November 30, 2006

A special thanks goes out to Stop The ACLU for this wonderful tidbit.

Hate breeds on hate feeds on hate breeds on hate.

Everything you do comes back to you, whatever it may be. What you do as an angel, or what you do as a devil will come back and pay you for your deeds. This is the karma of preaching hate. I'm kinda glad the ACLU defends these idiots to spout their idiocy.

Via Break.com

Those religious nut bags at the Westboro Baptist Church were not welcome at this funeral for a soldier who died in Iraq. They are pretty much running for their lives and trying to drive away as fast as possible. This crowd would have torn them limb from limb.

If you want more content like this then please head on over to Stop the ACLU.

She's got the story on writer Rafiq Tagi here.

But I will anyway.

He's more like Kryptonite to common sense...and Jenny Craig.

My friend Linda has this incredible ability to find the goofiest stuff in the intertubes.

First up, Shrek III: Donkey Tours Iraq

And then.... spray on USC football players.

Michelle Malkin does an excellent job in today's Vent. Go check it out. The second half of today's Vent talks about an earlier story, run in the Los Angeles Times, about 30 civilians alleged to have been killed in Ramadi. Now thoroughly debunked. But which the Times refuses to retract.

Incidentally, al Quds press and Mafkarat al-Islam (Islam Memo), two Islamist news sources with ties to Sunni insurgents also published the same report (English synopsis here). Which means it is very likely that the stringers which the LA Times relied on were, in fact, the same ones employed by al Quds & Mafkarat al-Islam. In other words, insurgent propagandists themselves!

The US State Department calls Mafkarat al-Islam, "the most unreliable source of "news" about Iraq on the Internet." Good job LA Times!

Reuters own stringers, who themselves often have ties to the Sunni insurgency, only reported that unnamed witnesses, "saw several bodies of adult men lying in a street. Of course, these "sources" claimed the young men were just playing soccer.

Two different accounts of the same incident from the MSM. One of them claiming women and children bombed, the other young men killed. Neither of them meshing with first hand reports from US soldiers engaged in the conflict.

So, why does this matter? Because the terrorists disseminate media reports about "attrocities" amongst themselves. They use reports, such as the "Ramadi massacre" to prove to the world that they are really freedom fighters and that it is US forces that are killing civilians in Iraq.

Earlier I had reported that it was Ansar al Sunna which had produced a "Ramadi revenge" video. I was wrong. It was another insurgent group, Jaish Abu Bakr, which produced the video. The video shows four attacks "in response to the massacre of civilians by the Crusaders in the city of al-Ramadi during air strikes"

What massacre of civilians? The one that didn't happen. The one, though, that the LA Times and the Islamist al Quds press reported.

I'm not inclined to believe that members of the Jaish Abu Bakr brigades read the Times, but they do read al Quds and Mafkarat al-Islam. Reading those publications and others which routinely accuse the US of war crimes leads Muslims around the world to view this conflict as one in which we are the bad guys--or at the very least, to equivocate between the resistance and the occupiers.

The more that believe, the larger the pool for potential jihadis. And from among that pool, the jihadis are recruited.

Now, the US and Western public is being exposed to the same jihadi propaganda. Only coming from our own media. And is there any reason that the American public should believe reports coming from Iraq when at least some of the sources for those reports are clearly enemy propagandists? I. Think. Not.

Say what you will about the liberals, but when they blow it, they blow it big.

On Tuesday, Bob Geiger at the Huffington Post demanded to know if rightwing bloggers (including The Jawa Report) would be apologizing to the Associated Press for doubting their now-discredited story about the six burning Sunnis:

"It's Official: Media Body Burning Story is Bogus," crowed Newsbusters -- the wingnut National Enquirer -- who just went mad with glee proclaiming that "The news that six Sunnis were captured by Shiites, doused with kerosine [sic] and burned alive, was too sensational to not be picked up by the mainstream media. But it turns out that the event never happened. Furthermore, the Iraqi 'spokesman' relied on to give all information regarding this event is as fictional as the story itself."

Newsbusters took it a step further by also concluding that NBC's decision to begin calling what's going on in Iraq a "civil war" was based in part on the "bogus" nature of that story.

Flopping Aces, which seems to have started this embarrassing affair, has been running a lengthy series ominously called "Getting The News From The Enemy" while The Jawa Report really stands proud and proclaims that "It's unlikely that the Associated Press and other news agencies will issue corrections approaching the sensationalism with which they originally pushed the false stories."

I'd also like to commend Bob Geiger for emphasizing his status as a clueless tool by quoting the same person (that would be moi) twice (from NewsBusters and The Jawa Report) without even realizing it.

Update: In a long, rambling new post about "right wing trolls" sending him emails, Baghdad Bob starts to suspect that he may have made a hideous mistake:

The facts are what they are, and I'm patient enough to wait for the full story to come out -- but the spin and public-relations flackery being cited by the right-wing mouthpieces are not facts. If I need to do a retraction, I will. But pardon me if I wait for evidence above and beyond some screeching wingnut scrambling to paint the news as they wish it would be, instead of looking at the mess that Iraq truly is and contemplating the meaning of accountability.

According to the Multi-National Forces, 11 high ranking members of The Army of Ansar al Sunna have been captured. The Sunni group is one of the main terrorist organizations in areas North of Baghdad. They are known for their gruesome videos in which civilians are beheaded.

As Nick, who e-mailed me about this said, "bet you wont see this story on the MSM." Indeed. It's not so much that they won't report it, they will, but it will be buried in the text of another story. (see WaPo for example, which buries it 9 paragraphs into an article bearing bad news about an American pilot killed). And don't expect it to get any TV airtime. None.

This is very big news. On par with the story that the Juba Baghdad sniper was apparently captured. Alive. As Bohica reminded me, CNN was okay with showing the propaganda video of "Juba" killing American soldiers, but will they give Juba's arrest any airtime? Don't. Hold. Your. Breath.

MNF:

BAGHDAD, Iraq – In one week's time, Coalition Forces captured 11 suspected senior-level terrorists of Ansar al Sunna during a series of raids in north-central Iraq during mid-November.

During the raids, Coalition Forces captured the terrorist emirs of Iraq, Ramadi, Baqubah, Tikrit, al Qa’im, Bayji and Baghdad. They also captured two terrorist facilitators, a courier, an explosives expert and a financier.

The detention of these terrorists delivers a serious blow to the AAS network that is responsible for improvised explosive device attacks and suicide attacks and on Iraqi government, Coalition Forces and Iraqi civilians. The AAS network is also responsible for multiple kidnappings, small arms attacks and other crimes in the central and northern part of Iraq.

AAS is considered by some to be a leading terror organization in Iraq as al-Qaida’s leadership continues to crumble and it loses its ability to function due to Iraqi and Coalition Forces systematic dismantling efforts.

Although some AAS senior leadership allegedly hide in Iran, they continually plan attacks to disrupt Iraqi reconstruction efforts. This allows the AAS leadership to attempt to disrupt Iraqi reconstruction progress using their followers, while keeping the leadership out of harms way.

The Iraqi people deserve to live in country free from terror. Coalition and Iraqi Forces will continue to disrupt terrorist networks by killing and capturing terrorists, intercepting and destroying VBIEDs and suicide vests and continuously degrading terror cells operating within Iraq.

So, just how bad is the Army of Ansar al-Sunnah? Very. Bad.

Think Abu Musab al Zarqawi bad (Zarqawi used to work with them from time to time). Think the beheading of truck drivers and the murder of hostages bad. Or any one else who they suspected of having any ties to the Iraqi government. Killing them. Murdering them all. On video.

In fact, going through our archives I believe it is safe to say that The Jaish Ansar al Sunnah have more innocent blood on their hands than Zarqawi's Tawhid wal Jihad & al Qaeda in Iraq.

The following is not a comprehensive list of all the people they murdered and then used for their own terror propaganda. The death penalty is too good for members of Ansar al Sunna.

The Army of Ansar al-Sunna Kills American Cpl. Jeffrey A. Boskovich
Mayada Salihi--a woman--Taken Hostage in Iraq by Ansar al-Sunna
Two Turkish Truck Drivers--Turan Unal and Huseyin Aytag--Murderd by Ansar al Sunnah.
They murdered Japanese hostage Akihiko Saito.
12 Nepalese Hostages Killed, 1 Beheaded
Alleged CIA Agent Beheaded
Iraqi, Turk Beheaded by Army of Ansar al-Sunna
Ansar al Sunna Kills 3 Iraqis on Video
Ansar al Sunna beheads hostage Barie Nafi'a Daoud Ibrahim on video
CIA Agent Executed: Another Beheading Video
Army of Ansar al Sunna Beheads Iraqi Officer
Turkish Hostage Beheaded on Video
Army of Ansar al-Sunna Attacks 'CIA' Vehicle
Army of Ansar al-Sunnah Execution Video, More Beheadings in Mosul
Ansar al Sunna Beheads 3 On Video
Nepalese Civilian Murdered by Ansar al-Sunnah
The Army of Ansar al-Sunnah Kills Iraqi Translator
Army of Ansar al-Sunnah Murders 7 on Video
Beheading Video from Army of Ansar al-Sunnah: Shiite Follower of Muqtada al-Sadr Beheaded for 'Working with US'
Iraqi Murdered by Army of Ansar al-Sunnah in New Beheading Video
Army of Ansar al-Sunnah Murder Hostages by Beheading, Video Released
The Kurdish Victims of the Army of Ansar al Sunna
The Army of Ansar al-Sunna has murdered Iraqi Nasser Had Ali
Terrorists Murder Civilians in Iraq on Video (Amir Nassir & Others)
Turkish truck driver Ramadan Elbu murderd by Ansar al Sunna (with help of Zarqawi's al Qaeda)

In the race for House GOP leadership a few weeks ago, the reformers from the Republican Study Committee (Mike Penca and John Shadegg) were trounced by the incumbent House GOP leadership (John Boehner and Roy Blunt).

