised. It pulls no punches on Islam or its crazy practitioners. Not nice, at all. The title is from Arabic, meaning temptation or trial. I'm sure it is a trial for the Jihadists to see it out there for all to understand. LGF still has a version, which is also available at YouTube. For how long is anybody's guess. Pat Dollard swears he will keep it on his blog, come what may. This is viral marketing at its finest. Screw the bloody-minded censors.
UPDATE: Then YouTube took it down as another blogger, a Muslim, whose site is called the City of Brass, put it up. Even though the site author calls the Dutch flick a laughable, guilt-by-association polemic. I agree that it isn't original and it's one-sided. But it's a good reminder and still worth a look. The Seablogger also liked it.
The Iraqi endgame is in sight. Insightful, non-biased reporting from freelance correspondent Michael Yon:
"If there is an increase in casualties here as we go into the summer of 2008, it is because our people and the Iraqi forces are closing in. We have seen just how deadly al Qaeda can be. This enemy is desperate. They know they are losing."
Via Fresh Bilge
Sick humor. It seems to be that kind of day. But this is via Op-For, a certified, active-duty Mil blog. Does that make the gallows humor okay? Works for me.
Well, at least they titled it honestly, in the sense that the title, Bush's War, is so hamhandedly political that you know from the get-go just what the nabobs of the misnamed Public Broadcasting System are up to. But the ads, whose footnote is "the complete saga," are a bald lie:
"Frontline didn’t manage to find any time at all to mention the name of the most significant Iraq commander of all, Gen. David Petraeus. You could view all four and a half hours of this series and remain innocent of any knowledge of the dramatic turning of the tribes in Anbar that began in late 2006, as the Sunnis woke up to their own interest. Of the hard-fought, highly successful campaigns of 2007 to run al-Qaeda out of Baghdad, Diyala, the southern 'Triangle of Death,' not a peep. The fact that Moqtada al-Sadr has been intimidated into maintaining his truce, and that his forces are divided, nothing."
In other words, the take-home thought of the two-part series that concludes tonight will be that we're losing. Or, rather, that the hated Bush is losing. What Lefty crep. And to think that our tax money went to pay for this one-sided Democrat Party poop. Honest journalism went down the toilet years ago. Thank goodness for the Internet. Better to know before wasting four hours of your life on stale tripe.
You'd be so much better off, and certainly know more, to visit and subscribe to a true Iraq journalist with no axe to grind--and he doesn't mix metaphors the way I do, and he spellz better.
You can believe the usual prevarication of the Democrat house organ MSM ("the pastor flap") that poor ole Rev. Jeremiah Wright's words were cherry picked or taken out of context by that nasty Fox News, whose alternative, contradictory voice they cannot stand. Or you can take the time to hear him out, in complete context, in his post 9/11 America-Had-It-Coming Memorial service. Courtesy of an obviously-angry Filipino, Wretchard of the Belmont Club, who mourns fifteen compatriots, ordinary folks lost in the Twin Towers.
I agree with VDH that, if you think racial attitudes are divisive now, just wait, as he predicts, til you see the outcome of the Dems' Pennsylvania primary and the legacy of Obama's defeat for the presidency. I always thought the fellow might be nominated but never believed he could win the general election. That should be obvious now that he's taken to preaching to us about slavery and oppression and making offhand remarks about "typical white people." He was a novelty before, a black man running for office promising to transcend race. Now, with his refusal to disassociate himself from his anti-American, racist pastor, he's just another black scold in the JJackson, ASharpton race hustler mode, and white people aren't going to buy it. Oh, some of them will, sure. But there aren't enough of them to elect Barry. And the resulting black anger could be shocking--or would be if we hadn't already had the preview that started it all, the "KKK of A" rantings of Barry's paranoid pastor of twenty years and counting.
