'Wonderful time to be a soldier'�-�Editorials/Op-Ed�-�The Washington Times, America's Newspaper: "'Wonderful time to be a soldier'
TODAY'S COLUMNIST
By Joe Roche
August 26, 2005
I'm very proud to be a soldier of the U.S. Army because of the war on terror and our missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm not alone either. I'm surrounded by soldiers who are re-enlisting and volunteering to go to units that are deploying. In fact, despite all the negative news and protests, I see everyday that our military is actually doing very well.
This is quite obvious, except for the fact that most of the media seems asphyxiated with defeatism. The message from most journalists would lead you to believe that we soldiers are getting out, that no one is joining anew and that we want to stop fighting. This simply isn't true.
Yes, recruitment is lower, but the caliber of those who are signing up and the rates of re-enlistment are both extremely high. All 10 of our major combat divisions are ahead of expectations for retention of soldiers. In my unit, there are soldiers who specifically went active duty from the reserves because they want to go to Iraq or Afghanistan.
Before September 11, a lot of soldiers were happy to just enjoy the benefits. Since that day, those soldiers have left. That is fine and not the disaster that defeatist reports are making it seem. Such soldiers were never the types to want to go on long deployments and face combat. Yes, they were heroes for signing up and being in a job that could go that direction, but they had other priorities that made their service contingent on enjoying the benefits rather than serving in war.
That changed on September 11. Now, just as we are told to expect when joining, we are going to combat and many soldiers are getting injured and killed. This is our job, and it is what we know can happen. I don't know why the media insists on trumpeting the idea that all of us are tired and worn out and just want to stop fighting. I don't, and I am not alone.
The fact is that we are not experiencing casualty rates anywhere near past conflicts, nor for that matter as bad as during peacetime. There were weeks in Vietnam when 350-400 Americans died, and in other wars thousands would die in single battles. Nothing like that is happening now.
From 1983 to 1996, more than 18,000 soldiers died. That averages to more than 1,300 a year, far more than have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan each year. Yes, that was mostly from accidents, drunk driving and other mishaps. Yet, while protesters in Crawford, Texas and elsewhere would have you think that our military can't survive with the low casualty rates of this war, I wonder why they were willing to accept the much higher peacetime casualty rates of the past? We lost around 3,000 innocent people on September 11, and with four years of war and the toppling of two regimes, we haven't lost that many in combat.
Injuries are high, but they are nothing compared to past conflicts. And most striking is how many are recovering well. I have been to both of the major military hospitals involved in this war, Landstuhl in Germany and Walter Reed in Washington, and I can tell you that there are many soldiers who have lost limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan and who want to return to their units and get redeployed.
Like I said earlier, though, the striking fact I see every day is that the soldiers who are joining now are of much higher caliber than those who joined before September 11. The senior commandant of the Marines recently testified before Congress that the same is happening with them. There maybe fewer than before, but those that do show up are willing and dedicated to being deployed and going to combat. These are also the types who are re-enlisting more than ever before. In fact, re-enlistment is up to 130 percent of expectations in some divisions.
My wife is in the National Guard. Theirs is an interesting experience right now in that there have been more casualties by accidents and reckless behavior off-duty than in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why are protesters not upset about that? Sadly it appears that much of the media are obsessed with defeatism. Even the message of the protesters — contradictory, false and confused as ever — is made front-page headline news every day. The few people they can exploit to push this defeatist agenda are made to appear to speak for all of us. That just isn't true.
Contrary to all the bad news, I see everyday that our soldiers are motivated and eager to contribute and participate in our nation's military missions. This is a very proud and important time to be serving. Considering that out of a population of 285 million, less than one-tenth of one percent are going to war right now, and considering the huge impact we are having on the world, this is a wonderful time to be a soldier in the U.S. Army.
Sgt. Joe Roche is with the 12th Aviation Battalion and stationed at Fort Belvoir. "
Monday, August 29, 2005
Sunday, August 28, 2005
HOG ON ICE: Putting Things In Perspective
HOG ON ICE: Putting Things In Perspective: "Putting Things In Perspective
Steve's hurricane could cause even more trouble...
When thinking about Hurricane Katrina, you might want to consider how she's going to affect your life. It doesn’t matter if you live on the Gulf Coast or not--Katrina just may affect you personally. In fact, no matter where you live in the US, this hurricane is packing enough punch to be felt from sea to shining sea, but I can't find anyone in the MSM talking about it.
Let me explain...
Most people don't think about the real damage being done by these hurricanes in the Gulf. The Gulf of Mexico is responsible for almost 1/4 of the nation's domestic oil and gas production—this doesn’t count the imported oil and gas that is offloaded in the Gulf—but I’ll get to that in a minute. When these hurricanes blow through, oil companies have to evacuate their rigs—which means shutting down production. Like sleep, you can never make up for lost production. There are production losses planned into the production schedule, but with a year like this one, we're falling behind—and it’s one of the reasons we’re feeling it at the pumps. Then you have the rigs themselves. Let’s take Thunderhorse for example. Thunderhorse is the world’s largest offshore platform. She’s 75% owned by BP and 25% by Exxon—BP is the operator. The rig is designed to take hurricanes and other weather events and remain operationally viable. However, when Hurricane Dennis came through, something went wrong and she started listing about 20 to 30 degrees. Fast work by BP crews and the US Coastguard prevented the loss of a $5 billion rig. None of these rigs out there are hurricane proof.
But the real problem is Port Fourchon.
Most people have never heard of Port Fourchon, but it is the nation's premiere oil and gas support services facility--and right now it lies within 12 miles of Hurricane Katrina's CAT-3 or CAT-4 bullseye. Over 600 platforms and 75% of the Gulf’s deepwater projects lie within a 40-mile radius of Port Fourchon. Unfortunately, Port Fourchon is a Louisiana island. An island that is connected to the mainland by a single two lane bridge...an old, single two lane bridge. This bridge is the only means of getting cargo and supplies to the Port. More than 1,000 cargo trucks go across this bridge each day, delivering materials to the Port for Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) drilling rigs. If there’s no bridge, there’re no drilling parts and supplies.
Do you see where this is going? When people say our infrastructure is vulnerable, they are not kidding—and not all of it is about terrorism.
The Port is crucial to our national security—for a number of other reasons. While the Persian Gulf provides around 23% of the U.S. oil supply, Port Fourchon supports the offloading of over 18% of all domestic oil and gas and 13% of all oil imports. Port Fourchon is the site of the enormous booster pumps that carry crude oil from the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) to underground salt dome storage areas in Galliano. The LOOP is the first and only offshore oil terminal operating in the United States. It's located less than 20 miles south of Port Fourchon in the Gulf of Mexico and allows the off-loading of oil from supertankers into special pipelines that connect directly to more than 30% of the nation’s refining capacity. The LOOP takes in about one million barrels of foreign oil and 300,000 barrels of domestic crude from Gulf of Mexico OCS each day. Loose that capacity and you've got big trouble.
Put another way, there is no other dot on the map that is more important to the nation’s energy supply, yet it’s connected to the mainland by an obsolete bridge and highway and it has a possible CAT-4 hurricane bearing down on it. It’s not a good situation and Port Fourchon authorities have been warning government officials about it for years.
I’m not being doom and gloom; I’m just saying that we don’t often think about how much these damn hurricanes can and might affect our daily lives.
Just something else to think about when you read about a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico…"
Steve's hurricane could cause even more trouble...
When thinking about Hurricane Katrina, you might want to consider how she's going to affect your life. It doesn’t matter if you live on the Gulf Coast or not--Katrina just may affect you personally. In fact, no matter where you live in the US, this hurricane is packing enough punch to be felt from sea to shining sea, but I can't find anyone in the MSM talking about it.
Let me explain...
Most people don't think about the real damage being done by these hurricanes in the Gulf. The Gulf of Mexico is responsible for almost 1/4 of the nation's domestic oil and gas production—this doesn’t count the imported oil and gas that is offloaded in the Gulf—but I’ll get to that in a minute. When these hurricanes blow through, oil companies have to evacuate their rigs—which means shutting down production. Like sleep, you can never make up for lost production. There are production losses planned into the production schedule, but with a year like this one, we're falling behind—and it’s one of the reasons we’re feeling it at the pumps. Then you have the rigs themselves. Let’s take Thunderhorse for example. Thunderhorse is the world’s largest offshore platform. She’s 75% owned by BP and 25% by Exxon—BP is the operator. The rig is designed to take hurricanes and other weather events and remain operationally viable. However, when Hurricane Dennis came through, something went wrong and she started listing about 20 to 30 degrees. Fast work by BP crews and the US Coastguard prevented the loss of a $5 billion rig. None of these rigs out there are hurricane proof.
But the real problem is Port Fourchon.
Most people have never heard of Port Fourchon, but it is the nation's premiere oil and gas support services facility--and right now it lies within 12 miles of Hurricane Katrina's CAT-3 or CAT-4 bullseye. Over 600 platforms and 75% of the Gulf’s deepwater projects lie within a 40-mile radius of Port Fourchon. Unfortunately, Port Fourchon is a Louisiana island. An island that is connected to the mainland by a single two lane bridge...an old, single two lane bridge. This bridge is the only means of getting cargo and supplies to the Port. More than 1,000 cargo trucks go across this bridge each day, delivering materials to the Port for Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) drilling rigs. If there’s no bridge, there’re no drilling parts and supplies.
Do you see where this is going? When people say our infrastructure is vulnerable, they are not kidding—and not all of it is about terrorism.
The Port is crucial to our national security—for a number of other reasons. While the Persian Gulf provides around 23% of the U.S. oil supply, Port Fourchon supports the offloading of over 18% of all domestic oil and gas and 13% of all oil imports. Port Fourchon is the site of the enormous booster pumps that carry crude oil from the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) to underground salt dome storage areas in Galliano. The LOOP is the first and only offshore oil terminal operating in the United States. It's located less than 20 miles south of Port Fourchon in the Gulf of Mexico and allows the off-loading of oil from supertankers into special pipelines that connect directly to more than 30% of the nation’s refining capacity. The LOOP takes in about one million barrels of foreign oil and 300,000 barrels of domestic crude from Gulf of Mexico OCS each day. Loose that capacity and you've got big trouble.
Put another way, there is no other dot on the map that is more important to the nation’s energy supply, yet it’s connected to the mainland by an obsolete bridge and highway and it has a possible CAT-4 hurricane bearing down on it. It’s not a good situation and Port Fourchon authorities have been warning government officials about it for years.
I’m not being doom and gloom; I’m just saying that we don’t often think about how much these damn hurricanes can and might affect our daily lives.
Just something else to think about when you read about a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico…"
Chrenkoff
Chrenkoff: "Once were superpower
Russia's national suicide continues:
Russians are having more abortions than births to avoid the cost of raising children, according to the country's highest-ranking obstetrician.
About 1.6 million women had a termination last year, a fifth of them under the age of 18, while about 1.5 million gave birth, said Vladimir Kulakov, vice president of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences in Moscow. 'Many more' abortions weren't reported, Kulakov said in the government's official newspaper.
I'll make a brave prediction: in twenty to thirty years, Russia will no longer exist in the form we know today. It might even shrink to the decaying ancient core of the Muscovy, pre-Ivan the Terrible expansion, as first its Muslims areas, and then other autonomous regions detach themselves, and eastern Siberia is absorbed by China (if China itself still exists in its current form in two or three decades' time). It's like watching the fall of the Roman Empire, except with a lot of nukes.
It is difficult to feel sorry for Russia in an abstract (particularly as a Pole), but I do feel sorry for the Russian people, who having suffered seven decades of communism, now find themselves trapped in a nightmarish twilight zone where the old establishment has merged with the organized crime to loot the state and terrorize the population.
"
Russia's national suicide continues:
Russians are having more abortions than births to avoid the cost of raising children, according to the country's highest-ranking obstetrician.
About 1.6 million women had a termination last year, a fifth of them under the age of 18, while about 1.5 million gave birth, said Vladimir Kulakov, vice president of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences in Moscow. 'Many more' abortions weren't reported, Kulakov said in the government's official newspaper.
I'll make a brave prediction: in twenty to thirty years, Russia will no longer exist in the form we know today. It might even shrink to the decaying ancient core of the Muscovy, pre-Ivan the Terrible expansion, as first its Muslims areas, and then other autonomous regions detach themselves, and eastern Siberia is absorbed by China (if China itself still exists in its current form in two or three decades' time). It's like watching the fall of the Roman Empire, except with a lot of nukes.
It is difficult to feel sorry for Russia in an abstract (particularly as a Pole), but I do feel sorry for the Russian people, who having suffered seven decades of communism, now find themselves trapped in a nightmarish twilight zone where the old establishment has merged with the organized crime to loot the state and terrorize the population.
"
Power Line: A positive accounting
Power Line: A positive accounting: "A positive accounting
Christopher Hitchens delivers a brilliant essay in the Daily Standard called 'A War to Be Proud Of.' His positive accounting of our accomplishments in the Bush administration's proactive war on terrorism includes:
1) The overthrow of Talibanism and Baathism, and the exposure of many highly suggestive links between the two elements of this Hitler-Stalin pact. Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who moved from Afghanistan to Iraq before the coalition intervention, has even gone to the trouble of naming his organization al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
(2) The subsequent capitulation of Qaddafi's Libya in point of weapons of mass destruction--a capitulation that was offered not to Kofi Annan or the E.U. but to Blair and Bush.
(3) The consequent unmasking of the A.Q. Khan network for the illicit transfer of nuclear technology to Libya, Iran, and North Korea.
(4) The agreement by the United Nations that its own reform is necessary and overdue, and the unmasking of a quasi-criminal network within its elite.
(5) The craven admission by President Chirac and Chancellor Schr�der, when confronted with irrefutable evidence of cheating and concealment, respecting solemn treaties, on the part of Iran, that not even this will alter their commitment to neutralism. (One had already suspected as much in the Iraqi case.)
(6) The ability to certify Iraq as actually disarmed, rather than accept the word of a psychopathic autocrat.
(7) The immense gains made by the largest stateless minority in the region--the Kurds--and the spread of this example to other states.
(8) The related encouragement of democratic and civil society movements in Egypt, Syria, and most notably Lebanon, which has regained a version of its autonomy.
(9) The violent and ignominious death of thousands of bin Ladenist infiltrators into Iraq and Afghanistan, and the real prospect of greatly enlarging this number.
(10) The training and hardening of many thousands of American servicemen and women in a battle against the forces of nihilism and absolutism, which training and hardening will surely be of great use in future combat.