Now, there's a race for the leadership of the RSC itself. It's shaping up to be a battle between Jeb Hensarling of Texas and Todd Tiahrt of Kansas. According to The Hill:

Hensarling has been an outspoken ally of Pence, who suffered a landslide defeat to Boehner in the leader’s race. Pence and Hensarling led a small band of upstarts who, over the past two years, have waged public battles with the leadership over revised budget rules and federal funding for the hurricane-battered Gulf Coast. The Texas Republican also backed Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) in his confrontation with appropriators last summer over earmarks included in spending bills that reached the House floor.

Many staffers consider Tiahrt, an appropriator, as the leadership-backed candidate who would mute the influence of conservative agitators as Republicans try to unite in the minority.

“It’s an effort to neuter the RSC,” one aide said. “It’s an effort to split the powerbase.”

CQPolitics.com has more:

Rep. Jeb Hensarling will be nominated to head the Republican Study Committee next year, according to a letter sent Tuesday by eight of the most active RSC members.

Their endorsement of the second-term Texas Republican sets up a potentially nasty fight over the direction of the House’s most conservative faction. The four founders of the RSC — John T. Doolittle of California, Ernest Istook of Oklahoma, Dan Burton of Indiana and Sam Johnson of Texas — are expected to nominate their own candidate, appropriator Todd Tiahrt of Kansas, for the post.

The RSC founders’ pick has been honored in the past by the rank and file. But Tuesday’s letter signed by current RSC Chairman Mike Pence of Indiana, John Shadegg of Arizona and six other conservatives signals a willingness among some RSC members to continue using aggressive tactics in the pursuit of a more conservative legislative agenda.

The Iraqi Ministry of the Interior announced that it has captured the Baghdad sniper known as Ali Nazar al Jubori. The name sounds eerily familiar. al Jubori....could this be the original Juba sniper? That is the claim being made.

Let me remind my readers that the "Juba the Baghdad sniper" does not exist--at least, not in the heroic sense that the jihadi crowd has painted him as. He's a myth. A piece of fictional propaganda produced by terrorists. A heroic superman for the al Qaeda supporters of the world.

This is not to say that there never was an al Qaeda linked sniper in Iraq who got the nickname "Juba", only that the popular videos showing "his" work are really compilations of not only different snipers, but also of different terror organizations. We know this because the "Juba top 10 video" shows previously released material from several different known terror groups and that at least one of the snipers who's work is shown in the video was later arrested.

But like many heroes, there may actually be a man behind the myth. Al Jubori may actually be the original "Juba Baghdad Sniper" as the Iraqis are claiming. In fact, a recent video proported to show the real "Juba" and included interviews with the Baghdad sniper.

The sniper cell he is said to have trained, also called the "Juba snipers", was also broken up and many of them arrested. Again, that is what the Iraqis are saying. We'll see.

If it is "Juba", then this is an important moral victory for the US and anti-terrorist forces in Iraq. Juba is a real hero to many in the Salafi terrror supporting community.

There were several websites devoted to Juba, and which were alleged to be run by him (although I doubt that), and which were based in the US. They were bought and paid for by someone claiming to be a member of the terrorist organization knows as the Islamic Army in Iraq (IAI)--which has links to al Qaeda. Oh, but thanks to Jawa Report readers, those websites are down.

Of course, not all of Juba's webzines are down. Only those that were commercially bought and paid for by the IAI. There is still one website up, provided for free by the Google owned Blogger/blogspot platform. That's right, Google continues to host a terrorist's website--or one proported to be run by him.

We've begged and pleaded with blogspot over this and other terrorist websites to no avail. They literally help the enemy while wrapping themselves under the veil of the First Amendment. The best we could do was set up an alternative Juba website.

Interestingly enough, I found this information from Michelle Malkin, who I believe doesn't yet know the value of the press release she was sent from CENTCOM (UPDATE: Now she does). The purpose of the press release was to counter stories by the AP which seem to be false. But buried down in it is this from Brig. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf Al-Kenani, Ministry of Interior spokesman (update: also buried in this MSM report):

The third subject is, this week the strikes we made against the al-Qaeda terrorist organization in Baghdad were many and very strong in Baghdad. Before my arrival to this press conference, I was informed that one of the three who were just captured or detained is Mazer Al-Jubouri, aka the Baghdad Sniper, and his group. He admitted many things that are very important and very dangerous and our forces used this information about his network and conducted raids in the past 24 hours and detained 30 terrorists.

Those terrorists executed several explosions in Palestine and Beirut streets, and the New Baghdad area. He also admitted that their base is in Diyala province, which supplied them with money, weapons and explosives. They are now under investigation and we think this cell or network has been dismantled.

UPDATE II: Murdoc has an exclusive (and short) podcast about media coverage of the "juba" capture.

UPDATE: Howie grabbed this image of Juba the Baghdad Sniper from one of the Islamic Army in Iraq's propaganda videos.

The "police captain" that the Associated Press used as the source for their story about six Sunni men dragged from prayers and burned alive by Shiite militants is not a policeman and does not work for the Iraqi government in any capacity, according to the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior.

CENTCOM had warned the AP about Hussein and other questionable sources they were using, but was rebuffed by the wire service organization. The AP's sensational story of the burning Sunnis was cited by NBC as a reason they decided to start calling violence in Iraq a "civil war." The source "police captain Jamil Hussein" has been quoted in wire service stories since April of this year.

Michelle Malkin has the details of a press conference held today by Iraqi Brigadier General Abdul-Kareem, speaking for the Iraqi Minstry of the Interior:

From CPATT PAO:
BG Abdul-Kareem, the Ministry of Interior Spokesman, went on the record today stating that Capt. Jamil Hussein is not a police officer. He explained the coordinations among MOI, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Defense in attempting to track down these bodies and their joint conclusion was that this was unsubstantiated rumor.

He went on to name several other false sources that have been used recently and appealed to the media to document their news before reporting. He went into some detail about the impact of the press carrying propaganda for the enemies of Iraq and thanked "the friends" who have brought this to their attention.

AP did attend the press conference.

So far, the Associated Press is standing by their story, claiming that their reporters visited Jamil Hussein at his police station. This brings the AP's reporters themselves into question. Are they simply trying to cover up a costly and humiliating mistake, or are they unvetted local hires whose allegiance is really to al Qaeda?

Read Michelle's entire post here.

There's an interesting post over at RedState on the rift between the "moderates" and the "conservatives" within the GOP.

The poster takes the position that blame for the rift lies largely with the "moderates":

I come down quite squarely on one side; I think the "moderates" as typified by the Republicans featured on these websites here; The Republican Main Street Partnership, The Real Republican Majority, GOP Progress, etc. are largely to blame for the split in the Republican coalition between the so-called "moderates" and social conservatives.

Hopefully, most folks realize that the "moderate-conservative" dichotomy is a heavily simplified--and I say OVERLY simplified view of the Republican party. I don't like the term "conservative," because I think it has lost whatever meaning it used to have and become a vague term generally describing a wide range of disparate, and often contradictory, ideas.

Is there a definition of "conservative" that fits our modern usage of the term? Is there, for example, a "litmus test" that characterizes a "conservative?" From where I stand, there isn't. If there is, I'd like to hear it. I know "staunch conservative" Republicans who are 100% focused on social issues and could scarcely care less about taxes and spending. These would generally referred to as "social conservatives." At the same time, I know other "staunch conservatives" who think the abortion debate is "much ado about nothing," but care deeply about the federal budget deficit. These are "budget hawks." I know yet other "staunch conservatives" who couldn't give a flip about social issues or the budget deficit, but they are hardcore about business-related issues like taxes, trade and government regulation. These are "Wall Street" conservatives. There are, of course, other classes of "conservatives."

In each case, these Republicans plant themselves squarely on the "conservative" end of the spectrum--for at least their particular issue. They're generally agnostic or conservative on other issues. So long as their pet issues are taken care of by the Republicans, they'll hang with the Republicans. If other group's issues are taken care of, that's fine too. That's how I, personally, define the "conservatives."

Who, then, are the "moderates?" I classify the "moderates" as those Republicans who are right-of-center on one or more issues (taxes, spending, regulation, etc.) but who are liberal on other issues (generally social issues.) The moderates aren't agnostic about all the wedge issues. They care a lot about at least one or two. They're just "right of center" on certain hot button issues and "liberal" on others. I think most "moderate" Republicans can be defined as liberal on the social issues (abortion, gay marriage, etc.) and right-of-center on fiscal policy. It seems that there are some Republicans who are liberal pretty much across the board. These folks also generally take on the mantle of "moderate." To be honest, I'm not sure why these folks are Republicans, but we should be happy to have them on board--even if they're a pain in the butt sometimes. Having said that, these folks DO NOT need to be occupying positions in the GOP leadership.