I confess that it makes me a little nervous to hear President Bush predict that the Iraq campaign will end in a victory. (The BBC has him already proclaiming victory, but, as we know, they are often fact-challenged.) The Dems, of course, already portray it as a defeat. Neither view seems entirely accurate. It certainly is the gentlest war this country has ever been in--fewest friendly, enemy and bystander casualties--despite lasting five years so far. I would expect it to take a lot longer, especially since we have tolerated, instead of eradicating, enemy sanctuaries in Iran and Syria. But even the media, when it is honest about it, knows the Iraqi people want us there. And it could very well turn out to be better for us, in the long run, even than bringing peace to Germany and Japan. Because, after all, Iraq's is the region where we get much of our oil, and whatever we may think of the politics of oil, our economy and our lives depend utterly upon it.
So he said yesterday, anyhow, in the speech reviled by historian Victor Davis Hanson. The phrase reminded me of this picture and Barry's, at the time, seemingly little protest against lapel flags and the old hand-over-the-heart when the anthem is played. However, after learning that he listened to anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-white screeds every Sunday morning for twenty years, I have to wonder who he really is. His anti-war stance turned me off before his questionable messianic persona surfaced, but I still liked the boldness of his race speech at first read--even when he threw his white grandma under the bus. (In the process, lying about her.) But I evidently missed some things. Mickey Kaus lists a few critical ones.
Sen. Obama could have taken the normal political course and run from the contradictions inherent in his initial denials about his mentor/pastor Jeremiah Wright. But he didn't. At least not in his speech today in Philadelphia. I didn't see it but read the transcript here. He didn't explain why he chose twenty years ago to align himself with conspiracy-minded Black Liberation Theology, divisive as it is for a man who talks unity. But he made a fine stab at explaining why it is the way it is, and going some distance to refute it. His overall "from many, one" message also was impressive, and truly unifying. Now, if I only believed in the reliability of Democrat-run government to right all these wrongs he enumerates (though I disagree with him on Iraq, his attacks on corporations and the idea that government should help people "find good jobs"), I might want to vote for him. But I don't, and so I won't. But I do admire his unusual willingness to confront the Wright issue that, all by itself, could yet bring him down.
MORE: OTH, the speech really P,Oed Roger L. Simon, who calls it B,S. He makes a good point:
"...anyone who finds moral equivalence between Wright's racist screeds and (Obama's) white grandmother's admitting to him in private that she feared black men on the street has got a serious problem."
Army SPC Monica Lin Brown, a medic from Lake Jackson (south of Houston) who joined with her brother in 2006, becomes only the second woman since WW2 to earn the Silver Star for combat valor.
That's what playwright David Mamet calls NPR, which I also have stopped listening to, though for other (but similar) reasons, in this essay about why he no longer counts himself a "brain-dead liberal." Could be tough getting your plays produced that way, David. Not to mention sympathetically reviewed. (Note the outraged comments that follow the essay.) There's also this amusing Pajamas Media piece about NPR's brief February foray into conservative commentary. What I'm still awaiting is for the government to stop funding this one-sided outlet. Or at least refund that portion of my tax money that does so. Not going to happen? Certainly hasn't yet.
Via Sine Qua Non
Centcom's boss is retiring, a year after he took the job, in what Westhawk says seem to be differences between Fallon and the Bush administration over Iran policy. Op-For essentially agrees and has a link to the Esquire article that may have precipitated the admiral's problems. Perhaps. Could be Iraq policy, as well. An old Army friend who knows them both insists that Fallon can't stand Gen. David Petraeus. Given the latter's success, the former may have found, on his own, that his usefulness to Bush was at an end.
MORE: I've always admired Wretchard's sense and sensibility about military matters. Mackubin Owens contends that Fallon was coming close to Union Gen. George B. McLellan's insubordination.
Or, more likely, melt (or set afire) the bed of that baby pickup the bad guys are using to carry themselves and their heavy machinegun into battle. Looks like Boeing has beaten the Air Force to the draw on the chemical airborne laser. Although the AF version, which is already a year late, has the more important and tricky task of downing in-flight enemy ballistic missiles.
Well, she did win the popular vote in Ohio comfortably, and creditably in Texas, though I suppose Barry's still ahead in the delegate count. Makes no nevermind to me who wins, though. I still don't think either one can beat McCain's experience, reputation, and charisma of competence. And I'm happy to say my vote contributed to his Texas win, instead of Hilarity's as trickster Limbaugh wanted it.