Moreover, while it's not clear whether or to what extent the American public shares Hitchens' pride in what we've accomplished, Hitchens is undoubtedly correct that the public itself has displayed a fortitude of which it should be proud:
Faced with a constant drizzle of bad news and purposely demoralizing commentary, millions of people stick out their jaws and hang tight. I am no fan of populism, but I surmise that these citizens are clear on the main point: It is out of the question--plainly and absolutely out of the question--that we should surrender the keystone state of the Middle East to a rotten, murderous alliance between Baathists and bin Ladenists. When they hear the fatuous insinuation that this alliance has only been created by the resistance to it, voters know in their intestines that those who say so are soft on crime and soft on fascism."
Christopher Hitchens delivers a brilliant essay in the Daily Standard called 'A War to Be Proud Of.' His positive accounting of our accomplishments in the Bush administration's proactive war on terrorism includes:
1) The overthrow of Talibanism and Baathism, and the exposure of many highly suggestive links between the two elements of this Hitler-Stalin pact. Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who moved from Afghanistan to Iraq before the coalition intervention, has even gone to the trouble of naming his organization al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
(2) The subsequent capitulation of Qaddafi's Libya in point of weapons of mass destruction--a capitulation that was offered not to Kofi Annan or the E.U. but to Blair and Bush.
(3) The consequent unmasking of the A.Q. Khan network for the illicit transfer of nuclear technology to Libya, Iran, and North Korea.
(4) The agreement by the United Nations that its own reform is necessary and overdue, and the unmasking of a quasi-criminal network within its elite.
(5) The craven admission by President Chirac and Chancellor Schr�der, when confronted with irrefutable evidence of cheating and concealment, respecting solemn treaties, on the part of Iran, that not even this will alter their commitment to neutralism. (One had already suspected as much in the Iraqi case.)
(6) The ability to certify Iraq as actually disarmed, rather than accept the word of a psychopathic autocrat.
(7) The immense gains made by the largest stateless minority in the region--the Kurds--and the spread of this example to other states.
(8) The related encouragement of democratic and civil society movements in Egypt, Syria, and most notably Lebanon, which has regained a version of its autonomy.
(9) The violent and ignominious death of thousands of bin Ladenist infiltrators into Iraq and Afghanistan, and the real prospect of greatly enlarging this number.
(10) The training and hardening of many thousands of American servicemen and women in a battle against the forces of nihilism and absolutism, which training and hardening will surely be of great use in future combat.
Moreover, while it's not clear whether or to what extent the American public shares Hitchens' pride in what we've accomplished, Hitchens is undoubtedly correct that the public itself has displayed a fortitude of which it should be proud:
Faced with a constant drizzle of bad news and purposely demoralizing commentary, millions of people stick out their jaws and hang tight. I am no fan of populism, but I surmise that these citizens are clear on the main point: It is out of the question--plainly and absolutely out of the question--that we should surrender the keystone state of the Middle East to a rotten, murderous alliance between Baathists and bin Ladenists. When they hear the fatuous insinuation that this alliance has only been created by the resistance to it, voters know in their intestines that those who say so are soft on crime and soft on fascism."
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner - William Morrow, 2005
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner - William Morrow, 2005: "http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil.html"
Need to read.
Need to read.
SHAME! HORRIBLE!
komo news | Police Need Your Help In Capturing Beating Suspects: "SEATTLE - Two soldiers who just returned from a year in Iraq were badly beaten in an attack outside Pioneer Square. But believe it or not, someone caught the beating on videotape. Now, police are asking for your help identifying the suspects.
The brutality of it all was captured on tape outside of Larry's Nightclub on First and Yesler on July 31.
Police say the victims were with two women who'd been groped by the suspects. One of the women threw a hot dog at the suspects and walked away.
They didn't get very far. The three suspects ran after them and began attacking the two men -- two soldiers who'd come home from the war."
The brutality of it all was captured on tape outside of Larry's Nightclub on First and Yesler on July 31.
Police say the victims were with two women who'd been groped by the suspects. One of the women threw a hot dog at the suspects and walked away.
They didn't get very far. The three suspects ran after them and began attacking the two men -- two soldiers who'd come home from the war."
military news about Afghanistan
military news about Afghanistan: "AFGHANISTAN: Where the Taliban Don't Roam
August 24, 2005: So far this month, counter-terrorist operations have killed about 110 Taliban, mainly along the Pakistani border. Several hundred suspects have been arrested. Most of the Taliban were killed last week, in the southern province of Zabul and the eastern province of Kunar. These two areas have been the scene of most Taliban violence. Only a few hundred Taliban are causing all the terror and violence in the southern part of the country, with an estimated 2,000 Pushtun tribesmen actively supporting the Taliban cause.
So far this year, about a thousand people have died in Taliban related violence (compared to 850 during the same period last year.) About half the dead are Taliban, with the rest being Afghan troops and civilians."
Here is the full article.
August 24, 2005: So far this month, counter-terrorist operations have killed about 110 Taliban, mainly along the Pakistani border. Several hundred suspects have been arrested. Most of the Taliban were killed last week, in the southern province of Zabul and the eastern province of Kunar. These two areas have been the scene of most Taliban violence. Only a few hundred Taliban are causing all the terror and violence in the southern part of the country, with an estimated 2,000 Pushtun tribesmen actively supporting the Taliban cause.
So far this year, about a thousand people have died in Taliban related violence (compared to 850 during the same period last year.) About half the dead are Taliban, with the rest being Afghan troops and civilians."
Here is the full article.
What if we just left??
The full article.
August 25, 2005: The more extreme critics of American strategy in Iraq demand that American forces just leave. "Bring the troops home." What if that were done? It's certainly possible. We withdrew a force from Lebanon in 1984, four months after suffering over 250 dead from suicide bomb attacks. The Lebanese civil war went on without us for another seven years. The fifteen year civil war in Lebanon left about two percent of the population dead, and twenty percent driven from their homes. For a country the size of Iraq, that would translate to half a million dead. ">military news about Iraq: "IRAQ: What If We Just Left?
August 25, 2005: The more extreme critics of American strategy in Iraq demand that American forces just leave. 'Bring the troops home.' What if that were done? It's certainly possible. We withdrew a force from Lebanon in 1984, four months after suffering over 250 dead from suicide bomb attacks. The Lebanese civil war went on without us for another seven years. The fifteen year civil war in Lebanon left about two percent of the population dead, and twenty percent driven from their homes. For a country the size of Iraq, that would translate to half a million dead. "
August 25, 2005: The more extreme critics of American strategy in Iraq demand that American forces just leave. "Bring the troops home." What if that were done? It's certainly possible. We withdrew a force from Lebanon in 1984, four months after suffering over 250 dead from suicide bomb attacks. The Lebanese civil war went on without us for another seven years. The fifteen year civil war in Lebanon left about two percent of the population dead, and twenty percent driven from their homes. For a country the size of Iraq, that would translate to half a million dead. ">military news about Iraq: "IRAQ: What If We Just Left?
August 25, 2005: The more extreme critics of American strategy in Iraq demand that American forces just leave. 'Bring the troops home.' What if that were done? It's certainly possible. We withdrew a force from Lebanon in 1984, four months after suffering over 250 dead from suicide bomb attacks. The Lebanese civil war went on without us for another seven years. The fifteen year civil war in Lebanon left about two percent of the population dead, and twenty percent driven from their homes. For a country the size of Iraq, that would translate to half a million dead. "
Monday, August 22, 2005
$2 for water for a year
One Hand Clapping � Blog Archive � $2 for water for a year: "Perhaps as many as a billion people around the world do not have regular access to safe drinking water. Several million people per year die from drinking contaminated water.
But the new LifeStraw may just be “the invention of the century.” At a cost of $2, one straw can filter up to 700 liters of water, about a year’s worth at 2 liters per day. The user just sticks one end in the water and sucks the water through the filtering elements.
Medgadget reports,
What first meets the water when sucked up is a pre-filter of PE filter textile with a mesh opening of 100 micron, shortly followed by a second textile filter in polyester with a mesh opening of 15 micron. In this way all big articles are filtered out, even clusters of bacteria are removed. Then the water is led into a chamber of iodine impregnated beads, where bacteria, viruses and parasites are killed. The second chamber is a void space, where the iodine being washed off the beads can maintain their killing effect. The last chamber consists of granulated active carbon, which role is to take the main part of the bad smell of iodine, and to take the parasites that have not been taken by the pre-filter or killed by the iodine. The biggest parasites will be taken by the pre-filter, the weakest will be killed by the iodine, and the medium range parasites will be picked up by the active carbon. The main interest to everyone is the killing of bacteria, and here our laboratory reading tells us that we have a log. 7 to log 8 kill of most bacteria. This is better than tap water in many developed countries.
This sounds like the kind of device that American churches could easily buy and supply to churches overseas for distribution."
Source for this amazing health Aid!
But the new LifeStraw may just be “the invention of the century.” At a cost of $2, one straw can filter up to 700 liters of water, about a year’s worth at 2 liters per day. The user just sticks one end in the water and sucks the water through the filtering elements.
Medgadget reports,
What first meets the water when sucked up is a pre-filter of PE filter textile with a mesh opening of 100 micron, shortly followed by a second textile filter in polyester with a mesh opening of 15 micron. In this way all big articles are filtered out, even clusters of bacteria are removed. Then the water is led into a chamber of iodine impregnated beads, where bacteria, viruses and parasites are killed. The second chamber is a void space, where the iodine being washed off the beads can maintain their killing effect. The last chamber consists of granulated active carbon, which role is to take the main part of the bad smell of iodine, and to take the parasites that have not been taken by the pre-filter or killed by the iodine. The biggest parasites will be taken by the pre-filter, the weakest will be killed by the iodine, and the medium range parasites will be picked up by the active carbon. The main interest to everyone is the killing of bacteria, and here our laboratory reading tells us that we have a log. 7 to log 8 kill of most bacteria. This is better than tap water in many developed countries.
This sounds like the kind of device that American churches could easily buy and supply to churches overseas for distribution."
Source for this amazing health Aid!
gizmag Article: The LifeStraw – the invention of the century?
gizmag Article: The LifeStraw – the invention of the century?
Wonderful invention. Revolutionize 3rd world health!
Wonderful invention. Revolutionize 3rd world health!
Sunday, August 21, 2005
The War in Iraq:Coatings for Protection
The War in Iraq:: "U.S. Navy researchers have discovered that polyurea, a high strength, spray-on plastic normally used to provide a non-skid surface on ship decks and truck beds, and for corrosion control, also absorbs the blast effects of bombs. About 3-4mm of polyurea was sprayed on the outside of a hummer and then a bomb was set off next to the vehicle, to recreate a roadside bomb attack in Iraq. There was much less damage inside the vehicle than when the same bomb was set off next to a hummer without the polyurea coating. The polyurea also prevents the metal body of the vehicle from splintering and turning into dangerous fragments. Had there not been a war going on in Iraq, that featured frequent attacks on unarmored vehicles, this unexpected use of polyurea would probably never have been discovered. The navy might end up coating the top side of small surface ships with the stuff, to give the crew additional protection in the event of missile or bomb attacks. The air force and army are also using polyurea as a wall coating for buildings that might be bombed. Tests have shown that the polyurea coating greatly reduces the bomb damage. Coating a hummer would cost several thousand dollars.
"
"
The War in Iraq: Shotguns
The War in Iraq:: "American troops are testing a new 12 gauge automatic shotgun in Iraq. Weighing 10.5 pounds unloaded, the Auto Assault 12 (AA12) has a rate of fire of 360 rounds per minute, and uses either an 8-round box magazine (adding 12 ounces to weapon weight) or a 20 round drum magazine (adding 2.5 pounds). Recoil on the system has been reduced to that of a light rifle, due to a sophisticated recoil system. The low rate of fire makes it possible to easily fire bursts of one, two, or three shots and is capable of using and mixing all types of 12 gauge ammunition, from shot to solid slugs, as well as non-lethal rounds. Allegedly, Iraqi insurgents have little respect for the M4 rifle and the 5.56mm round, but they fear shotguns, especially a 'street sweeper' like the AA12.
If that's not enough of a firepower increase at the squad level, the Marine Corps is testing a family of 12 gauge shells designed to deliver blast, fragmentation, and high-explosive armored piercing projectiles out to 200 meters. The high-explosive armor piercing projectile uses a shaped charge that has been demonstrated to put a 1 inch hole in quarter-inch steel plate. A total of 100 projectiles have been bought for testing as well as some quantity for 'experimental use' in Iraq.
At first glance, packing an armor-piercing charge into a 12 gauge round sounds like overkill, but Iraqi terrorists are becoming increasingly sophisticated in fortifying themselves, vehicles, and fixed positions."
If that's not enough of a firepower increase at the squad level, the Marine Corps is testing a family of 12 gauge shells designed to deliver blast, fragmentation, and high-explosive armored piercing projectiles out to 200 meters. The high-explosive armor piercing projectile uses a shaped charge that has been demonstrated to put a 1 inch hole in quarter-inch steel plate. A total of 100 projectiles have been bought for testing as well as some quantity for 'experimental use' in Iraq.
At first glance, packing an armor-piercing charge into a 12 gauge round sounds like overkill, but Iraqi terrorists are becoming increasingly sophisticated in fortifying themselves, vehicles, and fixed positions."
Special Rifle Sights
The War in Iraq:: "The U.S. Marine Corps is equipping most of their M-16 and M-4 rifles with ACOG (Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight). This device, which does not use batteries, is a well designed scope that provides a red chevron-shaped reticle and bullet drop compensator. For daytime use, a fiber optic system collects available light for brightness and controlled contrast in the scope. At night, the system relies on tritium for illumination. The 4x32 sight allows you to get first round hits at 300 meter, or longer ranges. The sight also allows for better accuracy at closer ranges, with both eyes open. The manufacturer, Trijicon, has been making similar sights for years, and they are popular for police, hunting and military use. SOCOM has long used them, and many marines and soldiers have bought the civilian version of the ACOG with their own money. At a thousand bucks each, ACOG costs more than the rifle it’s mounted on, and the users consider it well worth the price.
"
"
Saturday, August 20, 2005
One Hand Clapping � Blog Archive � Words are powerful
One Hand Clapping � Blog Archive � Words are powerful: "A fanatic who straps a bomb to his chest and walks into a market crowded with women and children, then detonates a bomb that is sometimes laced with rat poison to hamper blood coagulation, is properly called a “mass murderer.” There is nothing good to say about mass murderers, nor is there anything good to say about a person who encourages these murders. Calling these human bomb delivery devices “suicide bombers” is simply incorrect. They are murderers. A person or media source defending or explaining away the actions of the murderers supports them. There is no wiggle room.