If you accept these two definitions, I think its fair to say that the GOP's problems don't arise primarily out of a split between the "conservatives" and the "moderates" (i.e., "liberal/conservatives.") For one thing, I don't think there are that many GOP "moderates" (as defined above). The GOP's problems arise primarily out of a Republican agenda which is opposed by a substantial proportion of the base. I don't know, for example, of any conservative Republican who lost his seat primarily because of his or her position on partial-birth abortion or stem-cell research. More than a few appear to have lost their seats over out-of-control spending, Republican corruption scandals and a perception that they were lapdogs for the Bush Administration agenda.

Anyone who's been watching politics for more than a campaign season knows that a party has to keep its interest groups happy if it plans to stay in office. Normally, this requires a delicate balancing act, particularly if the interest groups are lobbying for unpopular causes. The Democrats face a big problem here. They've managed to put together a coalition of interest groups whose particular issues just don't resonate with the public. Further, there are a lot of serious rifts between the factions that make up the Democrat base. Some of the most serious rifts in the Democrat Party coalition exist between minorities and labor. There is a substantial and ever-growing demand in the Black community for school vouchers. Teachers' unions, on the other hand, will come unglued if a politician even utters the word. In many districts, the Democrats can't win without the solid support of both of these two gruops. Given this, it astounds me that the Republican politicians don't force every Democrat politician to take a stand on vouchers and thereby pick which of his own constituents he'll be offending.

In contrast to the Democrat Party, the Republican Party should have an easier time keeping its coalition together. This is because of two reasons. First, many of the Republican "base" issues are generally popular among the voting public. Second, the agendas of the various Republican interest groups don't necessarily conflict with one another. Reagan managed keep the social conservatives and the Wall Street conservatives happy at the same time. Even the budget hawks stayed in rank despite massive deficits--because most of them cared about other issues on which Reagan was rock solid. In many cases, a single policy can further the interests of all of these groups simultaneously. In other cases, a single policy can go against the interests of all these groups simultaneously. It should be obvious that the second type of issue should be avoided, if possible.

I believe that the problems the Republican Party is currently facing don't arise out of a poor choice among competing "conservative" interest groups. I think it arises out of a decision to give the cold shoulder to too many of them. The Republican Party, led by the Bush Administration, has put forth a big government agenda which doesn't have a particular constituency within the GOP coalition. The Republican leaders have given the GOP base an agenda few within the coalition were ever asking for. In many cases, these policies fall into the category of those which go against multiple GOP interest groups simultaneously. Given this, the GOP leadership shouldn't be surprised when few are particularly interested in buying what they're trying to sell.

So, what is the point of all this? The point is, this inaccurate dichotomy between the "conservatives" and the "moderates" isn't going to lead us to any answers as to how to get the Republican engine running on all 12 cylinders again. We need to get back to square one and figure out just what it is that unites us as Republicans. Maybe there's not much. Maybe there's a lot. I believe the latter is closer to the truth. However many things there are that we can generally agree on, these things need to become centerpieces of the Republican agenda going forward.

Hopefully all of the above may seem as obvious to you as it is to me. Unfortunately, these very basic principles seem to be complete black magic to the current GOP leadership.

(Tehran, Iran) Since the Iranian Parliament has no final authority for anything, one wonders where the accusation is coming from. It's speculated that Canada's assertiveness in the UN to have Iran condemned for human rights violations is at the root of the seemingly false accusation.

From TheStar.com:

In a sign of chilling relations between Iran and Canada, Iranian lawmakers have labelled Canada's embassy in Tehran a "den of spies" and called for a probe that could shut it down.

"The Canadian embassy represents the 'den of spies' and this is unacceptable for Iranians," said hard-liner Hamidreza Hajbabai, one of a group of parliamentarians accusing Ottawa of plotting with the United States, a long-term enemy of Iran.

Another lawmaker, Javad Arian-Manesh, said the Majiles (parliament) would investigate the Canadian embassy for espionage, "and if it is proven, (we are) determined to shut down the mission."

Canadian officials called the charges baseless and rhetorical. Nonetheless, they add to the decreasing level of peacefulness and tolerance between the two nations. An interested observer might even call the charges an act of belligerence.

November 29, 2006

Joseph McNamara, writing in the Wall Street Journal, takes on the increasing militarization of American law enforcement:

Simply put, the police culture in our country has changed. An emphasis on "officer safety" and paramilitary training pervades today's policing, in contrast to the older culture, which held that cops didn't shoot until they were about to be shot or stabbed. Police in large cities formerly carried revolvers holding six .38-caliber rounds. Nowadays, police carry semi-automatic pistols with 16 high-caliber rounds, shotguns and military assault rifles, weapons once relegated to SWAT teams facing extraordinary circumstances. Concern about such firepower in densely populated areas hitting innocent citizens has given way to an attitude that the police are fighting a war against drugs and crime and must be heavily armed.

h/t : Glenn.

Stay the course.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The independent panel studying U.S. policy in Iraq has unanimously agreed to a report that will call for a gradual pullback of American combat troops in Iraq but stops short of setting a firm timetable for withdrawal, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.

I apologize in advance for this analysis.

EXCUSE ME, BUT ISN'T THIS WHAT EVERY G-D C-Sing M-Fing PUNDIT FROM #12404849 IN THE ECOSYSTEM TO BUSH HIMSELF HAS BEEN SAYING FOR THE LAST THREE AND A HALF FRICKIN' YEARS???????????????

Once again, my apologies. More intellectual analysis below the fold.

GAH!!!!!!! How many F*CKING millions of dollars were wasted on these gawdamned goobers to TELL US SH*T WE ALREADY KNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry, sorry.

What I meant to say is that the Iraq Study Group has written a thoroughly researched background of events as they are currently happening in the Iraq Campaign. Their conclusions are sound, their reputations impeccable, and their records of success in ventures such as this are virtually non-existent.

On second thought, scratch the word "virtually."

"May you live in interesting times." - Ancient Chinese curse.

Yea, that is a curse when you think about it.

So is this:

TOKYO - Japan has the technological know-how to produce a nuclear weapon but has no immediate plans to do so, the foreign minister said Thursday, several weeks after communist North Korea carried out a nuclear test.

This is welcome news. If there's anything that the ChiComs and Norks fear, it's a militarily resurgent Japan. One that is closely allied with the West.

Thanks to all our loyal readers who have made this website a success. We just passed the 6 million visits mark, which happend just about the same time that the 10 million hits mark was passed.

Irony? On a blog which specializes in the war on terror, our 6 millionth visitor comes from Saudi Arabia.

Bigger irony? Our Saudi Arabian friend came here on a Live.com image search for "sex good" and found this post: Angelina Jolie, Madonna, Share Lesbian Lover

Biggest irony? Our Saudi friend spent 2 minutes 35 seconds looking at these three pictures (below the fold, SFW--unless you work in the Vatican) along with a description which includes, "We pleasured each other into the early hours..."

Thank you to our one-handed surfer from Saudi Arabia for making it all worthwhile.

Friends, given enough time and more hot lesbian models coming forward with lurid stories of intimate encounters with Angelina Jolie---we will win the war on terror!

The Jawa Report, come for the lesbian Angelina Jolie, stay to learn how to fight the cyber jihad!

An Associated Press story about six Sunni men being dragged from their mosque in Iraq, doused with kerosene, and burned alive continues to unravel, while AP spokeswoman Linda Wagner does her best Dan Rather impression (my first post from Saturday).

AP based their atrocity story on the word of Iraqi police Captain Jamil Hussein. Problem: the Iraqis say Hussein is not a police captain and does not work for them in any capacity. In response, AP has played the fake-but-accurate card that worked so well for Dan Rather.

Finally, other elements of the mainstream media are taking notice, after several days of exposes by bloggers.

From USA Today's On Deadline:

Today, responding to questions from On Deadline about AP's statement that it stands by its story, Lt. Dean e-mailed us. He said that on Thursday,

"Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the official (Iraqi) Ministry of Interior spokesmen, will begin his regularly scheduled press conference at noon tomorrow with a statement that Capt. Jamil Hussein, is not a Baghdad police officer or an MOI employee."

Hussein is the main source AP cited in its original story about the burnings.

Dean added that "We understand the challenges of reporting in Iraq due to the security situation, and we are in no way targeting AP specifically.

"However, when we continue to see reporting of stories which cannot be corroborated using questionable Iraqi sources, we feel it is our obligation to track the credibility of the source and ask what verification was used no matter which media outlet the report came from.

"We have had numerous stories reported through wire services which were proven to have not happened at all, yet the media outlets concerned dismissed verification on the ground for their sources."

AP spokeswoman Linda Wagner's response was disingenuous:

"Navy Lieutenant Dean's statement seems to suggest that the news media should work solely from a government list of 'authorized sources.' But a free press cultivates a wide range of sources. That's what AP did in this case, as it always does."

More on the bogus burning six story from Curt at Flopping Aces, who has been covering the story since it began.

Send it by mail
Send it in care of
The well of the 12th Imam.

Robert Spencer says it's a call to Islam.

The blog grandfather calls it the "second warning."

Since no good deed goes unpunished, feel free to give 'ol Mahmoud your response.

I would print mine, but this is a PG-13 blog.

stein hoist: Hot Air.

UPDATE 09/19/2007: Al Qaeda in Iraq's Islamic State of Iraq front group release second Troy Gilbert video.

UPDATE: 12/4: The military has changed Maj. Gilbert's status to KIA after DNA tests the body at the crash site was that of Troy. Rest in Peace.

A fund has been set up in his honor. For info, see this post.