Keep it up. Cut into Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez's budget. Keep his troops and tanks at home.
Via Instapundit
You've probably heard about Jimmy McCain, the son of presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain who's an enlisted grunt in the Marines and recently returned from Iraq. Now meet the one who's got another year before he graduates from the Naval Academy. Jack McCain provides a good (if probably varnished) look at his father. I hope he's right that dad's temper is pretty much a myth. It wouldn't surprise me.
Not sure of the provenence of this photo, which is making the email forwardings rounds. But, in addition to the F-22 Raptor, I like the view of Fortress Monroe in the background, at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. I like to visit the fort when I'm in the area, to see the casemate in the bastion (to the left of the center one there facing the jet's cockpit) where Confederate President Jefferson Davis was imprisoned after the Civil War. Poet Edgar Allen Poe was an artillerly NCO there before he was famous as a writer of horror stories. Monroe also was the headquarters of the army's recruiting command, when I was in recruiting back in 1970-71. Recruiting's HQ has since moved elsewhere.
As long as the rockets are only falling in Israel, the MSM isn't too concerned. It's when Israel fights back that the criticism begins:
"This is ridiculous. If there were no rockets raining on us the IDF wouldn’t have anything to do there. I don’t like the way we are portrayed. We don’t want this war. They are dragging us in. What can we do? There are rockets raining on us daily. But in the media we look like the aggressors."
MORE: What can you do in the fifteen seconds it takes a rocket to fly the one mile from Gaza to Sderot? Via Treppenwitz. And one more. No, my concern is not for the Palestinians. Let them first stop their attacks, then we'll talk about concern. The fact is, they never have.
The patriots keep on coming. The Code Pink crowd might shuffle them around, from Iraq to Afghanistan or wherever, might even bring a bunch of them home, if Barry wins the presidency. But there won't be any question of running out of them, or stressing them to the breaking point, etc.
Via Sense of Events
Obama may not know much about ground troops, but he's got part of the wild blue yonder covered. Retired Gen. Merrill McPeak, a former Air Force chief of staff, is a key supporter of the candidate he praises for "real gravitas." McPeak is still a bit of a loose aerial cannon, a role he established in the first Gulf War when he stepped on some toes by declaring the campaign the first time air power had defeated a field army. But his presence in Barry's camp shows the junior Illinois senator isn't a total neophyte when it comes to military affairs--despite the fears of other general officers, some Air Force ones included.
UPDATE: Protein Wisdom has a profile of McPeak which suggests Barry is securely in the surrender-in-Iraq camp, and not just lying to the lefties, like he's lying to the rust belt on NAFTA.
Some journalist. Mr. T. finds the army captain who was Obama's source for his inaccurate statements last night in Austin about the army in Afghanistan. Then, other than merely noting that the captain backs up Barry (why wouldn't he, he was the source) Tapper doesn't question his assertions or bother to get a second source to verify them, or even overtly notice that they contradict Obama's public remarks. Wonder how much ABC pays for lazy work like this. Ace also takes him to task.
Not that it matters, at least here in the San Francisco of Texas, which is pretty well set as Obama Country for the Texas Dem primary, judging by the bumper stickers and yard signs. But Barry's claim at last night's Dem/MSM dog-and-pony-show (laughingly called "a debate") that our troops in Afghanistan are so desperate that they must capture their weapons from the Taliban is wacko.
From the CNN transcript: "You know, I've heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon -- supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon. Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq. And as a consequence, they didn't have enough ammunition, they didn't have enough humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief."
First of all, captains lead companies, not platoons. And for various reasons that would be obvious to anyone with minimal knowledge of our NATO vs the Taliban's Russian weaponry--which apparently does not include Barry--nothing they have would be useful to us and vice versa. Different rifles. Different rifle ammo. Different shells. &c. So now we see that the Dems' prospective Pacifist-in-Chief is a bigger boob than anyone thought. Or else his wife (she of the finally-proud-to-be-an-American remark) isn't the only one affected by self-righteousness and the blunders it breeds.
UPDATE: Heh. And Barry's claim flew right over Hilarity's head, as Wretchard points out. These Dems labor in amazing ignorance sometimes.