Calling homicide bombers martyrs is a language offense; words are every bit as powerful as bombs, often more so. Calling murderers “martyrs” is like calling a man “customer” because he stood in line before gunning down a store clerk. "
Calling homicide bombers martyrs is a language offense; words are every bit as powerful as bombs, often more so. Calling murderers “martyrs” is like calling a man “customer” because he stood in line before gunning down a store clerk. "
Friday, August 19, 2005
Free Iraqi
Free Iraqi: "had Iraq's neighbors been really cooperative it would be very difficult for Al Qaeda to maintain their efforts in the same magnitude or even closer. And it would be naive to think that such police states know nothing about fighters and cars loaded with bombs that travel thousands of miles and cross their lands to reach Iraq. Now most of the totalitarian regimes in the region are not friends with the terrorists and in fact terrorists have attacked those regimes occasionally while using their lands as a passage, but the bigger cause has forced them to cooperate in Iraq and form a sort of an unwritten contract that regulates this cooperation.
I say they know, they're facilitating it but they still want it to be controlled, i.e. they want to make sure that the people they're supporting -or even not doing anything against them- are not going to use this support to attack America because that would bring their end, and very fast."
I say they know, they're facilitating it but they still want it to be controlled, i.e. they want to make sure that the people they're supporting -or even not doing anything against them- are not going to use this support to attack America because that would bring their end, and very fast."
Free Iraqi
Free Iraqi: "if the war in Iraq is not part of the war on terror as some westerns think then why do we have almost all the terrorists in the world racing each other to achieve 'martyrdom' in our land? Why not Afghanistan, Israel or their ultimate enemies; the west and America in particular? Sure they have attacked Europe but is that the best they can do there? I really doubt it. The terrorists have shown us that they have people almost everywhere in the world that are waiting for an order to blow themselves up in a bus, a train or a street crowded with civilians. So why are they putting most of their resources in Iraq instead of the west?
It's amazing how the terrorists themselves keep showing us in words and actions how vital the war in Iraq is for them and at the same time we have westerns and Americans saying that this war has nothing to do with fighting terrorism and that it's only increasing the danger of terrorism!"
It's amazing how the terrorists themselves keep showing us in words and actions how vital the war in Iraq is for them and at the same time we have westerns and Americans saying that this war has nothing to do with fighting terrorism and that it's only increasing the danger of terrorism!"
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Monday, August 15, 2005
Deaths in Iraq Lower than under Saddam
Deaths in Iraq: "The Iraqi government now believes that at least 12,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed during the last 18 months. In the last ten months, about 800 Iraqi civilians and police have been killed each month. Adding a bit more to account for unreported deaths (especially in Sunni Arab areas where chaos, not the government, runs things) the death rate is running at the rate of about 45 dead per 100,000 population per year. This is far higher than the usual rate in Middle Eastern countries (under 10). Well, most of the time. During civil wars and insurrections, the rate has spiked to over a hundred per 100,000, sometimes for several years in a row. During Saddam’s long reign, the Iraqi death rate from democide (the government killing its own people) averaged over 100 per 100,000 a year. This does not include the several hundred thousand killed during the war with Iran in the 1980s. There are other parts of the world that are more violent than Iraq. Africa, for example, especially Congo, Sudan and South Africa. Only South Africa has a sufficiently effective government to actually keep track of the death rate, mostly from crime, but it’s over 50 per 100,000. It’s worse in places like Congo and Sudan, but the numbers there are only estimates by peacekeepers and relief workers. In southern Thailand, a terror campaign by Islamic radicals has caused a death rate of over 80 per 100,000. "
Sunday, August 14, 2005
ChronWatch Reader Forum :: View topic - When it comes to Islam, ignorance is lethal:
ChronWatch Reader Forum :: View topic - When it comes to Islam, ignorance is lethal:: "
Mr. Jonathan Petre of Daily Telegraph did not tell the whole story. The truth is that most of those who convert to Islam, within months or a few years, realize they have been duped and leave Islam. Many of them rise with dedication and strive to eradicate his cult of lies and deception. I know hundreds of people who had converted to Islam but now have left it. Many of them started their own websites and weblogs and are exposing the ugly truth of Islam.
There are also millions of those who were born into Islam but now have left it. If Islamic apostasy can be called a movement, it is indeed the fastest growing movement today.
"
Mr. Jonathan Petre of Daily Telegraph did not tell the whole story. The truth is that most of those who convert to Islam, within months or a few years, realize they have been duped and leave Islam. Many of them rise with dedication and strive to eradicate his cult of lies and deception. I know hundreds of people who had converted to Islam but now have left it. Many of them started their own websites and weblogs and are exposing the ugly truth of Islam.
There are also millions of those who were born into Islam but now have left it. If Islamic apostasy can be called a movement, it is indeed the fastest growing movement today.
"
Friday, August 12, 2005
A Bomb?
The Bad Hair Blog: "A final thought,
Consider now what it must have sounded to anyone in 1945 the idea that, sixty years on, all the Axis powers would be true democracies.
Now ponder the possibilities in all the struggling democracies of today."
Consider now what it must have sounded to anyone in 1945 the idea that, sixty years on, all the Axis powers would be true democracies.
Now ponder the possibilities in all the struggling democracies of today."
United Press International�-�The Washington Times, America's Newspaper
United Press International�-�The Washington Times, America's Newspaper: "A controversial plan to embed radio frequency identification chips in license plates in the United Kingdom also may be coming to the United States, experts told UPI's Wireless World.
The so-called e-Plate, developed by the British firm Hills Numberplates, is a license plate that also transmits a vehicle's unique identification via encryption that can be read by a small detector, whose output can be used locally or communicated to a distant host. "
The so-called e-Plate, developed by the British firm Hills Numberplates, is a license plate that also transmits a vehicle's unique identification via encryption that can be read by a small detector, whose output can be used locally or communicated to a distant host. "
interesting!!
Chrenkoff: "Aussie jihadi - the story unfolds
Two days ago I reported on the story of a new terror tape aired by a Mid East TV channel, where a masked gunman harangues the West with an Australian accent. The story was true, but the direct quotes I used were not - some readers got the Crocodile Hunter/Crocodile Dundee jokes, some didn't.
Meanwhile, the story is developing:
Former army private Mathew Stewart has emerged as the chief suspect in the hunt for the masked terrorist with an Australian accent.
Stewart left home four years ago to fight alongside Osama bin Laden and has not been seen since.
Australian Federal Police officers immediately identified Stewart as the probable hooded figure who appeared in a terror video aired on Arab TV this week.
I'm eagerly awaiting now how Australian tabloids will christen our latest jihadi. Mat the Rat? Mudjahedin Mat? Al Qaeda Stew? Mooloolaba Muj? (Mooloolaba is a little town on the Sunshine Coast, 100 km north of Brisbane, where Stewart comes from).
The story how he got there is quite bizarre:
Private Mathew Stewart was patrolling the streets of Dili, East Timor, in 2002 when he was confronted with the full horror of live combat.
The quiet soldier and keen surfer from Queensland's Sunshine Coast stumbled upon the almost unrecognisable body of a Dutch journalist killed by militia.
Financial Times reporter Sander Thoenes, 30, had been shot in the chest and badly beaten. According to his comrades, Stewart was deeply traumatised by the discovery, his first encounter with death on the front line.
He was discharged from the army's 2nd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment for psychological reasons a short time later, sending him into a spiral of depression and self-doubt.
While other East Timor veterans looked for a change of lifestyle back home, Stewart began fixing his sights on the war unravelling in Afghanistan in the wake of the attacks on New York the previous year.
Furious at his perceived mistreatment in the Australian army, Stewart began making plans to fight for the other side.
It's ironic (in that grim sense of irony) that being traumatized by seeing a dead body would send a person on a sure path of seeing even more dead bodies, but it's doubly ironic that Private Stewart's turning point in life came in East Timor. It was the Australian intervention there in 2000 that guaranteed East Timor's transition to independence after a quarter of a century of a bloody Indonesian occupation costing 200,000 Timorese lives (a staggering one third of the entire population). Coincidentally, Australia's role in wrestling this small Catholic nation from under the domination of Muslim Indonesia has been cited by Osama bin Laden himself as one of the reason why Australia is now in Al Qaeda's sights.
I won't be surprised if there is more to this story, though, than just a traumatized and disgruntled ex-serviceman.
And if true, then it's yet another nail in the coffin of the intelligence community excuse that 'it was impossible to infiltrate Al Qaeda'. If an Australian soldier, with no apparent background in Islam, can walk off the street and sign himself up with the Terror Inc, then so could have any CIA infiltrator. Whether such asset inside Al Qaeda would have proven valuable in practice, particularly considering the risk of the mission, is another matter."
Two days ago I reported on the story of a new terror tape aired by a Mid East TV channel, where a masked gunman harangues the West with an Australian accent. The story was true, but the direct quotes I used were not - some readers got the Crocodile Hunter/Crocodile Dundee jokes, some didn't.
Meanwhile, the story is developing:
Former army private Mathew Stewart has emerged as the chief suspect in the hunt for the masked terrorist with an Australian accent.
Stewart left home four years ago to fight alongside Osama bin Laden and has not been seen since.
Australian Federal Police officers immediately identified Stewart as the probable hooded figure who appeared in a terror video aired on Arab TV this week.
I'm eagerly awaiting now how Australian tabloids will christen our latest jihadi. Mat the Rat? Mudjahedin Mat? Al Qaeda Stew? Mooloolaba Muj? (Mooloolaba is a little town on the Sunshine Coast, 100 km north of Brisbane, where Stewart comes from).
The story how he got there is quite bizarre:
Private Mathew Stewart was patrolling the streets of Dili, East Timor, in 2002 when he was confronted with the full horror of live combat.
The quiet soldier and keen surfer from Queensland's Sunshine Coast stumbled upon the almost unrecognisable body of a Dutch journalist killed by militia.
Financial Times reporter Sander Thoenes, 30, had been shot in the chest and badly beaten. According to his comrades, Stewart was deeply traumatised by the discovery, his first encounter with death on the front line.
He was discharged from the army's 2nd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment for psychological reasons a short time later, sending him into a spiral of depression and self-doubt.
While other East Timor veterans looked for a change of lifestyle back home, Stewart began fixing his sights on the war unravelling in Afghanistan in the wake of the attacks on New York the previous year.
Furious at his perceived mistreatment in the Australian army, Stewart began making plans to fight for the other side.
It's ironic (in that grim sense of irony) that being traumatized by seeing a dead body would send a person on a sure path of seeing even more dead bodies, but it's doubly ironic that Private Stewart's turning point in life came in East Timor. It was the Australian intervention there in 2000 that guaranteed East Timor's transition to independence after a quarter of a century of a bloody Indonesian occupation costing 200,000 Timorese lives (a staggering one third of the entire population). Coincidentally, Australia's role in wrestling this small Catholic nation from under the domination of Muslim Indonesia has been cited by Osama bin Laden himself as one of the reason why Australia is now in Al Qaeda's sights.
I won't be surprised if there is more to this story, though, than just a traumatized and disgruntled ex-serviceman.
And if true, then it's yet another nail in the coffin of the intelligence community excuse that 'it was impossible to infiltrate Al Qaeda'. If an Australian soldier, with no apparent background in Islam, can walk off the street and sign himself up with the Terror Inc, then so could have any CIA infiltrator. Whether such asset inside Al Qaeda would have proven valuable in practice, particularly considering the risk of the mission, is another matter."
: Out of Order ( The Saudi Military)
The New Republic Online: Out of Order: "a huge problem: the potential for factionalism within the Saudi military. Because different princes and their sons control various fighting forces, the possibility that armed units could become politicized in the near future looms large. Moreover, the institutional culture within these armed organizations is heavily influenced by Wahhabism--a dangerous situation for a kingdom in a state of political flux."
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
December 2002 Trading Tips Newsletter
December 2002 Trading Tips Newsletter: "Trading Rules 101
Many traders maintain and refine a set of Trading Rules that they attempt to follow. The rules are intended to encourage and remind traders to have some discipline, or to follow a trading system with exactness. A good set of Trading Rules will often prevent greed and plain stupidity from creeping into your trading. Almost any trader can identify a losing trade, and then say, 'If I had only followed my rules I wouldn't have had that losing trade'.
The following list of general Trading Rules is a compilation from many different sources. They are not in any particular order of importance. Many of the rules are common sense and you have heard them before. You may see a rule that you would like to add to your own Trading Rules list.
* Trade with the Trend.
* Cut your losses short, and let your gains run.
* Trade the Chart, not the Money.
* Don't chase the Market. Wait for a 2nd chance.
* Never buy because it seems too low. Never sell because it seems too high.
* Trade only symbols that have sufficient volume and liquidity.
* Never add to a losing position. Just get out and start over.
* When in doubt, get out, or stay out.
* Know where to exit a position before entering a trade.
* Never have an opinion about the market. Lose your opinion, not your money.
* Trade what you see, not what you believe.
* Think for yourself.
* Don't borrow money to invest.
* Don't trade tips.
* Focus on Trading, rather than on making Money.
* Avoid Impatience. You don't always have to be in the market. Wait for good trade opportunities.
* Always place a stop.
* Follow your Rules.
* Never 'Go for Broke'.
* Don't get sloppy after successful trades.
* Control your losses.
* If you wouldn't take the trade now, then don't stay in a current trade. Get Out.
* Don't trade without a plan.
* Lock-in profits.
* Move stops to a break-even (risk free) exit point as soon as possible.
* Focus on not-losing, more than winning.
* The trend is your friend."
Many traders maintain and refine a set of Trading Rules that they attempt to follow. The rules are intended to encourage and remind traders to have some discipline, or to follow a trading system with exactness. A good set of Trading Rules will often prevent greed and plain stupidity from creeping into your trading. Almost any trader can identify a losing trade, and then say, 'If I had only followed my rules I wouldn't have had that losing trade'.
The following list of general Trading Rules is a compilation from many different sources. They are not in any particular order of importance. Many of the rules are common sense and you have heard them before. You may see a rule that you would like to add to your own Trading Rules list.
* Trade with the Trend.
* Cut your losses short, and let your gains run.
* Trade the Chart, not the Money.
* Don't chase the Market. Wait for a 2nd chance.
* Never buy because it seems too low. Never sell because it seems too high.
* Trade only symbols that have sufficient volume and liquidity.
* Never add to a losing position. Just get out and start over.
* When in doubt, get out, or stay out.
* Know where to exit a position before entering a trade.
* Never have an opinion about the market. Lose your opinion, not your money.
* Trade what you see, not what you believe.
* Think for yourself.
* Don't borrow money to invest.
* Don't trade tips.
* Focus on Trading, rather than on making Money.
* Avoid Impatience. You don't always have to be in the market. Wait for good trade opportunities.
* Always place a stop.
* Follow your Rules.
* Never 'Go for Broke'.
* Don't get sloppy after successful trades.
* Control your losses.
* If you wouldn't take the trade now, then don't stay in a current trade. Get Out.
* Don't trade without a plan.
* Lock-in profits.
* Move stops to a break-even (risk free) exit point as soon as possible.
* Focus on not-losing, more than winning.
* The trend is your friend."