UPDATE: George found this photo of Maj. Gilbert. I think it only fitting that we put it on top. Above the image of the SOB pictured below and right. If any soldier in Iraq sees this guy, you know what to do. Rest in Peace.

------------------------------

To the friends and family of Maj. Troy L. Gilbert, our deepest sympathies and condolences. We pray that those who removed your sons body from the battlefield will find justice at the end of a Marine rifle.

Stars and Stripes:

The Pentagon has identified the Air Force pilot who is listed as Duty Status Whereabouts Unknown after his fighter jet crashed Monday near Karmah, Iraq.

Maj. Troy L. Gilbert of the 309th Fighter Squadron out of Luke Air Force Base, Ariz., was piloting the F-16C when it went down about 20 miles northwest of Baghdad, Department of Defense officials said Wednesday.

The cause of the crash is under investigation, though U.S. military spokesmen in Iraq have said enemy fire likely was not a factor in the incident.

Incidentally, the Islamic State of Iraq (formerly knows as the Mujahideen Shura Council), an al Qaeda umbrella group, claims one of their member organizations shot down the plane. Then again, in the same statement they claim to have shot down 6 Blackhawk helicopters, so question the reliability. Every time a helicopter goes down, whether by accident or not, they claim responsibility.

For now, we will file this in our hostage archives.

Newt Gingrich gets it, those naysaying him don't. Or, at least, they don't get what Gingrich is saying. He is saying exactly what we've been calling for for awhile now: taking the cyber jihad seriously. As a military matter.

If you don't get that the internet is the way in which jihadis recruit, train, and coordinate then you just don't get it. I'd suggest that you start reading The Jawa Report on a daily basis. Where we bring you stories such as Terrorists Launch Google Guide. Or reading Internet Haganah. Daily.

Now, let me say something here. I respect Ed, but he has this one wrong. Or, he doesn't get what Gingrich is saying. Especially given what I believe is a misleading headline for the story. And I've met Flap and his lovely wife, and he has it wrong too. And I'm sure that Ragnar linked to this earlier just so he could get a rise out of me. Kudos my Padawan biyotch.

Gingrich is not talking about establishing the thought police, a censorship board, and a speech Gestapo. Nor is he even proposing enacting draconian hate speech laws, the kind of speech prohibitions that liberals often support. In the same article, Gingrich also talks about doing away with McCain-Feingold---that is, to increase the capacity for political debate.

Gingrich is only proposing to curtail the speech of our enemies. Not imagined enemies. Real people who, literally, encourage young Muslims to go to Iraq to fight your neighbors. Real people who want you dead.

You live in a bizarro world if you think it is okay to kill our enemies, but not take away their tools of propaganda. It seems like an odd moral system to suggest that speech is a higher priority than life. Especially when the life and speech in question is the life and speech of the enemy.

To paraphrase Lincoln, the First Amendment is not a suicide pact.

It should also be noted that the First Amendment does not apply to the battlefield. The cyber jihadis themselves consider the internet a weapon of war and themselves combatants in this fight. This is why they formed the "Global Islamic Media Front", "The Jihad Media Brigade", "The Alfajr Media Center", and "as Sahab". To recruit. To train. To coordinate. To fight us. To kill us.

So they claim they are combatants. They claim the media, especially the internet, is a weapon. Yet you wish to protect this propaganda because you have some odd attachment to the First Amendment which trumps all other concerns?

WWGD? (What would Goebbels do?)

I believe the WWGD is a legitimate question, but one that most have avoided in this war. In past wars, we have had no problem censoring people. Especially our enemies. And the domestic forces that support them. I doubt any of us would have a problem targetting Joseph Goebells Ministry of Propaganda for a bombing raid during the height of WWII. Had Goebells not committed suicide, I doubt any would raise objections for trying him as a war criminal. Even though he did nothing more than speak.

Nor did any of us have a problem when the leaders of the German Bund were rounded up and their papers and presses shut down.

Sure, censorship has been abused in the past. But the potential to abuse a power is not a sufficient reason to withhold it. Otherwise, governments would have no power.

Here is what Newt says, in context: MORE BELOW

"This is a serious, long-term war," the former speaker said, according an audio excerpt of his remarks made available yesterday by his office. "Either before we lose a city or, if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the Internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us to stop them from recruiting people."

Gingrich gets how this war is being fought. I'm sorry, but the rest of you just don't. The fight is in the cyber realm. It is a real battle. People die because of it.

Now, here is the key:

"We should propose a Geneva Convention for fighting terrorism, which makes very clear that those who would fight outside the rules of law, those who would use weapons of mass destruction, and those who would target civilians are, in fact, subject to a totally different set of rules that allow us to protect civilization by defeating barbarism before it gains so much strength that it is truly horrendous," he said.

In reality, it has long been noted in many publications that terrorists are using the Internet. The problem is going to be great distrust over how this idea — if it ever comes to fruition (and it probably won't) would be implemented.

It's seems rather simple to me: deny your opponents the tools of terrorism. One of those tools in the internet. Go after the cyber jihadis.

And I don't mean issuing an indictment against them, I mean, literally, denying them access to the internet. Through various methods that some might think of as distatsteful. But certainly less distasteful than bombs.

I'm not sure that the NSA is up to the job, but it's a good place to start.

My own proposition is that of Cyber Privateering. The reasoning behind this has more to do with the way in which information flows in distributive networks than anything else. That is, it would be easier for our own cyber Army of Davids--given the proper incentive structure--to fight and beat the Army of Davids of the cyber jihadis.

America has the greatest hackers in the world. Let's use their talents for the public good. Just give us a few bucks for taking down our enemies' propaganda machinery, give us immunity from prosecution, and to paraphrase another great thinker, Winston Churchill: give us the tools and we will finish the job.

The Constitution itself gives Congress the power to grant letters of marquee--which, as you may know, is a means of employing private individuals (privateers--like pirates, but the legal kind) in furthering the goals of the state. It also grants Congress the authority to punish piracy and other crimes which are not even committed on US soil, but which are considered crimes against all civilized nations.

And, personally, I don't see much difference between pirates and jihadis. Except the jihadis are worse. The pirates just wanted to rape and pillage, the jihadis wish to rape, pillage, and rule. Kill them wherever you find them, punish all that are found aiding and abeding them.

Gingrich's idea of a 'Geneva Convention' outlawing jihad makes a whole lot of sense. He's never had much of a chance to win the Presidency, but I'd love to see him over the NSA.

UPDATE: As if on cue: Atlas Shrugs (hat tip: Larwynn):

Technical Mujahid” [Al-Mujahid al-Teqany], published by al-Fajr Information Center, was electronically distributed to password-protected jihadist forums Tuesday, November 28, 2006....

an introductory message, emphasizes the great purpose of jihad in the information sector. This front is determined by the author to be “a main pillar in the battle of Islam against the Crusaders and the polytheist belief”.

Newt Gingrich, Jawa reader.

Here's the message:

For the next few days, President Bush will be meeting with world leaders in the Middle East. While there are many important issues that President Bush will need to discuss, we want to make sure that the world’s worst humanitarian crisis stays at the top of his list.

Will you please call the President and ask him to make Darfur a priority in these meetings?

We have set up a 1-800 number to make it easy (and free) for you to make this call.

Please dial 1-800-320-0095 and ask President Bush to make the crisis in Darfur a priority in his meetings with other world leaders this week.

When you’ve hung up, please click here to let us know how your call went.

Please don’t overlook this step of reporting your call to us as it’s crucial for us to know how many concerned citizens are calling.

Normally the Taliban behead a man for allowing his wife to teach girls evil satanic algebra. But in this case the Taliban were both merciful and creative, they spilled his guts out on the ground and then used motorbikes to draw and quarter him.

Independent News: The gunmen came at night to drag Mohammed Halim away from his home, in front of his crying children and his wife begging for mercy.

The 46-year-old schoolteacher tried to reassure his family that he would return safely. But his life was over, he was part-disembowelled and then torn apart with his arms and legs tied to motorbikes, the remains put on display as a warning to others against defying Taliban orders to stop educating girls.

Mr Halim was one of four teachers killed in rapid succession by the Islamists at Ghazni, a strategic point on the routes from Kabul to the south and east which has become the scene of fierce clashes between the Taliban and US and Afghan forces.
The day we arrived, an Afghan policemen and eight insurgents died during an ambush in an outlying village. Rockets were found, primed to be fired into Ghazni City during a visit by the American ambassador a few days previously.

But, as in the rest of Afghanistan, it is the civilians who are bearing the brunt of this conflict. At the village of Qara Bagh, the family of Mr Halim are distraught and terrified. His cousin, Ahmed Gul, shook his head: "They killed him like an animal. No, no. We do not kill animals like that, it would be haram. They took away a father and a husband, they had no pity. We are all very worried. Please go now, you see those men standing over there? They are watching. It is dangerous for you, and for us."

Fatima Mushtaq, the director of education at Ghazni, has had repeated death threats, the notorious "night letters". Her gender, as well as her refusal to send girls home from school, has made her a particular source of hatred for Islamist zealots.

"I think they killed him that way to frighten us, otherwise why make a man suffer so much? Mohammed Halim and his family were good friends of ours and we are very, very upset by what has happened. He came to me when the threats first began and asked what he should do. I told him to move somewhere safe. I think he was trying to arrange that when they came and took him," she said.

Also See: Prairie Pundit and Hyscience.