MORE: ABC News' Jake Tapper interviews the captain Obama quoted, though does not name him or feel the need to question or corroborate his details, and shows (though Tapper doesn't say so) that Barry (to be charitable about it) garbled the officer's message. For one thing, the captain didn't say fifteen of his men went to Iraq, or that they lacked ammunition in Afghanistan, or raise the crucial Obama detail that they needed captured weapons--only that they had used some of them from time to time. Obama also didn't mention that this information was five years old, occurring in 2003. So, while Tapper concludes that we bloggers have gone off half-cocked, I still think it's a shoddy political performance, and close to an outright lie.
Funny how exercised the Chinese communists (who did it in secrecy), ex-communist Russians (who've never done it at all) and the usual assortment of American critics (who can't do a day without whining about something) get over a little out-of-this-world target practice. The Navy's hitting the satellite on the first try, when it was 150 miles high, looked like nice work from here. With the side benefit of warning Iran, Syria, North Korea, etc., that their nuclear missiles won't be immune.
So what is the NYTimes up to? Bashing McCain for something that happened eight years ago, now, before he's even nominated? Why not wait until, say, October? Could it be they want to give Huckabee a better chance, figuring Barry (or even Hilarity) will have a better chance against the Huckster than McCain? For once I agree with CNN: it seems this is more a story about the NYTimes than it is about McCain.
UPDATE: The fact that the NYTimes offered NO PROOF for its assertion that McCain actually had an affair with a female lobbyist didn't stop the Associated Press from picking up the story and expanding it for its clients. In addition to having no accuracy, they obviously have no shame.
Mr. Westergaard and wife are in hiding, threatened with death for his drawing of this cartoon. Which gives me the chance for a little solidarity with free speech. I recall even the liberal daily printed this one, the least offensive of the bunch, it seems to me. And quite benign compared to the anti-Jew cartoons that regularly appear in Arab newspapers and magazines. So hang in there, Kurt.
Despite all the fancy, tax-raising promises of this or that by the Dems, the presidential race will be a referendum on the war, particularly the Iraq campaign for which the Lefty Obama-rama already has plans:
“'Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq,' says a statement on the senator’s Web site. 'He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months. Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq. He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda.'”
As Michael Totten says, the hedge at the end only means he'll eschew counterinsurgency for a return to smart bombs and civilian casualties. This is why I think the Dems are headed for defeat. The lefties want to cut and run, they always have. But I'm betting no one else does.
91 Sharia is Englishe as tea and scones,
92 So everybody muste get stoned.
93 The pilgryms shuffled for the door
94 To face the rule of the Moor;
95 Poets, Professors, Starbucks workers
96 Donning turbans, veils and burqqas.
97 As they face theyr fynal curtan
98 Of Englande folk, one thynge is certan:
99 Dying by theyr own thousande cuts,
100 The Englande folk are folking nuts.
101 BURMA SHAVE
From Iowahawk's brilliant, fractured Chaucer: The Tale of the Asse-Hatte
No, tell me it ain't so. Surely not. I mean the gang that couldn't predict the collapse of the Soviet Union (not to mention lately asserting, counterintuitively, that Iran is NOT building an A bomb) surely knows whether the world's chief terrorist died at Tora Bora or not? Or have they just denied it all this time to make Bush look bad? And now wish to help their anti-war buds of the Dems make their case for election? That sounds more reasonable, for them, anyhow, rather than just more of their usual schtoopidty.
Used to be a buzz was when an aircraft flew over a few hundred feet above the ground. So it seems a little silly to call a Russian Tupolev bomber's overflight of the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier in the Pacific Ocean a "buzz" when the lumbering, 55-year-old propeller-driven bomber stayed 2,000 feet above the steel beach. Or is it just a wire service's attempt to embellish a story of the so-called new Cold War?