Saturday, August 06, 2005
Newsday.com: Insurgency continues targeting civilians
Newsday.com: Insurgency continues targeting civilians: "Even the bloodiest rebellions of modern times did not target civilians the way the insurgents have in Iraq. In Algeria, for example, rebels fighting against French colonial rule in the 1950s and '60s adopted a classic guerrilla tactic: They provoked the occupying troops to use excessive force and kill thousands of civilians. That prompted a public backlash and international condemnation of French actions. The French eventually withdrew from Algeria, after as many as 1 million people had been killed."
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
365 and a Wakeup: Desert Creatures
365 and a Wakeup: Desert Creatures: "The sun has been pitiless these last few days, doubling and redoubling its radiant energy until everything stationary shimmers in its own invisible pyre. The sputtering coughs of wind that limp across the cracked soil lack any real force; it’s as if the temperatures have cowed the air into refusing to stir. In these temperatures nothing moves without purpose. The troops that have to move back and forth across the FOB move along deliberate paths, their heads slightly bowed in unconscious deference to the flashbulb brilliance.
Now that we are several weeks into this withering season our cycles of work and rest have come to mirror the desert creatures that creep and slither through this harsh land. As is so often the case, we’ve had to slowly relearn the lessons nature hardwired into the native wildlife. The biggest key to surviving the temperatures is to (surprise, surprise) avoid the sun. Our barracks serve the same purpose as the desert creatures underground haunts – they both offer reservoirs of chill air. The only difference is our concrete berths hum to the steady whir of overworked air conditioning units.
Soldiers who decide to be infantryman don't join for the luxurious acomodations. That doesn't make it any easier to leave the air conditioned barracks, but it does help muster the will to keep heading out those doors into the atmospheric inferno. The sun isn't the only cruel taskmaster, the sheer weight of our combat equipment more then doubles the misery index. The thick ballistic carapace that we all wear is a life saver, but on days like this it seems to be a karmic bank selling protection in exchange for hour after hour of broiling misery. When you are wearing slabs of ceramic armor evaporative cooling becomes impossible, the sweat just soaks through layer after layer until your uniform is a sodden, salt encrusted mess. It is a pain, but nobody really worries to much about coming away from a mission soaked. We have a lot more to worry about then how to leach salt from a uniform."
Now that we are several weeks into this withering season our cycles of work and rest have come to mirror the desert creatures that creep and slither through this harsh land. As is so often the case, we’ve had to slowly relearn the lessons nature hardwired into the native wildlife. The biggest key to surviving the temperatures is to (surprise, surprise) avoid the sun. Our barracks serve the same purpose as the desert creatures underground haunts – they both offer reservoirs of chill air. The only difference is our concrete berths hum to the steady whir of overworked air conditioning units.
Soldiers who decide to be infantryman don't join for the luxurious acomodations. That doesn't make it any easier to leave the air conditioned barracks, but it does help muster the will to keep heading out those doors into the atmospheric inferno. The sun isn't the only cruel taskmaster, the sheer weight of our combat equipment more then doubles the misery index. The thick ballistic carapace that we all wear is a life saver, but on days like this it seems to be a karmic bank selling protection in exchange for hour after hour of broiling misery. When you are wearing slabs of ceramic armor evaporative cooling becomes impossible, the sweat just soaks through layer after layer until your uniform is a sodden, salt encrusted mess. It is a pain, but nobody really worries to much about coming away from a mission soaked. We have a lot more to worry about then how to leach salt from a uniform."
2Slick's Forum: To Paradise and Back Again
2Slick's Forum: To Paradise and Back Again: "Let's tee up a big screaming match about whether a high official of the White House committed a crime by breaching security in a dust-up over terrorists like Saddam Hussein and Usama bin Laden.
No, I'm not talking about Karl Rove. I'm talking about Sandy Berger stuffing secrets into his socks so the 9/11 Commission wouldn't be able to see what he and Bill Clinton were really thinking and saying and doing about Usama bin Laden.
Let's see now, what happened when Berger got caught with the secrets in his socks?
Hmmm. Did we hear the Democratic senators and congressmen wailing about breaking national security? No, we did not."
No, I'm not talking about Karl Rove. I'm talking about Sandy Berger stuffing secrets into his socks so the 9/11 Commission wouldn't be able to see what he and Bill Clinton were really thinking and saying and doing about Usama bin Laden.
Let's see now, what happened when Berger got caught with the secrets in his socks?
Hmmm. Did we hear the Democratic senators and congressmen wailing about breaking national security? No, we did not."
Sunday, July 31, 2005
normblog: So why...?
normblog: So why...?: "There are 250,000 Iraqis living in Great Britain - that's quarter of a million people, one of the biggest communities in Iraqi diaspora, and just under one sixth of the total British Muslim population of some 1.6 million.
So why, among the original 7/7 bombers, the next lot of recently captured bombers, and all the other people arrested in connection with the attacks, aren't there any British Iraqis?"
So why, among the original 7/7 bombers, the next lot of recently captured bombers, and all the other people arrested in connection with the attacks, aren't there any British Iraqis?"
Our extreme makeover
Our extreme makeover: "Favorable impressions of the U.S. are being detected around the world, including inside Muslim countries."
Read this from LA Times!
Read this from LA Times!
Iraqi Bloggers Central whence terrorism
Iraqi Bloggers Central: "Troubles have spread from the Middle East to get on planes and hit targets in New York, and wore explosive belts to blow up trains in Madrid and London and some have even went as far as hitting targets Indonesia.
The reasons (and theories) that explain the spreading (or export) of these troubles may vary; some say that the West's policy toward Israel is what inflamed the situation.
Ironically, the same people who adopted this theory a few years ago now say that war in Iraqis the main reason.
But I do believe that dictatorships are the main reason; the Arab regimes didn't accept Israel as a neighbor, of course not because they care about the Palestinians and their interests as everyone knows how Palestinians are treated in Arab countries and how many thousands on them were killed in Jordan and Lebanon and perhaps Arabs killed more Palestinians than the Israelis did.
Obviously, Arab regimes and leaders didn't like Israel because it's a democratic state and its presence in the region can threaten their thrones.
Actually I think that Arabs who live inside Israel and the Joulan heights know this better than I do and I don't think they'd like to replace their Israeli passports with passports from any Arab country; they know the difference and even people living inside Arab countries began to see the difference after the revolution in communications and news flow.
"
The reasons (and theories) that explain the spreading (or export) of these troubles may vary; some say that the West's policy toward Israel is what inflamed the situation.
Ironically, the same people who adopted this theory a few years ago now say that war in Iraqis the main reason.
But I do believe that dictatorships are the main reason; the Arab regimes didn't accept Israel as a neighbor, of course not because they care about the Palestinians and their interests as everyone knows how Palestinians are treated in Arab countries and how many thousands on them were killed in Jordan and Lebanon and perhaps Arabs killed more Palestinians than the Israelis did.
Obviously, Arab regimes and leaders didn't like Israel because it's a democratic state and its presence in the region can threaten their thrones.
Actually I think that Arabs who live inside Israel and the Joulan heights know this better than I do and I don't think they'd like to replace their Israeli passports with passports from any Arab country; they know the difference and even people living inside Arab countries began to see the difference after the revolution in communications and news flow.
"
Sunday, July 24, 2005
No Left Turns Archive
No Left Turns Archive: "Here is what Churchill said, in its entirety about the horrific battle to wrest the Sudan from the jihadists of the 19th century:
How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities - but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.
—Sir Winston Churchill, from The River War,"
How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities - but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.
—Sir Winston Churchill, from The River War,"
Saturday, July 23, 2005
On London Bombing
Iraqi Letters: "These people have found the ultimate weapon and the ultimate motivation. How can you defend yourself against people who are so bitter and angry that they are not only prepared to die in the process of killing you… but actually look forward to it? The vehicle? Faith! For these people, Faith has been effectively used to stun their own self-preservation mechanisms. Add to that the fact that there are numerous other people who are not willing to die themselves, but nevertheless equally angry to the extent that they are prepared to assist in whatever financial or logistical way that they can.
Frankly I do not see much difference between those people and the people who bomb cities full of innocent people. In fact the latter group is worse… because they are acting in that violently criminal manner from outside that ‘pit of despair’.
"
Frankly I do not see much difference between those people and the people who bomb cities full of innocent people. In fact the latter group is worse… because they are acting in that violently criminal manner from outside that ‘pit of despair’.
"
Monday, July 18, 2005
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Iraqi Bloggers Central
Iraqi Bloggers Central: "
Over at Trey Jackson you can watch a video of a Muslim fanatic in Baghdad shooting an American soldier from seventy-five yards. The Muslim jihadi is repeating over and over 'Allahu Akbar' as he pulls the trigger. The American soldier takes a bullet in the chest and goes down. He was, however, wearing a bullet-proof vest and he pops right back up and gets behind his Hummer.
The video that the Jihadis were taking goes black because the American soldiers locate the fricking idiots hiding in a van and wound the guy who had been chanting 'Allahu Akbar.'
The American soldier who was shot, Army Pfc. Stephen Tschiderer, it turns out, was a medic and he ended up treating the SCUMBAG who fired at him.
The video is very crisp and makes my blood run cold."
Over at Trey Jackson you can watch a video of a Muslim fanatic in Baghdad shooting an American soldier from seventy-five yards. The Muslim jihadi is repeating over and over 'Allahu Akbar' as he pulls the trigger. The American soldier takes a bullet in the chest and goes down. He was, however, wearing a bullet-proof vest and he pops right back up and gets behind his Hummer.
The video that the Jihadis were taking goes black because the American soldiers locate the fricking idiots hiding in a van and wound the guy who had been chanting 'Allahu Akbar.'
The American soldier who was shot, Army Pfc. Stephen Tschiderer, it turns out, was a medic and he ended up treating the SCUMBAG who fired at him.
The video is very crisp and makes my blood run cold."
Friday, July 15, 2005
Iraqi Blogger Testamony
Iraqi Bloggers Central: "I think many Iraqis know that Americans support them but not most and there's still a lot that Iraqis don't know. I feel lucky because I have this blog and because I can read English as it has shown me things I could never have known through our media. I never imagined Americans support and care about Iraqis this much before I started blogging. I thought they did but not this much and I feel I know Americans much more now and love them much more as well. More Iraqis need to see what I and other luckier Iraqis have and are seeing." here
Daily Pundit Individual Archive
Daily Pundit Individual Archive: "Texas federal Judge Janis Graham Jack is a former nurse who wondered how Silicosis, which causes just 200 deaths a year in the US, had suddenly created more than 20,000 claims against 250 companies. To find out, Judge Jack held 20 months of pretrial proceedings. In its subscriber-only article, the Wall Street Journal reports that “what she found was a gigantic attempted swindle:”"Read the whole thing here:
Thursday, July 14, 2005
WorldNetDaily: Al-Qaida nukes already in U.S.
WorldNetDaily: Al-Qaida nukes already in U.S.: "But the most disturbing news is that high level U.S. officials now believe at least some of those weapons have been smuggled into the U.S. for use in the near future in major cities as part of this 'American Hiroshima' plan, according to an upcoming book, 'The Al Qaeda Connection: International Terrorism, Organized Crime and the Coming Apocalypse,' by Paul L. Williams, a former FBI consultant.
According to Williams, former CIA Director George Tenet informed President Bush one month after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that at least two suitcase nukes had reached al-Qaida operatives in the U.S.
'Each suitcase weighed between 50 and 80 kilograms (approximately 110 to 176 pounds) and contained enough fissionable plutonium and uranium to produce an explosive yield in excess of two kilotons,"
According to Williams, former CIA Director George Tenet informed President Bush one month after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that at least two suitcase nukes had reached al-Qaida operatives in the U.S.
'Each suitcase weighed between 50 and 80 kilograms (approximately 110 to 176 pounds) and contained enough fissionable plutonium and uranium to produce an explosive yield in excess of two kilotons,"
Melanie Phillips's Articles
Melanie Phillips's Articles: "Whether this represents a hijacking of the religion is matter for theological dispute. But the fact is that it has not been challenged by any leading Islamic religious authority; indeed, they have endorsed it."
Friday, July 08, 2005
VDH's Private Papers::The Same Old, Same Old
VDH's Private Papers::The Same Old, Same Old: "In the short term, Bush and Blair will appear as islands in the storm amid an angry and anguished public. But as 7/7 fades, as did 9/11, expect them to become even more unpopular, as the voices of appeasement assure us that if they just go away, maybe so will the terrorists.
It is our task, each of us according to our station, to speak the truth to all these falsehoods, and remember that we did not inherit a wonderful civilization just to lose it to the Dark Ages.
�2005 Victor Davis Hanson"
It is our task, each of us according to our station, to speak the truth to all these falsehoods, and remember that we did not inherit a wonderful civilization just to lose it to the Dark Ages.
�2005 Victor Davis Hanson"
One Hand Clapping � Blog Archive � BBC gets with the program
One Hand Clapping � Blog Archive � BBC gets with the programI await renewed calls from certain quarters to set an “exit strategy” and a “timetable.” Note well, though: al Qaeda has no exit strategy but victory or death, and no timetable except to kill us as soon and as often as possible.
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Monday, July 04, 2005
Political Notio: Happy Birthday America
Political Notio: Happy Birthday America: "Happy Birthday America
We Americans like to think that freedom everywhere is because of us. Sure it’s an unrealistic way of thinking, but it’s not entirely untrue either. Since the end of WWII Americans have been taught that they did no less than save the world. The effects of that Second Great War, however, did no less than create this modern world.
It is hard to acknowledge the birth of America without mentioning Europe. Likewise, it’s hard to mention the imperialistic spread of freedom throughout Europe without acknowledging America. The thought of that same spread of freedom that used to inspire people to tear down giant walls with nothing more than hammers; or to stand unrelenting in front of oncoming tanks; or to cross vast bodies of water on overcrowded ships, nowadays makes most people squirm with aversion. Why such a change?
229 years ago this country was born with the belief that all men are created equal. We all know those words meant land owning white men and nothing less. Look where we are today. This republic of ours, as imperfect as it has always been, was designed with nothing more than a dream, but it was a dream with so much promise. Jefferson first coined that dream in the Declaration of Independence. It’s a dream that has not relinquished to this very day.
For the fourth Independence Day in a row America is at war. It’s not the first time that this has happened and it probably won’t be the last. Yet this dream that freedom is a birthright has been borrowed the world over. To think that people everywhere if given the choice would not want to rule themselves is probably as incorrect as to think that democracy imposed from the outside is also a value of that dream. To dream small with the American Dream is as wrong as dreaming too big.
America has been the lone pillar of promoting the democratic rule of people in this world. Despite all those who claim that this new form of “imperialism” is as wrong as the centuries worth of European colonialism, please name one country that has guaranteed democracy to so many people more than America has. Our grandest examples are Europe and Japan. Those are the standard at which all other American interventions are measured. As unfair as that might be, it is nevertheless the American standard.