Ed Morrissey has a piece today going after Newt Gingrich. Apparently, Gingrich recently said:

Either before we lose a city or, if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the Internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us to stop them from recruiting people.

if Gingrich believes that we can win the war by silencing American citizens, then he is fighting the wrong war on behalf of the wrong principles. All he is doing is replacing one bogeyman (political corruption) for another (terrorism); in essence, he's no different from McCain.

Legal pluralism is all the rage in Europe and among American legal academics. The concept is that different laws should apply to different groups within the same country. This is why Canada allows some religious courts legal authority. The same applies to Britain. No joke.

The scary thing, is that it could happen here too. It's all the rage in law schools. And young lawyers today become tomorow's judges......

Dread Pundit Bluto has the details. But here's a teaser from The Telegraph:

Faizul Aqtab Siddiqi, a barrister and principal of Hijaz College Islamic University, near Nuneaton, Warwicks, said this type of court had advantages for Muslims. "It operates on a low budget, it operates on very small timescales and the process and the laws of evidence are far more lenient and it's less awesome an environment than the English courts," he said.

Mr Siddiqi predicted that there would be a formal network of Muslim courts within a decade.

I've been getting lots of e-mails for the past few days urging me to link to stories about Alexander Litvinenko the former spy who was recently poisoned. I haven't. Here's why.

I spent some time in Russia. I went to a University there for a year. Which means I know Russians.

Their idea of 'truth' is not our idea of 'truth'. It's more like truthiness (Yeah, The Jawa Report now rhymes with poor).

For instance, students would routinely cheat on tests. But no one considered it cheating. Different cultural definitions of honesty, I guess. Same applies to stealing.

So, when Russians come out saying they know who was behind Litvinenko's poisoning, I just roll my eyes and shrug. People in Russia talk that way: "everybody knows that" [insert crazy idea here, especially ones blaming people from the Caucuses, Jews, the Mafia, etc.].

Did Putin's thugs kill Litvinenko? Maybe. Was it the mafia? Maybe. Was it nuclear smugglers trying to shut him up? Maybe? Did he poison himself in a final look-at-me-I'm-important act? Maybe. Did a Putin follower rid him of this pesky ex-spy without Putin's approval? Maybe.

The truth is, I don't know. Russians are like Arabs. Scratch a Russian, and underneath is a Tatar, or so the saying goes. Even when multiple sources verify the same event, it's still best to remain skeptical. Because there is such a thing as social truth. That is, everyone lying about the same thing because the lie fosters the truth.

I'm out of this fight until a lot more is known....in the Western sense of the word. It is a strange and compelling story, but one in which I'd much rather remain a spectator in.

But, if you just want to keep up on the facts as they emerge, you might want to try AJ Stata's place out.

The open-borders Republicans are fond of reassuring the rank-and-file that immigrants from Latin American countries are "more conservative" than most Republicans and are, in fact, destined to be Republicans.

This article has a different take.

h/t : Michelle.

Check this out. It's like going to through your World Civilizations I & II classes in 90 seconds. Especially meaningful for the uninformed about "Palestine".

November 28, 2006

Thanks to Fred Fry in the comments, we get this gem of an article from Canada's Globe and Mail. It's worth reading the whole thing.

Like Fred posted, this excerpt is particularly interesting:

"If we attack the Canadians, they call for aircraft and bomb everything in the area. The U.S. only tried to kill the Taliban. The Canadians try to kill everybody."

Here's what I see. I see a group of savvy media manipulators trying to get out the message that Canadian troops are even worse than American troops.

I see an attempt to shock what they obviously view as a far more compliant population of media watchers into erupting into protest. I also see an attempt to replicate in Canada what we will soon see here. Hearings, subpoenas, and a general bogging down of the war effort.

I also see desperation. Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan is pretty much off the political radar in the U.S. The Pelosis and Murthas aren't calling for withdrawal from Afghanistan.

So all these losers have left is trying to convince the populations of our NATO allies that they, like us barbaric Americans, are nothing more than blood soaked oppressive butchers. A lame attempt to replicate the propaganda from Iraq.

Sorry, chums. Canada is even more hard to rouse from slumber than we are, but when we get together in a war, you're screwed.

I'll go out on a limb and guess that there's far more Canadians taking pride that their boys are bombing you into the Stone Age than not.

Sigh.

LOS ANGELES - A federal judge struck down President Bush's authority to designate groups as terrorists, saying his post-Sept. 11 executive order was unconstitutionally vague, according to a ruling released Tuesday.

The Humanitarian Law Project had challenged Bush's order, which blocked all the assets of groups or individuals he named as "specially designated global terrorists" after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

So who gets to designate terror organizations, the judiciary?

God help us.

UPDATE (Ragnar) : There's a copy of Judge Collins' order here. If Judge' Collins' name sounds familiar, it may be because she's been in the news before. Judge Collins ruled in January 2004 that portions of the Patriot Act were also "impermissibly vague," and could not be enforced. A copy of the Judge's January 2004 order can be viewed here. There's a related order from July here.

Cyber jihadis have attacked the Vatican website. Okay, maybe they're not your traditional terrorists, but cyberterrorism is a form of terrorism nonetheless. And the Vatican website is part of the Vatican.

I've been checking the Vatican's website all day. It hasn't been down. Kudos to the Swiss Guards of the cybersphere for doing an excellent job.

As someone who's website has been the victim of Turkish cyber jihadis attempting to do the denial of service routine, I can tell you that that this lot isn't the brightest the ummah has to offer. They are pains in the asses, though.

Update by Vinnie: Swiss Guards? Or Fathers Merrin and Karras? Or at least their cyber-counterparts...

NewsMax:

As thousands of Turks took to the streets to protest the ongoing visit of Pope Benedict XVI to their country, the Church was already dealing with another threat from angry Muslims – a cyberattack on the Vatican Web site.

An appeal to Jihadist hackers was sent out through Web forums linked to al-Qaida and was posted on two of the Web sites that publish messages from the terrorist organization.

"The leadership of the electronic Jihad has decided to undertake a grand attack against the official Vatican site following the insults by the Pope against our Prophet," the statement read in Arabic, referring to remarks the Pope made in a September 12 speech.

"With Allah's blessing, the attack will succeed thanks to the help of our brothers if we all attack simultaneously. We ask all our brothers to be present at the hour of the attack for a joint action, because they (Catholics) have struck our religion. They must be fought and deserve to be attacked and not only on their Internet site.” ...

Vatican security officials aren’t sure what the hackers seek to accomplish, but suspect they aim to create a "denial of service” for visitors to the site by flooding the Vatican servers with messages from thousands of computers controlled by hackers.

Hat tip: Dan Riehl for the e-mail.

UPDATE: Confirmed. Alternate spelling is Ibrahim Hassan Addou and he is an American citizen. Much more information in this post.
------------

I was reading through the headlines today to see if fighting has begun between our allies in Ethiopia and the jihadis of the Islamic Courts Union which now run most of Southern Somalia, when I came across something interesting.

The head of The Foreign Relations Department of the Islamic Courts Union, Ibrahim Hassan Addow, is an American citizen.

How bad is the Islamic Courts Union? Bad enough that we have dubbed them the 'African Taliban'. They wish to impose strict sharia law on the citizens of Somalia, just like the Afghani Taliban. They also have ties to al Qaeda, just like the Afghani Taliban. And just like the Afghani Taliban, they deny that they are extremists and that they have ties to terrorists.

So, who is Ibrahim Hassan Addow? I have no idea. In fact, I can find no information on him prior to his association with the jihadis now running much of Somalia. But he claims to be an American. UPDATE: Critical information found on Ibrahim Hassan Addou. He worked at American University in Washington, D.C., and now heads a university in Mogadishu.

Since the title "Professor" is often attached to his names in media reports, is it possible he taught at the University level in the United States? If so, is there any one out there who knows anything about him?

He seems to be the main spokesman for the ICU abroad and has participated in several international conferences aimed at bringing peace to Somalia. Perhaps he was chosen for this job because of his US citizenship and status as an educated man.

I'm thinking that he is probably a naturalized citizen--that is, that he immigrated to the United States and became a citizen at some point--not that he was born here. But, since the US has stated in no uncertain terms that the Islamic Courts Union of Somalia has ties to the global jihad and is harboring al Qaeda terrorists who bombed the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, would that not make Ibrahim Addow a traitor?

On top of that it is the Islamic Courts Union themselves who claimed the warlords they were recently victorious over were backed by the US government then would this not make him a traitor times two? The organization he is the spokeman for claims it is fighting US backed forces!

I hope somebody somewhere is working on revoking his citizenship. Or brininging him back for a speedy trial followed by some Texas style justice.

Here we have a guy who is trying to put the happy face on a regime that murders people for watching soccer or for not praying or for converting to Christianity [insert any other number of 'crimes' here] and which has recently declared jihad against Ethiopia. Nice.

Oh, and since I was originally looking for whether or not the Somalians and Ethiopians were now officially at war, you might want to know that the answer is yes. The African Taliban claimed today that Ethiopian troops began to shell ICU held positions. They've also invited Muslims from around the world to join the jihad in Somalia.

Which contradicts all earlier statements made by the ICU that there were no foreign fighters in Somalia and there is no connection between the ICU and the global jihad.

UPDATE: As if on cue, the Islamists release a video called: Somalia, apostate hell. Hell for apostates they mean.

Al Jazeera:

Somalia's Union of Islamic Courts has accused neighbouring Ethiopia of shelling a town about 630km north of the capital, Mogadishu.