It was bad enough that they had to weld an expedient steel cage around it to keep RPGs, one of the most ubiquitous weapons in the Middle East, from destroying the Stryker utterly. Now the Army, in a burst of true dumb, has created a version called the MGS which has a 105mm gun and enlarged turret on top of it, blocking crew exits from two forward hatches and eliminating the vehicle's air-conditioning. Not only is it a sauna on wheels, but it's a death trap. It's also now too heavy and too bulky to easily fit into a C-130, scrapping its original reason for being: air transportability. You might suppose the all-volunteer force would have eased this kind of bureaucratic stupidity. You would be wrong.
Finishing "A Thousand Splendid Suns" got me interested again in Afghanistan, which I admit had fallen off my radar as of late. Just in time to find out that things look bleak. Nothing like the days when the Taliban was in charge, but apparently sliding back in their direction. NATO isn't owning up to its promises, Canada is getting antsy, the Bush administration is promising a few thousand more Marines. This is supposed to be the Dems favored campaign, well Hilarity's. Obama, last we heard, wants to retreat everywhere and invade Pakistan. Nowadays, he says nothing. What would McCain do? Shift troops there as they are withdrawn from Iraq? One brigade at a time? At least we know he won't give up.
Via Soobdujour.
Like Instapundit says, this is a real winner: "McCain for President. Or we're really screwed." Nuff said.
Arizona Sen. John McCain's post-vote speech last night hit all the points intended to mollify his party critics. It could be the start of a reconciliation that stops the rather-sit-home whining before it gets out of hand. As he said: "We are the captains of our fate. We can overcome any challenge as long as we keep our courage and stand by our principles. I intend to make my stand on those principles, and trust in the judgment of the American people I serve." It's been said that after eight years of one party, voters normally want another in the White House. But the times are unusual, and the Long War continues, and it may be that people won't want its stewards to change--particularly when the only choice is the controversial husband-wife team of the pre-war administration. We're going to find out.
UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt, who kept me sane in 2004 by never doubting that Bush would win re-election, has the right idea: "There are seven reasons for anyone to support the eventual nominee no matter who it is: The war and six Supreme Court justices over the age of 68."
I was sitting on the patio under the outside light, smoking and reading "A Thousand Splendid Suns" when a raccoon shuffled up to me out of the darkness. I was amazed. He appeared to be the size of a small German shepard. A really big raccoon, in other words, though wearing the usual black mask. But he looked friendly enough. Hungry, perhaps. "Good evening, Mr. Raccoon," I said. I almost expected him to say something polite in response, maybe ask for the time or some leftovers. I would have directed him to the garbage can on the other end of the rancho. Instead, he stopped in his tracks, retreated slowly into the darkness and scurried away. Adios, Mr. Raccoon.
Remains to be seen whether it'll be enough, but Army Iraq veteran LTC Greg Gadson, who played football at West Point, has been an inspiration to the New York Giants. We can expect he'll be on their sidelines at the Super Bowl later today and remember to look for him.
Thanks to rare regular reader Anna for the link.
UPDATE: I guess Gadson was good enough, because they won it all in the final minute, 17-14.
"It’s known as bigamy by real people, but bureaucrats have their own separate lexicon…which yields terms like 'valid polygamy' [for extra-wife welfare payments]. Next there will be 'obligatory honor killings,' and government will pay for the burial expenses."
Where? In barmy old Britain. Where else?
Via Gates of Vienna
If you can't stop the war, stop the recruiting. What pitiable fools these Californians be:
"...the Berkeley City Council...voted 8-1 Tuesday night to tell the U.S. Marines that its Shattuck Avenue recruiting station 'is not welcome in the city, and if recruiters choose to stay, they do so as uninvited and unwelcome intruders.'"
Can't be different in one-eyed Berkeley. So much for diversity. But they never meant diversity of ideas.
Via Instapundit
First it was Piglet. Now it's the Three Little Pigs. When did the Brits turn into morons? I must have been napping.
In New York City. In a new Adam Sandler movie that treats Israelis sympathetically. What a concept. With such immortal lines as this one: "We've been fighting for 2,000 years--it can't be much longer." I'm not going to break down and cross the sticky floors of a local movie house, but I will rent the DVD.