Today the people of Iraq want to dream too. The dream that shook off our own chains of tyranny is now in Iraq waiting for the moment of calm so that they all may rest and finally dream.
Michael Ignatieff, in his essay “Who Are Americans to Think That Freedom Is Theirs to Spread?,” says it as clear as possible: “Who else is available to sponsor liberty in the Middle East but America? Certainly the Europeans themselves have not done a very distinguished job defending freedom close to home.”
It was our soldiers then too in Europe who fought and died to defend freedom “for strangers.” It is our soldiers today that fight and die in Iraq to defend freedom for a different set of strangers. “There is nothing worse than believing your son or daughter, brother or sister, father or mother died in vain. Even those who have opposed the Iraq war all along, who believe that the hope of planting democracy has lured America into a criminal folly, do not want to tell those who have died that they have given their lives for nothing. This is where Jefferson’s dream must work.”
Happy Birthday America. And thank you to all our men and women in uniform, you have dreamed more than any of us. Never, ever quit dreaming."
We Americans like to think that freedom everywhere is because of us. Sure it’s an unrealistic way of thinking, but it’s not entirely untrue either. Since the end of WWII Americans have been taught that they did no less than save the world. The effects of that Second Great War, however, did no less than create this modern world.
It is hard to acknowledge the birth of America without mentioning Europe. Likewise, it’s hard to mention the imperialistic spread of freedom throughout Europe without acknowledging America. The thought of that same spread of freedom that used to inspire people to tear down giant walls with nothing more than hammers; or to stand unrelenting in front of oncoming tanks; or to cross vast bodies of water on overcrowded ships, nowadays makes most people squirm with aversion. Why such a change?
229 years ago this country was born with the belief that all men are created equal. We all know those words meant land owning white men and nothing less. Look where we are today. This republic of ours, as imperfect as it has always been, was designed with nothing more than a dream, but it was a dream with so much promise. Jefferson first coined that dream in the Declaration of Independence. It’s a dream that has not relinquished to this very day.
For the fourth Independence Day in a row America is at war. It’s not the first time that this has happened and it probably won’t be the last. Yet this dream that freedom is a birthright has been borrowed the world over. To think that people everywhere if given the choice would not want to rule themselves is probably as incorrect as to think that democracy imposed from the outside is also a value of that dream. To dream small with the American Dream is as wrong as dreaming too big.
America has been the lone pillar of promoting the democratic rule of people in this world. Despite all those who claim that this new form of “imperialism” is as wrong as the centuries worth of European colonialism, please name one country that has guaranteed democracy to so many people more than America has. Our grandest examples are Europe and Japan. Those are the standard at which all other American interventions are measured. As unfair as that might be, it is nevertheless the American standard.
Today the people of Iraq want to dream too. The dream that shook off our own chains of tyranny is now in Iraq waiting for the moment of calm so that they all may rest and finally dream.
Michael Ignatieff, in his essay “Who Are Americans to Think That Freedom Is Theirs to Spread?,” says it as clear as possible: “Who else is available to sponsor liberty in the Middle East but America? Certainly the Europeans themselves have not done a very distinguished job defending freedom close to home.”
It was our soldiers then too in Europe who fought and died to defend freedom “for strangers.” It is our soldiers today that fight and die in Iraq to defend freedom for a different set of strangers. “There is nothing worse than believing your son or daughter, brother or sister, father or mother died in vain. Even those who have opposed the Iraq war all along, who believe that the hope of planting democracy has lured America into a criminal folly, do not want to tell those who have died that they have given their lives for nothing. This is where Jefferson’s dream must work.”
Happy Birthday America. And thank you to all our men and women in uniform, you have dreamed more than any of us. Never, ever quit dreaming."
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Melanie Phillips's Articles: The demographic death-wish
Melanie Phillips's Articles: The demographic death-wish: "Britain is sitting on an infertility time-bomb. A leading fertility expert, Professor Bill Ledger, has warned that within the next ten years the number of couples experiencing problems conceiving children is expected to double.
By 2015, he says, one in three couples may need fertility treatment. Low success rates from IVF mean soaring numbers will be left childless, with extra thousands going through this draining treatment at huge cost to the health service.
He blames this looming crisis on modern lifestyle factors such as delays in starting a family, obesity, falling sperm counts and rising rates of sexually transmitted diseases."
VERY INTERESTING
By 2015, he says, one in three couples may need fertility treatment. Low success rates from IVF mean soaring numbers will be left childless, with extra thousands going through this draining treatment at huge cost to the health service.
He blames this looming crisis on modern lifestyle factors such as delays in starting a family, obesity, falling sperm counts and rising rates of sexually transmitted diseases."
VERY INTERESTING
The Belmont Club
The Belmont Club: "Politics at its most corrupt is the art of promising something for nothing; or more realistically, concealing the price for services rendered. Nobody wants to mention that 'free health care' is paid for by tax deductions. Still fewer want to admit that security is obtained by force; information by compulsion; or that war involves violence. The process of 'extraordinary rendition' is a case study in laundering responsibility; a description of how a commodity is provided by an astute political division of labor."
OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan
OpinionJournal - Peggy NoonanHow exactly does it work? How does legitimate self-confidence become wildly inflated self-regard? How does self respect become unblinking conceit? How exactly does one's character become destabilized in Washington?
The Supreme Court this week and last issued many rulings, and though they were on different issues the decisions themselves had at least one thing in common: They seemed to reflect a lack of basic human modesty on the part of many of the justices. Many are famously very old, and they have been together as a court for a very long time. One wonders if they have lost all understanding of how privileged they are to have lifetime sinecures of power and authority. Do they have any sense anymore of common human wisdom, of the normal human arrangements by which Americans live?
Maybe a lot of them aren't bothering to think. Maybe Ruth Bader Ginsburg is no longer in the habit of listening to arguments but only of watching William Rehnquist, and if he nods up and down she knows to vote "no," and if he shakes his head she knows to vote "yes." That might explain some of the lack of seriousness in the decisions. Local government can bulldoze Grandma's house because it's in the way of a future strip mall that will add more to the tax base? The Ten Commandments can appear on public land but not in a courthouse, but Moses, who received the Ten Commandments can appear in the frieze of the House but he'll be sandblasted off the Supreme Court? Or do I have that the other way around?
What are they doing? All this hair splitting, this dithering, this cutting and pasting--all this lack of serious and defining principle. All this vanity. Readit all
The Supreme Court this week and last issued many rulings, and though they were on different issues the decisions themselves had at least one thing in common: They seemed to reflect a lack of basic human modesty on the part of many of the justices. Many are famously very old, and they have been together as a court for a very long time. One wonders if they have lost all understanding of how privileged they are to have lifetime sinecures of power and authority. Do they have any sense anymore of common human wisdom, of the normal human arrangements by which Americans live?
Maybe a lot of them aren't bothering to think. Maybe Ruth Bader Ginsburg is no longer in the habit of listening to arguments but only of watching William Rehnquist, and if he nods up and down she knows to vote "no," and if he shakes his head she knows to vote "yes." That might explain some of the lack of seriousness in the decisions. Local government can bulldoze Grandma's house because it's in the way of a future strip mall that will add more to the tax base? The Ten Commandments can appear on public land but not in a courthouse, but Moses, who received the Ten Commandments can appear in the frieze of the House but he'll be sandblasted off the Supreme Court? Or do I have that the other way around?
What are they doing? All this hair splitting, this dithering, this cutting and pasting--all this lack of serious and defining principle. All this vanity. Readit all
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Anubis
Anubis: "Islamic barbarity watch
Much is made of the 'elevated' civilization the various Muslim Caliphates allegedly enjoyed while Europe was enduring the Dark Ages.
While my ancestors managed to claw their way back into the light, it seems that, at some point, Islam - and especially Islamic law - fell into the abyss and never got out:
'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
Rapist cop booked under controversial religious law
A Pakistani policeman charged with raping a teenaged girl in a police station has been charged under a controversial religious law that carries the death penalty - but which could also enable him to walk free.
Sub-inspector Qaiser Shah was booked under Sections 10 and 11 of the Hud Zina Ordinance, which puts the onus on the victim to prove she was raped.
Under this law, the victim has to produce four male Muslims who were witness to the rape. If she fails to prove the allegation, she can be ostracised and even charged with adultery.
------------------------------------------------------
There's an enlightened bunch for you."
Much is made of the 'elevated' civilization the various Muslim Caliphates allegedly enjoyed while Europe was enduring the Dark Ages.
While my ancestors managed to claw their way back into the light, it seems that, at some point, Islam - and especially Islamic law - fell into the abyss and never got out:
'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
Rapist cop booked under controversial religious law
A Pakistani policeman charged with raping a teenaged girl in a police station has been charged under a controversial religious law that carries the death penalty - but which could also enable him to walk free.
Sub-inspector Qaiser Shah was booked under Sections 10 and 11 of the Hud Zina Ordinance, which puts the onus on the victim to prove she was raped.
Under this law, the victim has to produce four male Muslims who were witness to the rape. If she fails to prove the allegation, she can be ostracised and even charged with adultery.
------------------------------------------------------
There's an enlightened bunch for you."
Babalu Blog: Cubanisms: Only in Miami...
Babalu Blog: Cubanisms: Only in Miami...These are building contractor terms in Miami Spanglish. For your enjoyment and miseducation, a few of those terms follow:
Draibol: Dry Wall
Guedarpru: Weatherproof
Guatartai: Watertight
esto: Stud
grei: Grade
bin: Beam
pos: Post
rufeador: Roofer
tailero: Tiler
plastero: Plaster (I always thinks of the word plasta in Spanish or cowpie, so I imagine that their work is pretty bad!!!!)
estin: Steam (for heating)
chutaras: Shutters
And many others...
Plus the reckless translations from Spanish, literally:
White Carpenter: Carpinteria en Blanco (unfinished carpentry, construction carpenter who puts up wood siding or wood beams and plywood in the roof)
Cabineter: Ebanista, Cabinet maker
Final Carpenter: No, it's not the last carpenter on your list, it's somebody who delivers a finished product!!! Also Fine Carpenter, from Spanish carpinteria fina.
I simply think that this is pathetic. They should be learning English, and if that's too difficult for people of a certain age or level of education, well, they at least should use the correct terms in Spanish so they don't become the laughing stock of the world. I think that one needs to speak properly whichever language one prefers to communicate with others, but that this kind of half tongue lingo is totally unacceptable. Many people would not hire somebody with this kind of business card and that's detrimental for both the person who is trying to earn a contract and the trades of construction in general.
Draibol: Dry Wall
Guedarpru: Weatherproof
Guatartai: Watertight
esto: Stud
grei: Grade
bin: Beam
pos: Post
rufeador: Roofer
tailero: Tiler
plastero: Plaster (I always thinks of the word plasta in Spanish or cowpie, so I imagine that their work is pretty bad!!!!)
estin: Steam (for heating)
chutaras: Shutters
And many others...
Plus the reckless translations from Spanish, literally:
White Carpenter: Carpinteria en Blanco (unfinished carpentry, construction carpenter who puts up wood siding or wood beams and plywood in the roof)
Cabineter: Ebanista, Cabinet maker
Final Carpenter: No, it's not the last carpenter on your list, it's somebody who delivers a finished product!!! Also Fine Carpenter, from Spanish carpinteria fina.
I simply think that this is pathetic. They should be learning English, and if that's too difficult for people of a certain age or level of education, well, they at least should use the correct terms in Spanish so they don't become the laughing stock of the world. I think that one needs to speak properly whichever language one prefers to communicate with others, but that this kind of half tongue lingo is totally unacceptable. Many people would not hire somebody with this kind of business card and that's detrimental for both the person who is trying to earn a contract and the trades of construction in general.
Saturday, June 25, 2005
Power Line: Where Will It End?
Power Line: Where Will It End?: "The hate, that is. Victor Davis Hanson recapitulates the liberals' hate campaign against President Bush, ranging from Charlie Rangel ('This is just as bad as the 6 million Jews being killed') to John Glenn ('It's the old Hitler business') to Amnesty International. Like us, Hanson worries about where all this will lead:
As a result, the bar is lowering. In today's climate, Alfred Knopf has already published a novel about killing the president. Charlie Brooker writing in the Guardian in London prayed for another Lee Harvey Oswald to take out George W. Bush. Comedians, New York plays and art exhibits also bandy about assassination.
Each time a public official evokes Hitler to demonize the president, the American effort in Iraq or its conservative supporters, cheap rhetorical fantasy becomes only that much closer to a nightmarish reality where the unstable, here and abroad, act on the belief America really is Hitler's Germany.
We will all soon reap what the ignorant are now sowing.
Let's hope that somber prophecy doesn't prove true. Michelle Malkin notes more evidence of the same phenomenon. She links to the Huffington Post, where, in response to a rumor that Vice-President Cheney was hospitalized in Colorado, Democratic commenters openly wish for Chency's death, much as some (to be fair, not all) liberals recently cheered for conservative commentator Laura Ingraham to die of breast cancer.
It's not a pretty picture. Meanwhile, to put all of this in perspective, Gateway Pundit has a good roundup of developments in the trial, in Jordan, of 13 al Qaeda terrorists for plotting to perpetrate the worst chemical weapons attack in history. (We most recently commented on the Jordan trial in 'Pay No Attention to the Terrorists Behind the Curtain'.)
The Jordan trial is significant in part because it shows what an important base for al Qaeda-directed terrorism Saddam's Iraq was. But this is of little interest to the left; as best I can tell from a site search, readers of the New York Times don't even know the Jordan trial is going on. Liberals are convinced they know who their enemies are, and they're not talking about the al Qaeda terrorists who, directed from Iraq, schemed to kill tens of thousands of Jordanians and Americans."
Here!
As a result, the bar is lowering. In today's climate, Alfred Knopf has already published a novel about killing the president. Charlie Brooker writing in the Guardian in London prayed for another Lee Harvey Oswald to take out George W. Bush. Comedians, New York plays and art exhibits also bandy about assassination.
Each time a public official evokes Hitler to demonize the president, the American effort in Iraq or its conservative supporters, cheap rhetorical fantasy becomes only that much closer to a nightmarish reality where the unstable, here and abroad, act on the belief America really is Hitler's Germany.
We will all soon reap what the ignorant are now sowing.
Let's hope that somber prophecy doesn't prove true. Michelle Malkin notes more evidence of the same phenomenon. She links to the Huffington Post, where, in response to a rumor that Vice-President Cheney was hospitalized in Colorado, Democratic commenters openly wish for Chency's death, much as some (to be fair, not all) liberals recently cheered for conservative commentator Laura Ingraham to die of breast cancer.