In response, thousands of enraged Somalis gathered in the capital shouting “Down with America! Down with Ethiopia!”

Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, an Islamic courts leader, told a crowd of more than 10,000 people: "Ethiopian soldiers have massed around Bandiradley and started firing missiles"....

Sheikh Yusuf Mohamed Siyad Indhaade, the national security chairman for the Islamic courts, said: "Our door of jihad is open for all Muslims around the world if the Security Council approves the deployment of foreign troops in Somalia.

"We call on the world to avoid a war that will affect the Horn of Africa."

Sheikh Fu'ad Mohammed Khalaf, the head of the Islamic courts' education department, said: "When the first shot is fired, all schools and universities will be closed and students and teachers will go to jihad."

"The US delegation will be received by our Foreign Relations Chief, Ibrahim Hassan Addow, who is himself an American citizen. Islamists would like to tell the United States in person of its opposition to a US-proposed UN Security Council resolution that would partially lift a 1992 arms embargo on Somalia and authorize regional peacekeepers," the sources quoted Muddey as saying. The lifting of the UN weapons embargo which is being spearheaded by US is a serious security risk, the Spokesman added.

There was no immediate reaction to the invitation from the US embassy in neighbouring Kenya which handles Washington's Somalia portfolio. But a positive response was unlikely as the United States accuses some Islamists of ties with al-Qaida and harbouring suspects in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the sources indicated.

(Via Centcom)

A local Iraqi unpacks medical supplies at the Kirkuk General Hospital. The medical aid, supplied by Coalition Forces, will be distributed amongst the hospital and the local clinics.

Medical supplies in shortage, such as intravenous (IV) bags and burn blankets, were supplied by civil affairs soldiers from the 25th Infantry Division.

“God willing, these supplies will be helpful,” said Ahmed Karman, an Iraqi pharmacist working in the medical warehouse at the Kirkuk General Hospital . “In the past we were forced to rely on the black market for medical supplies.”

Under normal situations the hospital and the clinics receive medical supplies from the Ministry of Health and the Red Cross, the pharmacist said. “Most of our supplies come from Baghdad or Mosul ,” he said. “But everything depends on our ability to get to and from the cities. When there are transportation problems, there are shortages.” The soldiers brought the warehouse burn blankets, bandages, needle disposal containers, IVs and accessories. “Previously we have worked with individual clinics,” said Maj. Paul Beekman, C Company, 402nd Civil Affairs team leader. “But this was the first time we have dropped off medical supplies to the hospital’s warehouse. We are planning another drop off, because we have more to give to them.” After taking a look inside, Beekman said the warehouse looked relatively barren. “I think this drop off will have a huge impact on the hospital and the clinics,” he said. “They have basic supplies like gauze and needles, but things like those are only intended to be used one time. Still (the Iraqi hospital and clinics) are very thankful for any supplies we can get them.”

So what can little old Howie do about it right now? Well, The Jawa Report is a Google News Source and our casa is Centcom’s casa, so to speak. Centcom welcome to Google News.

Photo Credit: U.S. Army , Sgt. Anthony White.

UPDATE 09/19/2007: Al Qaeda in Iraq's Islamic State of Iraq front group release second Troy Gilbert video.

UPDATE: As if on cue, the "Iraqi resistance" (which, in Falluja, means al Qaeda linked organizations) claims they shot the F-16 down with a "Strela" rocket. I speak a little Russian, and strela means "arrow" and is a Soviet made portable SAM. No word on the body of the pilot yet.

UPDATE II: Al Jazeera TV claiming that The Mujahideen Shura Council (MSC) and Mujahideen Army, in a joint statement, claim downing of plane. Odd, since the MSC no longer calls itself the MSC, but rather "The Islamic State of Iraq". The group formerly known as the MSC, though, is an al Qaeda-Salafi-jihadi umbrella organization.
---------
Update III: The Military has identified the missing Pilot as:

The Department of Defense announced today the identity of an airman listed as Duty Status Whereabouts Unknown (DUSTWUN).

Maj. Troy L. Gilbert was the pilot of an Air Force F-16C engaged in support of coalition ground combat operations that crashed approximately 20 miles northwest of Baghdad Nov. 27.

Gilbert is assigned to the 309th Fighter Squadron, Luke Air Force Base, AZ and currently deployed to the 332nd Expeditionary Wing, Balad Air Force Base, Iraq.

We pray for his family and demand his return and that he is treated respectfully.
------------------
The pilot of the F16 which crashed in Iraq on Monday is still missing. A video has emerged taken just after the crash. The video is posted below (warning: graphic). In it, what are described as "locals" by the MSM can be seen disrespecting the plane. They also show the body of the dead pilot. US forces are searching to recover his remains before they can be disrespected any more.

CNN: The Air Force F-16CG fighter jet crashed Monday outside of Baghdad while flying on a low-level "strafing run" -- firing on targets on the ground at a low altitude -- a U.S. military official in Baghdad said….

…A Pentagon source said the plane was operating near Falluja, which is about 30 miles west of Baghdad.

Al-Jazeera, the Middle East-based television news network, has aired video showing what it said was the smoldering wreckage of the F-16. The video shows pieces of the aircraft including the tail which displays the aircraft's number and an "Air Combat Command" logo.

It said the video was shot in Karma, which is about nine miles (15 kilometers) northeast of Falluja.

Mohammed Al-Obeidi, an Iraqi who lives in the nearby town of Karmah, told The Associated Press he saw the jet flying up and down erratically before it nose-dived and exploded in a farm field.

He said other U.S. warplanes rushed to the crash site and were circling around it.

The F-16 was deployed to the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing at Balad Air Base, Iraq.

This is not consistent with a missile shoot down, there would have been no up and down motion. Our enemies in Iraq have used a limited number of Russian SA7 shoulder fired missiles but that would have been obvious. Enemy claims of a missle strike are possible but doubtful.

Note CNN describes the men in the video as locals and not insurgents. But the one places his foot on the plane’s insignia, a show of disrespect. They also run like rabbits at the sound of approaching US warplanes. It also shows what appears to be the body of the pilot, and that he ejected from the plane prior to impact. How and when the pilot’s body was removed is not clear. However one of the men forgets to cover his face so I’d say someone will be looking him up real soon.

The insurgents may have taken the pilot’s body to extract a ransom to raise funds or for propaganda purposes. These terrorist war criminals have been known to murder pilots when captured. Also they have used the body of a dead pilot for propaganda purposes. These actions are war crimes and we should treat the enemy for what they are: terrorists & war criminals.

Video below:

Update 10/05/10 by Howie: Per request of Major Troy Gilbert's family the video has been removed as Troy's body is visible in the video. If you need a copy or the link email Howie.

Note: CNN had the best coverage on this so I had to hold my nose and post it.

Alternative sources : ABC and Reuters

Hat Tips: Northern Watch and Doubletap.

When terrorists hold press conferences and the AP has no problem going to it for a little Q&A and photo op, then, well, I hate to say this, but the terrorists have already won.

Iran's proxy, Hezbollah, is helping to train the death squads of al Sadr's Mahdi Army. File under: no Shiite. The only question is: why send them to Lebanon for training when thousands have already been trained in Iran?

Reuters:

The Iranian-backed group Hezbollah has been training members of the Mahdi Army, the Iraqi Shi'ite militia led by Moktada al-Sadr, The New York Times reported on Monday, quoting a senior U.S. intelligence official.

Between 1,000 and 2,000 fighters from the Mahdi Army and other Shi'ite militias had been trained by Hezbollah in Lebanon, the unidentified official told the newspaper.

A small number of Hezbollah operatives had also visited Iraq to help with training, the official said.

Iran has facilitated the link between Hezbollah and the Shi'ite militias in Iraq while Syrian officials have also cooperated, but there is debate whether it has the blessing of the senior leaders in Syria, the official told the Times, speaking on condition of anonymity.

UPDATE: The AP responds. If the story turns out to be legit, then this means the Iraqi government is more srewed up than even I imagined (and I have quite a vivid imagination). That, or we have some real live propagandists on our hands.
---------------

If you haven't been keeping up with the ongoing saga of bad reporting from Iraq, you should be. Look, things are not going well in a lot of areas in Iraq. But some of these false reports are inflaming violence and are, in fact, a form of blood lible equivalent to the old lies about Jews killing Christian children.

The purpose of allegations of attrocities committed by the US is to justify and inflame violence against us. Is AP reporter Sameer N. Yacoub purposely trying to get US troops killed by repeating accusations that the US opened fire on 11 unnarmed civilians when, in fact, no US troops were even in the area? I don't know.

Dan Riehl finds evidence that Yacoub was a longtime schill of the Hussein regime. He also finds evidence that Yacoub may have contacts within Sunni terror circles. On top of that, Flopping Aces first took note when the AP began to cite as authoritative sources people who were not actually working for the Iraqi agencies that they claimed to be working for.

Taken together, a case might be made that Yacoub and other AP reporters are closet Baathists, Sunni Islamicists, or simply anti-Shia/ anti-American. That they are part of the concerted propaganda war and media jihad declared by terrorists. See for instance our recent post on The Jihad Media Battalion or Greyhawk's great expose on the Global Islamic Media Front if you weren't aware that the terrorists actually admit that there is a propaganda war going on.