Via Roger L. Simon
In a Greek tragedy, the fated catastrophe can't be prevented. But conservatives should be able to avoid a Republican train wreck (caused by sitting out a McCain candidacy), says military historian Victor Davis Hanson, if they give up their litany about his past sins and accept his turnarounds, for instance on blanket amnesty. The alternative, afterall, would be four years spent discovering Obama's make-it-up-as-I-go-along intentions, or another round of Clinton sex, money and national security scandals. And, whichever one won, the bumbling, expensive and corrupt social manipulations for which the Democrats are so famous. McCain, by comparison, should be a walk in the park. I disagree that ONLY McCain has "an outside shot at edging out" Obama/Clinton. I think they're eminently beatable. But I like Hanson, have read many of his good books, and tend to follow his lead. This looks like another good time to do it.
MORE: Hanson's earlier good, and therefore controversial, take on McCain.
Fred's distant third in South Carolina probably means he can start taking long naps again, but surely someone (Mitt? Rudy?) can stop McCain, the irascible liberal Republican, who won. He's the MSM's darling, which ought to be clue enough. Nominate this guy who pretends to talk straight while refusing to call his amnesty for illegal immigrants amnesty, and you get a guy whose main claim to fame is he would fight the Islamic fanatics. I suppose that might be enough. He could match wrinkles with Hilarity. He would look awful old opposite Obama, but Obama's anti-war, which would be a good contrast. Clinton/Obama would be sure raise taxes; McCain might not. But I'll still cross my fingers that Mitt or Rudy blows out Florida in time to derail McCain. They have his advantage without his negatives.
UPDATE: Romney leads in the delegate count, but has yet to win a big primary, on the order of SC or NH. Mitt's been hit for being too slick, but he should look sincere next to argumentative McCain.
Instead of wasting energy or emotion on the latest NYTimes slander of America's warriors, take a minute to see this new less-is-more Marines recruiting ad. Then one more minute to check out the wordier but still impressive Army one. Outstanding.
I confess I didn't pay much attention to the NYTimes' latest smear on combat veterans--implying without context (statistical or otherwise) that the sometimes dubious violent crimes of 121 returned Afghanistan and Iraq veterans are connected to their combat experiences. The Democrat house organ helped invent the slur on Vietnam combat veterans as "ticking time bombs," making us the forerunners of the actual Muslim suicide bomber. But Ralph Peters doesn't overlook such things, even if they aren't news. In "The New Lepers," he describes the latest smear as "an artful example of hate-speech disguised as a public service."
Via Instapundit
MORE: Beware the brutal veteran journalist, with actual incidents. Humor from Iowahawk. You might need to worry, because a lot of them are going to be laid off in the near future.
The concept car is ugly. It has no headroom and looks like a mashed can. But if Chevy can really pull off this flex-fuel, hybrid electric car by 2010, it could be the start of something good for the Long War and the economy. Too many of our pols seem to have their pockets lined with Saudi dollars for them to make a serious effort away from the Middle East oil funding the terrorists. But the automobile industry might be able to do it for them. Although as the driver of a Honda rice-burner, I'll grant the Audi-driving Seablogger his take on the usual American car: "...it’s overpowered; it steers like a truck; and it feels as though it wants to go airborne every time it rounds a corner.”
Via Instapundit
Amazing computer animation of the structural-failure accident that has forced the grounding of many F-15 Strike Eagles. You can argue about how many air-superiority fighters are needed nowadays, but apparently not about the longeron problem afflicting some of these 25-year-old aircraft.
MORE: The Air Force blames manufacturer McDonnell Douglas's work in the 1970s.
I bought one of the early plastic model kits of this radical aircraft, the F-117, just to get an idea of what it was really like. Should have known better. Lots more details and one good close-up picture (see the print copy of the magazine for more) provided in this Air & Space piece, now that the Nighthawk--its official name--is being retired.
Columbia University, denying an Iranian report that some professors are enroute to Tehran to apologize to Mahmoud-the-mad for insults on his recent New York visit, includes an interesting little slap:
"We ask that a clarification be added....and that verification of the facts even during the era of Google's news value-neutral, digital age continues to be warranted."
Ah, yes, let's bemoan the end of the days when the gatekeepers got to decide "news value." Boo hoo.
Via Simply Jews