It's not a pretty picture. Meanwhile, to put all of this in perspective, Gateway Pundit has a good roundup of developments in the trial, in Jordan, of 13 al Qaeda terrorists for plotting to perpetrate the worst chemical weapons attack in history. (We most recently commented on the Jordan trial in 'Pay No Attention to the Terrorists Behind the Curtain'.)
The Jordan trial is significant in part because it shows what an important base for al Qaeda-directed terrorism Saddam's Iraq was. But this is of little interest to the left; as best I can tell from a site search, readers of the New York Times don't even know the Jordan trial is going on. Liberals are convinced they know who their enemies are, and they're not talking about the al Qaeda terrorists who, directed from Iraq, schemed to kill tens of thousands of Jordanians and Americans."
Here!
Friday, June 24, 2005
Los Angeles Times: Why the Rebels Will Lose
Los Angeles Times: Why the Rebels Will Lose: "June 23, 2005
No wonder public support for the war is plummeting and finger-to-the-wind politicians are heading for the exits: All the headlines out of Iraq recently have been about the rebels' reign of terror. But, lest we build up the enemy into 10-foot-tall supermen, it's important to realize how weak they actually are. Most of the conditions that existed in previous wars won by guerrillas, from Algeria in the 1950s to Afghanistan in the 1980s, aren't present in Iraq.
The rebels lack a unifying organization, ideology and leader. There is no Iraqi Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro or Mao Tse-tung. The top militant is Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian who has alienated most of the Iraqi population, even many Sunnis, with his indiscriminate attacks on civilians. Read More
Support for the insurgency is confined to a minority within a minority —"
No wonder public support for the war is plummeting and finger-to-the-wind politicians are heading for the exits: All the headlines out of Iraq recently have been about the rebels' reign of terror. But, lest we build up the enemy into 10-foot-tall supermen, it's important to realize how weak they actually are. Most of the conditions that existed in previous wars won by guerrillas, from Algeria in the 1950s to Afghanistan in the 1980s, aren't present in Iraq.
The rebels lack a unifying organization, ideology and leader. There is no Iraqi Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro or Mao Tse-tung. The top militant is Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian who has alienated most of the Iraqi population, even many Sunnis, with his indiscriminate attacks on civilians. Read More
Support for the insurgency is confined to a minority within a minority —"
Thursday, June 23, 2005
The American Enterprise: The War is Over, and We Won
The American Enterprise: The War is Over, and We Won: "
The War is Over, and We Won
By Karl Zinsmeister
Your editor returned to Iraq in April and May of 2005 for another embedded period of reporting. I could immediately see improvements compared to my earlier extended tours during 2003 and 2004. The Iraqi security forces, for example, are vastly more competent, and in some cases quite inspiring. Baghdad is now choked with traffic. Cell phones have spread like wildfire. And satellite TV dishes sprout from even the most humble mud hovels in the countryside." Fullpage
The War is Over, and We Won
By Karl Zinsmeister
Your editor returned to Iraq in April and May of 2005 for another embedded period of reporting. I could immediately see improvements compared to my earlier extended tours during 2003 and 2004. The Iraqi security forces, for example, are vastly more competent, and in some cases quite inspiring. Baghdad is now choked with traffic. Cell phones have spread like wildfire. And satellite TV dishes sprout from even the most humble mud hovels in the countryside." Fullpage
The American Enterprise: The War is Over, and We Won
The American Enterprise: The War is Over, and We Won: "Your editor returned to Iraq in April and May of 2005 for another embedded period of reporting. I could immediately see improvements compared to my earlier extended tours during 2003 and 2004. The Iraqi security forces, for example, are vastly more competent, and in some cases quite inspiring. Baghdad is now choked with traffic. Cell phones have spread like wildfire. And satellite TV dishes sprout from even the most humble mud hovels in the countryside." See here!
Terrorists or Insurgencists
A Western Heart: "I know the media doesn't use the word 'terrorists', and instead prefers 'insurgency', but here's a NYT piece on the terrorists with some interesting news:
U.S. marines watching the skyline from their second-story perch in an abandoned house here saw a curious thing: In the distance, mortar rounds and gunfire popped, but the volleys did not seem to be aimed at them.
In the dark, one marine spoke in hushed code words on a radio, and after a minute found the answer. 'Red on red,' he said late Sunday night, using a military term for enemy-on-enemy fire."
Read it here
U.S. marines watching the skyline from their second-story perch in an abandoned house here saw a curious thing: In the distance, mortar rounds and gunfire popped, but the volleys did not seem to be aimed at them.
In the dark, one marine spoke in hushed code words on a radio, and after a minute found the answer. 'Red on red,' he said late Sunday night, using a military term for enemy-on-enemy fire."
Read it here
The American Thinker
The American Thinker: "Will the Republicans we elected please stand up
June 21st, 2005
I voted for our current president twice for one fundamental reason: he exhibited the unique, personal leadership characteristics, I believed our country needed the first time he ran and continues to need today. He looked at a situation, sized it up, made a decision, told you what he was going to do and then…he did it.
His propensity to deliver on promises made some inside the beltway very uncomfortable, I am sure.
As I look at where we are as a country today, I see some alarming parallels between the behavior of some elected officials during the Vietnam War and some elected officials now. Perhaps you do as well. " . . .Read here
June 21st, 2005
I voted for our current president twice for one fundamental reason: he exhibited the unique, personal leadership characteristics, I believed our country needed the first time he ran and continues to need today. He looked at a situation, sized it up, made a decision, told you what he was going to do and then…he did it.
His propensity to deliver on promises made some inside the beltway very uncomfortable, I am sure.
As I look at where we are as a country today, I see some alarming parallels between the behavior of some elected officials during the Vietnam War and some elected officials now. Perhaps you do as well. " . . .Read here
Monday, June 20, 2005
Power Line: The Real Thing
Power Line: The Real Thing: "The Real Thing
Marines in western Iraq made a sobering discovery yesterday that highlights the folly of those who decry 'torture' at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay:
Marines on an operation to eliminate insurgents that began Friday broke through the outside wall of a building in this small rural village to find a torture center equipped with electric wires, a noose, handcuffs, a 574-page jihad manual - and four beaten and shackled Iraqis.
One way you can distinguish a real torture center from an American detention facility is that in the real thing, people keep dying:
'They kill somebody every day,' said Mr. Fathil, whose hands were so swollen he could not open a can of Coke offered to him by a marine. 'They've killed a lot of people.'
***
His town has always been a good place, he said, but the militants have made it hell.
'These few are destroying it,' he said, his face streaked with tears. 'Everybody they take, they kill. It's on a daily basis pretty much.'
What do you think; do you suppose we need a lot more news stories about how a guard at Gitmo accidentally touched a Koran?
The liberals' public relations campaign against the American military and the Bush administration, based on the overblown Abu Ghraib story and the bogus Guantanamo Bay story, is a disgrace.
UPDATE: A reader pointed out that I forgot to include the link, which I've added."
Marines in western Iraq made a sobering discovery yesterday that highlights the folly of those who decry 'torture' at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay:
Marines on an operation to eliminate insurgents that began Friday broke through the outside wall of a building in this small rural village to find a torture center equipped with electric wires, a noose, handcuffs, a 574-page jihad manual - and four beaten and shackled Iraqis.
One way you can distinguish a real torture center from an American detention facility is that in the real thing, people keep dying:
'They kill somebody every day,' said Mr. Fathil, whose hands were so swollen he could not open a can of Coke offered to him by a marine. 'They've killed a lot of people.'
***
His town has always been a good place, he said, but the militants have made it hell.
'These few are destroying it,' he said, his face streaked with tears. 'Everybody they take, they kill. It's on a daily basis pretty much.'
What do you think; do you suppose we need a lot more news stories about how a guard at Gitmo accidentally touched a Koran?
The liberals' public relations campaign against the American military and the Bush administration, based on the overblown Abu Ghraib story and the bogus Guantanamo Bay story, is a disgrace.
UPDATE: A reader pointed out that I forgot to include the link, which I've added."
Truck drivers find Iraq comfortable, rewarding
Truck drivers find Iraq comfortable, rewardingTruck drivers find Iraq comfortable, rewarding
Associated Press
LYONS - When he signed on for a one-year tour of duty as a truck driver in Iraq, Dean Battershell was looking at the paycheck.
He thought he might be living with heat, scorpions, and sleeping in a tent with a dirt floor. But that hasn't been the case.
Besides the money being "good," Battershell said he's sold on the job, and making plans for extending his time. He has been in Iraq four months. He came home for a visit recently.
"Five years ago, I would have never dreamed of anything like this," he said. "But when it's over we'll have a little money in the bank, and I can say for myself, 'We did our part.' "
Kathy Lines, whose husband, Randy Lines, is working with Battershell in Iraq, agreed.
The two men, good friends and fishing buddies, signed up together. Lines has driven trucks for 19 years and Battershell for 3 ½.
They headed for Iraq in early February. Battershell is returning for a second four-month tour in June. Lines is slated to be home for a visit in early July.
"He'll stay for the full year. He's not afraid," Kathy Lines said. "The food's good. He likes the people, and he's made tons of friends from a lot of nations."
Dressed in blue jeans and a plaid shirt, Battershell sat beside Lines in the back room of his dad's business, Earl's Upholstery, on the north side of the Rice County Courthouse square.
In addition to the "good chow," he's assigned to an air-conditioned 9-by-12 room outfitted with a single bed. Other amenities include a private bathroom and a PX shopping area with a movie theater, a weight room and a library. He doesn't need money, except for gifts or pocket change. His checks are direct-deposited in the United States.
Battershell spends his days behind the wheel of a cab-over truck pulling a flatbed trailer. It's loaded mostly with shipping cartons and headed for different bases. Hauling time depends on the load, from 2 ½ hours up. Lines is driving "reefers," refrigerated semis loaded with perishables.
"We go all the way south to Kuwait and north of Baghdad, east and west, close to the Iranian border," he said.
The trucks travel in convoys of 10 to 13 rigs.
While "things happen," Battershell said, he's not afraid.
"We get hit every once in a while, but it's a rarity anymore, not an everyday occurrence," he said. "I go outside the wire not expecting any problems."
As he rocked back and forth in a well-worn office chair, Battershell talked about what he's seen and the opinions he's formed about the politics of war.
The body count's the big news. Losing even one military life is bad. But what people aren't hearing is of the thousands of people on the street whose lives have been saved and turned around, he said. Life's better.
There are long lines of Iraqis joining the military and police, and kids are back in school, he said. The primary coalition goal is to see the infrastructure up and going, bridges fixed and oil back online, he said.
"Even before the war, the infrastructure was shot," Battershell said.
Holding a photo album of snapshots, Lines joined in describing the life. She and her husband talk daily by telephone.
"It's 113 degrees there right now," she said.
Morale is good, with the coalition forces, truckers and laborers from around the world getting along great with one another. There are times he's lonely, Battershell said. But when he was stateside sometimes he was away from home for as long as two weeks.
While both men have been in the line of fire and day-to-day it's dangerous, they're not afraid, Battershell said, noting he's felt danger in other places, too, like going down the highway in Chicago or southern Los Angeles.
On his return this week, Battershell's ride from the airport to the company base will be in a "hard car" -- an armored SUV with 2 ½-inch glass -- or riding in the back of a truck.
He's become aware of culture differences between Iraqis and Westerners, with worshippers stopping five times daily for prayer and some farmers hauling sheep and goats in the back seat of their pickup truck while their wives ride in the truck bed.
"I was never pro-war, but I am pro what we're doing," he said. "It's not what you see on TV. We've saved a lot of lives by going in and getting that guy, Saddam. When we first took over, the people didn't understand what freedom is."
Associated Press
LYONS - When he signed on for a one-year tour of duty as a truck driver in Iraq, Dean Battershell was looking at the paycheck.
He thought he might be living with heat, scorpions, and sleeping in a tent with a dirt floor. But that hasn't been the case.
Besides the money being "good," Battershell said he's sold on the job, and making plans for extending his time. He has been in Iraq four months. He came home for a visit recently.
"Five years ago, I would have never dreamed of anything like this," he said. "But when it's over we'll have a little money in the bank, and I can say for myself, 'We did our part.' "
Kathy Lines, whose husband, Randy Lines, is working with Battershell in Iraq, agreed.
The two men, good friends and fishing buddies, signed up together. Lines has driven trucks for 19 years and Battershell for 3 ½.
They headed for Iraq in early February. Battershell is returning for a second four-month tour in June. Lines is slated to be home for a visit in early July.
"He'll stay for the full year. He's not afraid," Kathy Lines said. "The food's good. He likes the people, and he's made tons of friends from a lot of nations."
Dressed in blue jeans and a plaid shirt, Battershell sat beside Lines in the back room of his dad's business, Earl's Upholstery, on the north side of the Rice County Courthouse square.
In addition to the "good chow," he's assigned to an air-conditioned 9-by-12 room outfitted with a single bed. Other amenities include a private bathroom and a PX shopping area with a movie theater, a weight room and a library. He doesn't need money, except for gifts or pocket change. His checks are direct-deposited in the United States.
Battershell spends his days behind the wheel of a cab-over truck pulling a flatbed trailer. It's loaded mostly with shipping cartons and headed for different bases. Hauling time depends on the load, from 2 ½ hours up. Lines is driving "reefers," refrigerated semis loaded with perishables.
"We go all the way south to Kuwait and north of Baghdad, east and west, close to the Iranian border," he said.
The trucks travel in convoys of 10 to 13 rigs.
While "things happen," Battershell said, he's not afraid.
"We get hit every once in a while, but it's a rarity anymore, not an everyday occurrence," he said. "I go outside the wire not expecting any problems."
As he rocked back and forth in a well-worn office chair, Battershell talked about what he's seen and the opinions he's formed about the politics of war.
The body count's the big news. Losing even one military life is bad. But what people aren't hearing is of the thousands of people on the street whose lives have been saved and turned around, he said. Life's better.
There are long lines of Iraqis joining the military and police, and kids are back in school, he said. The primary coalition goal is to see the infrastructure up and going, bridges fixed and oil back online, he said.
"Even before the war, the infrastructure was shot," Battershell said.
Holding a photo album of snapshots, Lines joined in describing the life. She and her husband talk daily by telephone.
"It's 113 degrees there right now," she said.
Morale is good, with the coalition forces, truckers and laborers from around the world getting along great with one another. There are times he's lonely, Battershell said. But when he was stateside sometimes he was away from home for as long as two weeks.
While both men have been in the line of fire and day-to-day it's dangerous, they're not afraid, Battershell said, noting he's felt danger in other places, too, like going down the highway in Chicago or southern Los Angeles.
On his return this week, Battershell's ride from the airport to the company base will be in a "hard car" -- an armored SUV with 2 ½-inch glass -- or riding in the back of a truck.
He's become aware of culture differences between Iraqis and Westerners, with worshippers stopping five times daily for prayer and some farmers hauling sheep and goats in the back seat of their pickup truck while their wives ride in the truck bed.