However, there is another explanation. This one does not require that Sameer N. Yacoub and others at the AP as part of the jihad, only that they are lazy and perhaps are inclined towards believing the worst about those they see as the 'bad guys'. (In this case the Shia and the US).

For instance, look closely at the report from Sameer N. Yacoub that Dan Riehl digs up. How does Yacoub know what is going on in Fallujah?

Associated Press Television News pictures showed one man beating a charred corpse with a metal pole...

APTN showed the charred remains of three slain men.

As we've said so many time here, the vast majority of reports from Iraq are from the Green Zone. Remember, when Bill from INDC asked CENTCOM how many embedded reporters there were in Iraq the answer was NINE. Nine embedded reporters in a country the size of Iraq.

Not only does this leave the news Baghdad centered, but it also means that Western reporters must gather news by watching local TV, relying on local stringers which may have an agenda in the war (in war, who doesn't have an agenda?), or who may be using their cellphone as a substitute for face-to-face interviews.

The latter method, cellphone interviews with contacts inside the Iraqi police, seems to be how the 'facts' were gathered for the fraudulent story about 6 Sunni being burned to death. As Curt from Flopping Aces revealed, the person cited in the story actually doesn't work for the the Iraqi police. Gateway Pundit finds that neither does another popular AP source. More here.

I'm guessing that the AP reporters never bothered to interview the man in person. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that "Capt. Jamil Hussein" was the one that called the AP. That no one ever bothered to go down to the 'police station' outside of the Green Zone where Hussein 'worked'.

Knowing what we know about how terrorists deliberately lie in order to inflame public opinion against the US, and knowing what we know about Green Zone reporting, then it quite understandable why world opinion is such that many believe that the US military is the moral equivalent of the terrorists we fight.

How low will the terrorists go in their propaganda campaign? Recall that Patterico had debunked a story about a bombing of civilians in Ramadi. In that story, Sunni terrorists and their sympathizers had simply made an event up. Not only had the US not bombed civilians, they hadn't actually bombed any one.

But the facts do not matter to the insurgents. A recent video from the Army of Ansar al Sunnah shown US targets being hit in retribution for the Ramadi bombing.

See if you follow me here. Terrorists lie about an attrocity which never actually happened. Then the same terrorists produce a propaganda video in which there is retaliation for the very same attrocity which they made up in the first place!

However, outside a few bloggers who know better than to believe what the AP and other MSM news outlets print, the rest of the world is left with the impression that the US and the insurgents are basically engaged in the same type of warfare. We kill civilians, they kill civilians. It's all bad.

Worse, Arabs, Muslims, and even Iraqis get the same messages on an almost daily basis. They are left with the impression that the US is no different than the Sunni terrorists or the Shia death squads.

The inevetable consequence of this propaganda is the recruitment of more jihadis to fight. Terrorists are not irrational people. They believe they are the good guys. And as long as the media is quite willing to reify their worldview, then we can never win.

This is not to suggest that things are going well in Iraq. They aren't. It is only to suggest that one of the reasons things are not going well is because the US, from the beginning, never learned how to play the propaganda game. We allowed the MSM to become the tool of our enemies. And by doing so the insurgency has only grown to the point that it is at now.

Don't forget to take Michelle Malkin's poll: Who is the biggest terrorist propaganda tool?

(San Francisco, California) A female psychiatrist with the University of California, Dr. Luan Brizendine, has conducted research which found that women talk three times as much as men.

Based on clinical work and analyses of more than 1,000 scientific studies, Dr. Brizendine's research found that "the simple act of talking triggers a flood of brain chemicals which give women a rush similar to that felt by heroin addicts when they get a high." It's not that way with us guys.

From TheRegister.co.uk:

Dr Luan Brizendine of the University of California, who's published her shock findings in The Female Brain, says the average woman works her way through 20,000 words per day, compared with just 7,000 for the average bloke. She says "women devote more brain cells to talking than men", and cites fundamental differences between male and female brains as the cause.

Now, a logical conclusion would be that males have better listening skills than women. After all, if women are yakking most of the time, they can't be talking to other women since they, too, are yakking. Therefore, women must be talking to men and, as a result, men empirically are more adept at listening since they do it three times as much as women.

On the contrary, says Dr. Brizendine who runs a female "mood and hormone" clinic in San Francisco. According to her psychiatric feminist research, the testosterone in the male brain also shrinks the primary hearing cortex which makes them "deaf" to most logical arguments. However, the shrinkage in one area of the brain is compensated for by the expansion of the areas of the brain which control sexual thought processing.

Notably, not everyone concurs with Dr. Brizendine's assertions since there is no common agreement regarding testosterone's effect on the brain. Personally, I view the contention that women talk too much as about right, but it's ludicrous to label men as "deaf" to logic.

In summary, research found that women talk most of the time while men don't and the reason is that women don't have nasty testosterone to make them deaf and fiendish about sex.

Dr. Brizendine is reported to be affiliated with the University of California but in which capacity is unclear. Internet searches under 'psychobabble studies' and 'feminist psychiatric hooey' failed to return any useful results.

November 27, 2006

A transcript posted at lefty blog Think Progress quotes NBC as factoring in a story from now-discredited source Jamil Hussein about Sunni worshippers being burned alive as a major factor in NBC's decision to declare a "civil war" in Iraq [emphasis added]:

The news from Iraq is becoming grimmer every day. Over the long holiday weekend bombings killed more than 200 people in a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad. And six Sunni men were doused with kerosene and burned alive. Shiite muslims are the majority, but Sunnis like Saddam Hussein ruled that country until the war. Now, the battle between Shiites and Sunnis has created a civil war in Iraq. Beginning this morning, MSNBC will refer to the fighting in Iraq as a civil war — a phrase the White House continues to resist. But after careful thought, MSNBC and NBC News decided over the weekend, the terminology is appropriate, as armed militarized factions fight for their own political agendas. We’ll have a lots more on the situation in Iraq and the decision to use the phrase, civil war.

It's not just NBC. Since the Adnan Hajj/Reutersgate/fauxtography scandal during the Israeli/Hezbollah war led to grave questions about the current state of Western journalism, it has become increasingly obvious that there is something basically wrong with the way the major media companies are covering events in the Middle East.

Via Curt at Flopping Aces who has been continuously updating the story.

Bassem Mroue, whose twisted little number the Jawa Report had back in July when he was caught screeding on his blog against Israel during the Israel/Hezbo conflict, is at it again. OpFor and Malkin have the latest shenanigans from one of the AP's most notorious terrorist-affiliated "stringers".

Here's my Jawa Report / Mein Blogovault July coverage (w/ screenshots) of Mroue's anti-Israel blog (from which he scrubbed damning evidence of his biases as a result of being exposed here, according to the NRO Media blog).

Hey, Bassem! Remember this?

Cockroaches hate sunlight, dontchaknow.

According to what I hear on a daily basis, the Iraq Study Group, headed by James Baker, wants us to bring Syria and Iran in to help with Iraq.

Nov. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predicted the collapse of Israel, the U.S. and Britain, attacking what he called their ``oppressive behavior.''

``The Zionist regime is on a steep downhill towards collapse and disgrace,'' Ahmandinejad told supporters at a rally of Basiji militia forces near Tehran today. In a reference to the U.S. and U.K., he said ``the collapse and crumbling of your devilish rule has started.'' The speech was carried live on state television.

In related news, the ISG wants to bring Russia in to help cure radiation poisoning, Cuba to help with the North Korea situation, and Dr. Rusty Shackleford to help out in case Brangelina have marital problems.

Although it appears that Yusuf Islam, aka Cat Stevens, jumped clean off the peace train, other aging rockers have not.

Beatle John Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, has called for December 8, the anniversary of Lennon's death, to be observed as a day of worldwide healing.

According to Ono, the day of healing is "the day to ask for forgiveness from those who suffered the insufferable."

Uh ... does anyone know what the hell that means?

Because you can't spell jihad without GOOGLE.

An organization calling itself 'The Jihad Media Battalion' (alt, brigade), which is linked to al Qaeda in Iraq, has produced a 26 page guide for using the Google search engine to further the goals of the global jihad. The group was formed to promote the dissemination of al Qaeda and other Salafist jihadi propaganda.

According to the authors of the guide, the purpose of learning how to properly use Google is to

remind our Muslim brothers in general, and the mujahideen in particular, the need to learn the arts of jihad on the internet and Jihad media

Thus, the guide instructs users how to search through the cached pages of the pro-jihad al Jazeera website and the jihadi forums of al Hesbah.

Ironically, "photoshop tutorials" is used by The Jihad Media Battalion as an example of something a would be media jihadi might be interested in looking for on the internet. Which makes us wonder whether or not Adnan Hajj is a member of the battalion?

The jihadis understand that the most important battleground in this war is that of propaganda. Unfortunately, very few of our leaders understand this. Or, if they understand it, are unwilling to fight it.

Who are the Jihad Media Battalion? At one time the group called itself "al Qaeda's Jihad Media Battalion" and they have produced a number of pro-jihadi videos aimed at Western audiences. By "al Qaeda" they meant "al Qaeda in Iraq" since their number one star is the now deceased Abu Musab al Zarqawi.

Their goal is to influence Western perceptions of the war in Iraq and elsewhere. We know this because a good deal of their videos are released with English subtitles.

Circumstantial evidence also points to this 'brigade' being located in Scandanavia. Thus, one of al Qaeda in Iraq's media arms may actually be located in Northern Europe. Which also gives us pause to wonder if Maithem Abdul Razzaq might also be closer to The Hague than he is to Yarmouk, Iraq?