"I was never pro-war, but I am pro what we're doing," he said. "It's not what you see on TV. We've saved a lot of lives by going in and getting that guy, Saddam. When we first took over, the people didn't understand what freedom is."
Saturday, June 18, 2005
New Rules of engagement
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Plus, Amnesty's amnesia.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, June 13, 2005, at 3:30 PM PT
A favorite slice of reality TV in today's Iraq is the melodramatically named program Terrorism in the Grip of Justice. Aired on state-run Al Iraqiya, which doesn't require a satellite dish, it shows the confessions of captured "insurgents," mainly foreign fighters. When possible, it also shows the videos that these people have made, so that, for example, a man can be viewed as he slices a victim's throat and then viewed, looking much less brave, as he explains where he comes from, how he was taught to rehearse beheadings and throat-slittings on animals, and other insights into the trade. On occasion, these characters are confronted with the families of their victims. At other times, they have been able to tell the families of the missing what happened to their loved ones. The aim is to demystify the holy warriors and also to encourage civilians to call in with further tips.
Some of the confessions, such as one from an alleged Syrian intelligence officer who said that the insurgency was run by Syria, are a little too convenient. And the possibility exists that other confessions are either staged or coerced. Nonetheless, the program, which originated in the northern city of Mosul, has been very influential in exposing the origins and character of the forces that are bent on wrecking Iraqi society.
Terrorism in the Grip of Justice could only be shown once the transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government had been made. The United States could not have put any of these people on television, because the Geneva Conventions forbid the exhibiting of prisoners. (I don't know what the law would say about showing the program on U.S. television, and in any case the video-beheadings recorded by the captured perpetrators would be too hideous for mass consumption.) In my opinion, at any rate, the elected Iraqi authorities are well within their rights in using this means of propaganda. Indeed, they are entitled to all the presumptions of a war of self-defense.
The position of the United States is different, because not only is it a signatory to the Geneva protocols, it is also the power that has pressed other nations to both sign and observe them. (It was also the United States that pressed all member states of the United Nations to sign Eleanor Roosevelt's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia at first declined to do.) Any wavering on the part of Washington thus has consequences far beyond itself.
The forces of al-Qaida and its surrogate organizations are not signatory to the conventions and naturally express contempt for them. They have no battle order or uniform and are represented by no authority with which terms can be negotiated. Nor can they claim, as actual guerrilla movements like the Algerian FLN have done in the past, to be the future representatives of their countries or peoples. In Afghanistan and Iraq, they sought to destroy the electoral process that alone can confer true legitimacy, and they are in many, if not most, cases not even citizens of the countries concerned. Their announced aim is the destruction of all nonbelievers, and their avowed method is indiscriminate and random murder. They are more like pirates, hijackers, or torturers—three categories of people who have in the past been declared outside the protection of any law.
The administration therefore deserves at least some sympathy in its confrontation with an enemy of a new type. I should very much like to know how a Gore administration would have dealt with the hundreds of foreign sadists taken in arms in Afghanistan. I should also like to know how other Western governments, which are privately relieved that the United States assumed responsibility for the last wave, expect to handle the next wave of fundamentalist violence in their own societies. No word on this as yet.
An axiom of the law states that justice is more offended by one innocent person punished than by any number of guilty persons unapprehended. I say frankly that I am not certain of the applicability of this in the present case. Mullah Omar's convoy in Afghanistan was allowed to escape because there was insufficient certainty to justify bombing it. Several detainees released from Guantanamo have reappeared in the Taliban ranks, once again burning and killing and sabotaging. The man whose story of rough interrogation has just been published in Time had planned to board a United Airlines flight and crash it into a skyscraper. I want to know who his friends and contacts were, and so do you, hypocrite lecteur.
You may desire this while also reserving the right to demand that he has a lawyer present at all times. But please observe where we stand now. Alberto Gonzales was excoriated even for asking, or being asked, about the applicability of Geneva rules. Apparently, Guantanamo won't do as a holding pen until we decide how to handle and classify these people. But meanwhile, neither will it do to "render" any suspects to their countries of origin. How many alternatives does this leave? Is al-Qaida itself to be considered a "ticking bomb" or not? How many of those who express concern about Guantanamo have also been denouncing the administration for being too lenient about ignoring warnings and missing opportunities for a pre-atrocity roundup? I merely ask. I also express the wish that more detainees be brought, like the wretched American John Walker Lindh, before a court.
About Amnesty International's disgraceful performance, however, I can tell as well as ask. I was at one point quite close to its London headquarters, and I used to both carry and return messages for the organization when I went as a reporter to screwed-up countries. The founding statutes were quite clear: An Amnesty local was to adopt three "prisoners of conscience," one from either side of the Cold War and one from a "neutral" state. Letters were to be written to the relevant governments and to newspapers in free countries. Though physical torture and capital punishment were opposed in all cases, no overt political position was to be taken. (I remember there was quite a row when an Amnesty "country report" on Argentina went so far as to describe a guerrilla raid as "daring.") By adhering to these rules, AI became a credible worldwide group to which even the most repressive governments sometimes had to pay attention. All honor to its founder Peter Benenson, who died earlier this year.
And now look. I think it is fairly safe to say that not one detainee in Guantanamo is there because of an expression of opinion. (And those whose "opinion" is that all infidels must die are not exactly prisoners of conscience.) Morally neutral on this point, apparently, Amnesty nonetheless finds its voice by describing the prison itself as "the gulag of our times." No need to waste words here: Not everyone in the gulag was a "prisoner of conscience," either. But if an organization that ostensibly protects the rights of prisoners is unaware of the nature of a colossal system of forced labor and arbitrary detention—replete with physical torture, starvation, and brutal execution—then the moral compass has become disordered beyond repair. This is not even neutrality between the fireman and the fire. It surely expresses a covert sympathy with the aims and objectives of jihad and an overt, if witless and sinister, hatred of the United States. If only this were the only symptom of that tendency.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His most recent book is Thomas Jefferson: Author of America.
Plus, Amnesty's amnesia.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, June 13, 2005, at 3:30 PM PT
A favorite slice of reality TV in today's Iraq is the melodramatically named program Terrorism in the Grip of Justice. Aired on state-run Al Iraqiya, which doesn't require a satellite dish, it shows the confessions of captured "insurgents," mainly foreign fighters. When possible, it also shows the videos that these people have made, so that, for example, a man can be viewed as he slices a victim's throat and then viewed, looking much less brave, as he explains where he comes from, how he was taught to rehearse beheadings and throat-slittings on animals, and other insights into the trade. On occasion, these characters are confronted with the families of their victims. At other times, they have been able to tell the families of the missing what happened to their loved ones. The aim is to demystify the holy warriors and also to encourage civilians to call in with further tips.
Some of the confessions, such as one from an alleged Syrian intelligence officer who said that the insurgency was run by Syria, are a little too convenient. And the possibility exists that other confessions are either staged or coerced. Nonetheless, the program, which originated in the northern city of Mosul, has been very influential in exposing the origins and character of the forces that are bent on wrecking Iraqi society.
Terrorism in the Grip of Justice could only be shown once the transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government had been made. The United States could not have put any of these people on television, because the Geneva Conventions forbid the exhibiting of prisoners. (I don't know what the law would say about showing the program on U.S. television, and in any case the video-beheadings recorded by the captured perpetrators would be too hideous for mass consumption.) In my opinion, at any rate, the elected Iraqi authorities are well within their rights in using this means of propaganda. Indeed, they are entitled to all the presumptions of a war of self-defense.
The position of the United States is different, because not only is it a signatory to the Geneva protocols, it is also the power that has pressed other nations to both sign and observe them. (It was also the United States that pressed all member states of the United Nations to sign Eleanor Roosevelt's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia at first declined to do.) Any wavering on the part of Washington thus has consequences far beyond itself.
The forces of al-Qaida and its surrogate organizations are not signatory to the conventions and naturally express contempt for them. They have no battle order or uniform and are represented by no authority with which terms can be negotiated. Nor can they claim, as actual guerrilla movements like the Algerian FLN have done in the past, to be the future representatives of their countries or peoples. In Afghanistan and Iraq, they sought to destroy the electoral process that alone can confer true legitimacy, and they are in many, if not most, cases not even citizens of the countries concerned. Their announced aim is the destruction of all nonbelievers, and their avowed method is indiscriminate and random murder. They are more like pirates, hijackers, or torturers—three categories of people who have in the past been declared outside the protection of any law.
The administration therefore deserves at least some sympathy in its confrontation with an enemy of a new type. I should very much like to know how a Gore administration would have dealt with the hundreds of foreign sadists taken in arms in Afghanistan. I should also like to know how other Western governments, which are privately relieved that the United States assumed responsibility for the last wave, expect to handle the next wave of fundamentalist violence in their own societies. No word on this as yet.
An axiom of the law states that justice is more offended by one innocent person punished than by any number of guilty persons unapprehended. I say frankly that I am not certain of the applicability of this in the present case. Mullah Omar's convoy in Afghanistan was allowed to escape because there was insufficient certainty to justify bombing it. Several detainees released from Guantanamo have reappeared in the Taliban ranks, once again burning and killing and sabotaging. The man whose story of rough interrogation has just been published in Time had planned to board a United Airlines flight and crash it into a skyscraper. I want to know who his friends and contacts were, and so do you, hypocrite lecteur.
You may desire this while also reserving the right to demand that he has a lawyer present at all times. But please observe where we stand now. Alberto Gonzales was excoriated even for asking, or being asked, about the applicability of Geneva rules. Apparently, Guantanamo won't do as a holding pen until we decide how to handle and classify these people. But meanwhile, neither will it do to "render" any suspects to their countries of origin. How many alternatives does this leave? Is al-Qaida itself to be considered a "ticking bomb" or not? How many of those who express concern about Guantanamo have also been denouncing the administration for being too lenient about ignoring warnings and missing opportunities for a pre-atrocity roundup? I merely ask. I also express the wish that more detainees be brought, like the wretched American John Walker Lindh, before a court.
About Amnesty International's disgraceful performance, however, I can tell as well as ask. I was at one point quite close to its London headquarters, and I used to both carry and return messages for the organization when I went as a reporter to screwed-up countries. The founding statutes were quite clear: An Amnesty local was to adopt three "prisoners of conscience," one from either side of the Cold War and one from a "neutral" state. Letters were to be written to the relevant governments and to newspapers in free countries. Though physical torture and capital punishment were opposed in all cases, no overt political position was to be taken. (I remember there was quite a row when an Amnesty "country report" on Argentina went so far as to describe a guerrilla raid as "daring.") By adhering to these rules, AI became a credible worldwide group to which even the most repressive governments sometimes had to pay attention. All honor to its founder Peter Benenson, who died earlier this year.
And now look. I think it is fairly safe to say that not one detainee in Guantanamo is there because of an expression of opinion. (And those whose "opinion" is that all infidels must die are not exactly prisoners of conscience.) Morally neutral on this point, apparently, Amnesty nonetheless finds its voice by describing the prison itself as "the gulag of our times." No need to waste words here: Not everyone in the gulag was a "prisoner of conscience," either. But if an organization that ostensibly protects the rights of prisoners is unaware of the nature of a colossal system of forced labor and arbitrary detention—replete with physical torture, starvation, and brutal execution—then the moral compass has become disordered beyond repair. This is not even neutrality between the fireman and the fire. It surely expresses a covert sympathy with the aims and objectives of jihad and an overt, if witless and sinister, hatred of the United States. If only this were the only symptom of that tendency.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His most recent book is Thomas Jefferson: Author of America.
Friday, June 17, 2005
VDH's Private Papers::The Sorry Bunch
VDH's Private Papers::The Sorry Bunch Article about Islam/goals/actions with editorial info.
Sunday, June 12, 2005
Iraq's leadership says militants seeking talks - Boston.com - Middle East - News
Iraq's leadership says militants seeking talks - Boston.com - Middle East - News: "Iraq's leadership says militants seeking talks
June 12, 2005
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The Iraqi government said on Sunday that some rebels had approached it looking for peace terms and repeated its willingness to negotiate with groups which renounced violence and which had not killed Iraqis.
Government spokesman Laith Kubba, speaking at a regular news conference, gave no details of who had made contact.
While many nationalist guerrillas concentrate their attacks on U.S. occupying forces, high-profile groups like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al Qaeda in Iraq would appear to be excluded from any dealings with the government because they have mounted bloody assaults on Iraqi civilians and security forces.
'Many have been trying to open channels to talk in recent weeks,' Kubba said. 'Some were calling directly, saying 'We did not kill any Iraqis but took up arms to resist the occupation and want to participate in the political process.'
'To those who have not carried out any killings of Iraqis and who are willing to give up violence and intend to take part in the political process, the door is open.'
The Shi'ite-led government of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari has often said it is willing to talk to rebels who stop fighting. Most insurgents, who have killed more than 850 people in the couple of months since the government was formed, are drawn from Saddam Hussein's once-dominant Sunni minority.
Some, like Zarqawi himself, come from other Arab countries. "
June 12, 2005
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The Iraqi government said on Sunday that some rebels had approached it looking for peace terms and repeated its willingness to negotiate with groups which renounced violence and which had not killed Iraqis.
Government spokesman Laith Kubba, speaking at a regular news conference, gave no details of who had made contact.
While many nationalist guerrillas concentrate their attacks on U.S. occupying forces, high-profile groups like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al Qaeda in Iraq would appear to be excluded from any dealings with the government because they have mounted bloody assaults on Iraqi civilians and security forces.
'Many have been trying to open channels to talk in recent weeks,' Kubba said. 'Some were calling directly, saying 'We did not kill any Iraqis but took up arms to resist the occupation and want to participate in the political process.'
'To those who have not carried out any killings of Iraqis and who are willing to give up violence and intend to take part in the political process, the door is open.'
The Shi'ite-led government of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari has often said it is willing to talk to rebels who stop fighting. Most insurgents, who have killed more than 850 people in the couple of months since the government was formed, are drawn from Saddam Hussein's once-dominant Sunni minority.
Some, like Zarqawi himself, come from other Arab countries. "
Winds of Change.NET: The Arab/Islamic World's Cultural Gaps
Winds of Change.NET: The Arab/Islamic World's Cultural Gaps: "The Arab/Islamic World's Cultural Gaps
by Guest Author at June 10, 2005 08:46 AM
Look here
JK: U.N. Reports capture part of the issue, but not all of it. Winds of Change.NET's Cairo correspondent Tarek Heggy (see his article archive) looks at the cultural deficits that are the root cause of the Arab/Islamic world's current backwardness and status as non-competitive states, with links to past Winds articles. This article was originally featured on To The Point News.
The Arab Mind
by Tarek Heggy in Cairo, Egypt
I have written many books and articles over the last ten years about the defects in the Arab mind-set, all of which are cultural defects stemming from three main sources. The first is the repressive climate that prevails throughout Arab societies, the second a backward educational system that lags far behind modern educational systems and the third a mass-media apparatus operated by those responsible for the climate of political repression to serve their interests.
The following are the most obvious defects from which the contemporary Arab mind-set suffers:
1. A lack of intellectual hospitality;
2. It is steeped in a culture that encourages conformity and discourages diversity;
3. Limited tolerance for the Other;
4. Limited tolerance for criticism and the virtual absence of self-criticism;
5. The adoption of stands not on the basis of their coherence, validity or intrinsic value but on the basis of tribal or religious affiliations;
6. Deep feelings of inequality with others in terms of results and achievements makes for a sense of inadequacy that is sublimated into an exaggerated and unfounded pride;
7. A tendency to indulge in excessive self-praise and to glorify past achievements as a way of escaping our dismal reality;
8. The prevalence of what I call the ‘big-talk culture’, in which overblown rhetoric is used to compensate for the appalling lack of concrete achievements;
9. A lack of objectivity and the growth of individualism;
10. An unhealthy nostalgia for and escape into the past;
11. An aversion to the notion of compromise, which is deemed to be a form of capitulation and defeat;
12. Lack of respect for women;
13. A tendency to unquestioningly accept stereotypes at face value;
14. Setting great store by the conspiracy theory and believing that the Arabs are always the victims of heinous plots hatched against them by their enemies;
15. An ill-defined sense of national identity: is it Arab, Muslim, Asian, African or Mediterranean?
16. The spread of the personality cult phenomenon in Arab societies, where the relationship with the ruler is based not on mutual respect and accountability but on the excessive adulation, not to say deification, of the ruler;
17. The prevalence of an insular culture that knows next to nothing about the outside world and the real balance of power by which it is governed, let alone the science or culture of others;
18. A lack of appreciation for the value of the bond that links the human species together, which is their common humanity. For most people in the region, the only bonds that count are either tribal, sectarian or nationalistic, although humanity is the most exalted common denominator of all;
19. The spread of a mentality of fanaticism due to a number of factors, the most important being the tribalism that dominates the Arab mind-set to varying degrees;
20. Finally, the Arab mind-set is not overly concerned with the notion of freedom for the simple reason that the Arabs have enjoyed only limited doses of political rights and civil liberties.
The twenty defects listed above are by no means exhaustive; I have no doubt that any Middle East expert can come up with many more. However, all these defects are acquired, which means they are amenable to reform. Moreover, they can all be found, albeit to different degrees, in other societies. As I mentioned, they stem from the prevailing climate of political despotism and outdated educational and information systems designed and operated to serve the interests of a power structure intent on maintaining its iron grip.
These defects will continue to grow unless radical changes are introduced to all three areas. The political system must be overhauled with a view to providing a wider margin of freedom and allowing people a greater say in determining the shape of their present and future. The educational systems in force must be reorganized from the ground up, their philosophy, curricula and methods brought into line with the requirements of the age.
Last but not least, the media must be removed from under the thumb of government and allowed to function in complete political and economic freedom as a credible forum for the dissemination of culture, ideas and information.
For more of Tarek Heggy's writtings in English, please visit"
by Guest Author at June 10, 2005 08:46 AM
Look here
JK: U.N. Reports capture part of the issue, but not all of it. Winds of Change.NET's Cairo correspondent Tarek Heggy (see his article archive) looks at the cultural deficits that are the root cause of the Arab/Islamic world's current backwardness and status as non-competitive states, with links to past Winds articles. This article was originally featured on To The Point News.
The Arab Mind
by Tarek Heggy in Cairo, Egypt
I have written many books and articles over the last ten years about the defects in the Arab mind-set, all of which are cultural defects stemming from three main sources. The first is the repressive climate that prevails throughout Arab societies, the second a backward educational system that lags far behind modern educational systems and the third a mass-media apparatus operated by those responsible for the climate of political repression to serve their interests.
The following are the most obvious defects from which the contemporary Arab mind-set suffers:
1. A lack of intellectual hospitality;
2. It is steeped in a culture that encourages conformity and discourages diversity;
3. Limited tolerance for the Other;
4. Limited tolerance for criticism and the virtual absence of self-criticism;
5. The adoption of stands not on the basis of their coherence, validity or intrinsic value but on the basis of tribal or religious affiliations;
6. Deep feelings of inequality with others in terms of results and achievements makes for a sense of inadequacy that is sublimated into an exaggerated and unfounded pride;
7. A tendency to indulge in excessive self-praise and to glorify past achievements as a way of escaping our dismal reality;
8. The prevalence of what I call the ‘big-talk culture’, in which overblown rhetoric is used to compensate for the appalling lack of concrete achievements;
9. A lack of objectivity and the growth of individualism;
10. An unhealthy nostalgia for and escape into the past;
11. An aversion to the notion of compromise, which is deemed to be a form of capitulation and defeat;
12. Lack of respect for women;
13. A tendency to unquestioningly accept stereotypes at face value;
14. Setting great store by the conspiracy theory and believing that the Arabs are always the victims of heinous plots hatched against them by their enemies;
15. An ill-defined sense of national identity: is it Arab, Muslim, Asian, African or Mediterranean?
16. The spread of the personality cult phenomenon in Arab societies, where the relationship with the ruler is based not on mutual respect and accountability but on the excessive adulation, not to say deification, of the ruler;
17. The prevalence of an insular culture that knows next to nothing about the outside world and the real balance of power by which it is governed, let alone the science or culture of others;
18. A lack of appreciation for the value of the bond that links the human species together, which is their common humanity. For most people in the region, the only bonds that count are either tribal, sectarian or nationalistic, although humanity is the most exalted common denominator of all;
19. The spread of a mentality of fanaticism due to a number of factors, the most important being the tribalism that dominates the Arab mind-set to varying degrees;
20. Finally, the Arab mind-set is not overly concerned with the notion of freedom for the simple reason that the Arabs have enjoyed only limited doses of political rights and civil liberties.
The twenty defects listed above are by no means exhaustive; I have no doubt that any Middle East expert can come up with many more. However, all these defects are acquired, which means they are amenable to reform. Moreover, they can all be found, albeit to different degrees, in other societies. As I mentioned, they stem from the prevailing climate of political despotism and outdated educational and information systems designed and operated to serve the interests of a power structure intent on maintaining its iron grip.
These defects will continue to grow unless radical changes are introduced to all three areas. The political system must be overhauled with a view to providing a wider margin of freedom and allowing people a greater say in determining the shape of their present and future. The educational systems in force must be reorganized from the ground up, their philosophy, curricula and methods brought into line with the requirements of the age.
Last but not least, the media must be removed from under the thumb of government and allowed to function in complete political and economic freedom as a credible forum for the dissemination of culture, ideas and information.
For more of Tarek Heggy's writtings in English, please visit"
One Hand Clapping � Blog Archive � Universal right to bear arms?
One Hand Clapping � Blog Archive � Universal right to bear arms?: "Canadian Joe Katzman writes, here
We have a pretty different attitude to guns up here, and I must say that American gun culture has always kind of puzzled me. To me, one no more had a right to a gun than one did to a car. Well, my mind has changed. Changed to the point where I see gun ownership as being a slightly qualified but universal global human right.
What changed my mind? This simple conclusion:
The Right to Bear Arms is the only reliable way to prevent genocide in the modern world.
His tag line is direct: “The Right to Bear Arms. It’s not just for Americans any more.”
I wrote an essay in 2002 entitled, “Civilization, Violence, Sovereignty and the Second Amendment: Why the right to keep and bear arms is the fundamental right of a sovereign people.” I claimed then, and now, that civilization is founded and maintained on violence or the threat of violence, not an original thought of mine but one well developed by Christian philosopher Jacques Ellul in his book, Violence: Reflections from a Christian Perspective (go to the bottom of the linked page where there are links to the complete text in PDF and RTF, and an incomplete HTML version.)
Hence, if the ultimate authority of the state is to be found in the people of the state (as a condition of nature, as America’s Founders understood), then the people must also have the ultimate power to protect their sovereignty. That means, bluntly, the power of coercion. And coercion necessarily includes the use of violence.
What does this mean elsewhere in the world? Joe quotes a speech by Tendai Biti, an MDC member of parliament, referring to the mass starvation of Zimbabweans by dictator Robert Mugabe.
“I can’t tell you - and the hundreds of Central Intelligence Organisation officers who I know are listening to me right now - about who is going to provide the leadership, who is going to do what, and so forth - but what I can guarantee you is that the anger is overflowing in the veins of the average Zimbabweans. They will defend themselves. The time for smiling at fascism is over.”
Let’s hope so."
We have a pretty different attitude to guns up here, and I must say that American gun culture has always kind of puzzled me. To me, one no more had a right to a gun than one did to a car. Well, my mind has changed. Changed to the point where I see gun ownership as being a slightly qualified but universal global human right.
What changed my mind? This simple conclusion:
The Right to Bear Arms is the only reliable way to prevent genocide in the modern world.
His tag line is direct: “The Right to Bear Arms. It’s not just for Americans any more.”
I wrote an essay in 2002 entitled, “Civilization, Violence, Sovereignty and the Second Amendment: Why the right to keep and bear arms is the fundamental right of a sovereign people.” I claimed then, and now, that civilization is founded and maintained on violence or the threat of violence, not an original thought of mine but one well developed by Christian philosopher Jacques Ellul in his book, Violence: Reflections from a Christian Perspective (go to the bottom of the linked page where there are links to the complete text in PDF and RTF, and an incomplete HTML version.)
Hence, if the ultimate authority of the state is to be found in the people of the state (as a condition of nature, as America’s Founders understood), then the people must also have the ultimate power to protect their sovereignty. That means, bluntly, the power of coercion. And coercion necessarily includes the use of violence.
What does this mean elsewhere in the world? Joe quotes a speech by Tendai Biti, an MDC member of parliament, referring to the mass starvation of Zimbabweans by dictator Robert Mugabe.
“I can’t tell you - and the hundreds of Central Intelligence Organisation officers who I know are listening to me right now - about who is going to provide the leadership, who is going to do what, and so forth - but what I can guarantee you is that the anger is overflowing in the veins of the average Zimbabweans. They will defend themselves. The time for smiling at fascism is over.”
Let’s hope so."
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Friday, June 10, 2005
VDH's Private Papers::The Global Shift
VDH's Private Papers::The Global Shift: "As nations come to know the Chinese, and as a ripe Europe increasingly cannot or will not defend itself, the old maligned United States will begin to look pretty good again. More important, America will not be the world’s easily caricatured sole power, but more likely the sole democratic superpower that factors in morality in addition to national interest in its treatment of others.
China is strong without morality; Europe is impotent in its ethical smugness. The buffer United States, in contrast, believes morality is not mere good intentions but the willingness and ability to translate easy idealism into hard and messy practice.
Most critics will find such sentiments laughable or na�ve; but just watch China in the years to come. Those who now malign the imperfections of the United States may well in shock whimper back, asking for our friendship. Then the boutique practice of anti-Americanism among the global elite will come to an end."
China is strong without morality; Europe is impotent in its ethical smugness. The buffer United States, in contrast, believes morality is not mere good intentions but the willingness and ability to translate easy idealism into hard and messy practice.
Most critics will find such sentiments laughable or na�ve; but just watch China in the years to come. Those who now malign the imperfections of the United States may well in shock whimper back, asking for our friendship. Then the boutique practice of anti-Americanism among the global elite will come to an end."
Monday, June 06, 2005
Power Line: What's Happening in Afghanistan
Power Line: What's Happening in Afghanistan: "To me, the most exciting thing about the internet is how it empowers individuals. More than ever before, a single person can make a difference because his or her work can so easily be leveraged--viewed within a matter of hours by thousands or even millions of people around the world, with no need for media gatekeepers. If I had to offer one example of a single individual who has used the medium to make a difference, it would be Arthur Chrenkoff. He has devoted himself to collecting the under-reported news of progress in Iraq and Afghanistan and putting it out in the blogosphere; more recently, the Wall Street Journal's online edition has also been publishing Arthur's roundups.
Today's edition is on Afghanistan, and it is absolutely unbelievable. It seems just about book-length, and covers improvements in every phase of Afghan life. Reading it is a revelation. Arthur begins:
Over the last few weeks, Afghanistan has been in the news again--unfortunately, for all the wrong reasons. The media pack has made a brief reappearance in Afghanistan to report on carefully staged 'spontaneous' riots, which briefly erupted around the country, ostensibly in protest over a report in Newsweek (later retracted) about desecration of Koran by the American military personnel at Guantanamo Bay.
Sadly, in the rush of commentary about Afghanistan's slide into anarchy and America's deteriorating position in Kabul, most of the international media again missed or downplayed many other stories, some of them arguably far more consequential than an antigovernment rampage whipped up by opponents of President Hamid Karzai. Take this story:
A crowd of 600 Afghan clerics gathered in front of an historic mosque yesterday to strip the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar of his claim to religious authority, in a ceremony that provided a significant boost to the presidency of Hamid Karzai.
The declaration, signed by 1,000 clerics from across the country, is an endorsement of the US-backed programme of reconciliation with more moderate elements of the Taliban movement that Karzai has been pursuing ahead of the country's first parliamentary elections, due in September.
You really have to read the whole thing to get an idea of the magnitude of the story that the press is missing in Afghanistan.
Posted by John at 10:39 AM"
Today's edition is on Afghanistan, and it is absolutely unbelievable. It seems just about book-length, and covers improvements in every phase of Afghan life. Reading it is a revelation. Arthur begins:
Over the last few weeks, Afghanistan has been in the news again--unfortunately, for all the wrong reasons. The media pack has made a brief reappearance in Afghanistan to report on carefully staged 'spontaneous' riots, which briefly erupted around the country, ostensibly in protest over a report in Newsweek (later retracted) about desecration of Koran by the American military personnel at Guantanamo Bay.
Sadly, in the rush of commentary about Afghanistan's slide into anarchy and America's deteriorating position in Kabul, most of the international media again missed or downplayed many other stories, some of them arguably far more consequential than an antigovernment rampage whipped up by opponents of President Hamid Karzai. Take this story:
A crowd of 600 Afghan clerics gathered in front of an historic mosque yesterday to strip the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar of his claim to religious authority, in a ceremony that provided a significant boost to the presidency of Hamid Karzai.
The declaration, signed by 1,000 clerics from across the country, is an endorsement of the US-backed programme of reconciliation with more moderate elements of the Taliban movement that Karzai has been pursuing ahead of the country's first parliamentary elections, due in September.
You really have to read the whole thing to get an idea of the magnitude of the story that the press is missing in Afghanistan.
Posted by John at 10:39 AM"
Sunday, June 05, 2005
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