It is not clear whether they are officially part of the al Qaeda organization, or only composed of sympathizers wishing to further the jihadi goals. In either case, they clearly see themselves as part and parcel to the global jihad. They see propaganda as a tool of war, and themselves as warriors.

If they consider themselves combatants in the war on terror, why shouldn't we? If they consider propaganda a weapon, then why shouldn't we? And if they consider themselves soldiers wielding weapons, then why should we not treat them as such?

As a matter of practical policy, it would mean making those involved in the media jihad legitimate military targets. It would also mean treating third parties, such as websites, that distribute such propaganda as aiding and abedding terrorism. If unkowingly, then they should be forced to stop this distribution. If knowingly, then they should be prosecuted for facilitating terror.

Difficult? Yes. Especially when treated as a law enforcement issue. As a military matter of cyber war, fairly easy and quick.

But, when one website is shut down, another will pop up. I know this. But the same is true of terrorists. Killing or jailing one means two more will pop up somewhere else.

It's a lot easier to shut down a website than to kill or jail a terrorist. And the more difficult it is to distribute jihadi propaganda, the less likely it is that new recruits will be found.

Thanks to Tribeca who beat me (by that much) in finding the original file.

See also Curt's expose of the Maithem Abdul Razzaq's '6 Sunnis burned alive' affair, mentioned above, Patterico's debunking of an airstrike the Sunni jihadis have been calling a massacre (they've even begun killing people in 'revenge' for the massacre that wasn't) and Michelle Malkin's excellent post (and many good links) on how the media jihad distorts MSM reporting and affects domestic perceptions of the war on terror.

UPDATE and related: Anonymous residents in Sadr city claim US massacre, military says no one near the place. You. Be. The. Judge.

Following up on the apparently false stories of burning mosques and Sunnis set aflame at prayer in Iraq, propagated by a Jamil Hussein, who claimed to be an Iraqi police captain, Curt at Flopping Aces notes confirmation from CENTCOM (backup site here) that Hussein is a fraud:

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED

Dear Associated Press:

On Nov. 24, 2006, your organization published an article by Qais Al-Bashir about six Sunnis being burned alive in the presence of Iraqi Police officers. This news item, which is below, received an enormous amount of coverage internationally.

We at Multi-National Corps - Iraq made it known through MNC-I Press Release Number 20061125-09 and our conversations with your reporters that neither we nor Baghdad Police had any reports of such an incident after investigating it and could find no one to corroborate the story. A couple of hours ago, we learned something else very important. We can tell you definitively that the primary source of this story, police Capt. Jamil Hussein, is not a Baghdad police officer or an MOI employee. We verified this fact with the MOI through the Coalition Police Assistance Training Team.

Also, we definitely know, as we told you several weeks ago through the MNC-I Media Relations cell, that another AP-popular IP spokesman, Lt. Maithem Abdul Razzaq, supposedly of the city’s Yarmouk police station, does not work at that police station and is also not authorized to speak on behalf of the IP. The MOI has supposedly issued a warrant for his questioning.

I know we have informed you that there exists an MOI edict that no one below the level of chief is authorized to be an Iraqi Police spokesperson. An unauthorized IP spokesperson will get fired for talking to the media. While I understand the importance of a news agency to use anonymous and unauthorized sources, it is still incumbent upon them to make sure their facts are straight. Was this information verified by anyone else? If the source providing the information is lying about his name, then he ought not to be represented as an official IP spokesperson and should be listed as an anonymous source.

Unless you have a credible source to corroborate the story of the people being burned alive, we respectfully request that AP issue a retraction, or a correction at a minimum, acknowledging that the source named in the story is not who he claimed he was. MNC-I and MNF-I are always available and willing to verify events and provide as much information as possible when asked.

Very respectfully,
LT XXXXXX

XXXX X XXXXXXXX
Lieutenant, U.S. Navy
MNC-I Joint Operations Center
Public Affairs Officer

Appears so. Unfortunately, his fellow Muslims also identified him--so they kicked him out of the mosque and threatened him with violence:

Mr. Miftah's letter is here. I suspect this is the part that got him in trouble:

Cowards like al-Zawahri and bin Laden are inciting the ignorant and innocent youths to commit suicide bombings to kill innocent civilians including children, women and the elderly, while they hide in spider holes and caves. They never send their own sons and daughters, born out of half a dozen of their wives, to get killed in the name of Islam. They are themselves hypo crites, cowards, thugs and liars. For 12 years they misappropriated aid received from the U.S. and the West to fight Russia. Now they are ensuring smooth flow of petro dollars from Arab countries in the name of jihad against the West.

Even mosques and Islamic institutions in the U.S. and around the world have become tools in their hands and are used for collecting funds for their criminal acts. Half of the funds collected go into the pockets of their local agents and the rest are sent to these thugs.

They are the reason for branding the peaceful religion of Islam as terrorism. The result, therefore, is in the form of Danish cartoons and remarks/reference by the Pope.

I appeal to the Muslim youth in particular and Muslims of the world in general to rise up and start jihad against the killers of humanity and help the civilized world to bring these culprits to justice and prove that Islam is not a religion of hatred and aggression.

I appeal to the Muslim clerics around the world that, rather than issuing empty fatwas condemning suicide bombing, they should issue a fatwa for the death of such scoundrels and barbarians who have taken more than 4,267 lives of innocent people in the name of Islam and have carried out more than 24 terrorist attacks on civilian installations throughout the world. This does not include the chilling number of deaths because of such activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is well over 250,000.

I appeal to al-Zawahri and his band of thugs to hand themselves over to justice and stop spreading evil and killing innocent humans around the world in the name of Islam. Their time is limited and Muslims of the world will soon rise against them to apprehend them and bring them to justice.

The Nobel Prize noble no more. You really need to read Bruce Bawer's article today. Not just because The Jawa Report is mentioned. Okay, that would be reason enough. Just go read it.

He adds even more to the controversy surrounding the Nobel invitation to Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens) to perform at this year's Peace Prize shindig. Yusuf Islam admits that he supports capital punishment for blasphemers. Some peace train you got there Islam.

Ironically, Yusuf believes that 'the gospels' also call for murdering those that blaspheme. Which is quite absurd. Unless I missed that part about Jesus stoning the blasphemers. Maybe it's somewhere in the back?

The Sun:

There is reason to be dismayed by the Norwegian Nobel Committee's anointing of Yusuf. This is, after all, a man who's been denied entry into America and expelled from Israel.

After the publication of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, he was quoted in the New York Times as saying that if Mr. Rushdie came to his door for help, "I might ring somebody who might do more damage to him than he would like. I'd try to phone the Ayatollah Khomeini and tell him exactly where this man is."

A Web site called the Jawa Report claims that Yusuf has performed at fund-raising events for charities with connections to terrorist organizations. On the same Web site you can also read claims that he is an intimate of the Islamist Omar Bakri Mohammed and of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, who is now serving a life sentence for terrorist activities.

Perhaps the barring of Yusuf from America and his expulsion from Israel were based on misunderstandings; perhaps he was misquoted on Mr. Rushdie, and perhaps the Jawa Report is mistaken.

But Yusuf's own statements on his own Web site are not so easily dismissed. On that Web site he claims that he "never called for the death of Salman Rushdie; nor backed the Fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini," even though he feels that Mr. Rushdie's book "The Satanic Verses" "destroyed the harmony between peoples and created an unnecessary international crisis."

But then he adds the following: "When asked about my opinion regarding blasphemy, I could not tell a lie and confirmed that — like both the Torah and the Gospel — the Qur'an considers it, without repentance, as a capital offense. The Bible is full of similar harsh laws if you're looking for them. However, the application of such Biblical and Qur'anic injunctions is not to be outside of due process of law, in a place or land where such law is accepted and applied by the society as a whole."

What does this mean? It means this: Yusuf is not against the idea of Mr. Rushdie being executed for writing a book. He is simply acknowledging that in Britain and other Western countries, the proper Islamic punishments do not apply. Yet.

Hat tip: Glen Jenvey, who is also the guy who grabbed the audio linking Cat Stevens to terrorists.

Wow. This Muslim in Oklahama wrote a letter to the local paper calling bin Laden a coward. Did he get a pat on the back for it from fellow Muslims? Nope. They kicked him out of the mosque.

Moderates all, I'm sure.

Western Resistance has the details. Hat tip: Joel

November 26, 2006

Good news!

(Moscow, Russia) The Al Qaeda terrorist leader in the North Caucasus, Abu Hafs (aka Abu Khavs and Abu Havs), was killed in a four-hour gun battle with police in the Dagestani town of Khasavyurt, close to the Chechen border.

From RIA Novosti:

The Federal Security Service (FSB) confirmed Sunday the elimination of Al Qaeda's emissary and the head and financier of terrorists in Russia's south.

"On November 26, in a special operation by Russia's Federal Security Service in Khasavyurt in the Republic of Dagestan, Al Qaeda's chief representative in the North Caucasus known to all security services in the world as a very dangerous international terrorist, the actual head and financier of bandit formations in Chechnya, the national of Jordan, Abu Hafs, was killed," the FSB said.

The incoming Chairman of the powerful House Ways & Means Committee and a Deputy Majority Whip, Charlie Rangel (D-NY), reiterated the point that US troops are stupid today on Fox News Sunday.

Wow. He actually believes that. Or maybe it was just another botched joke? Right.

After putting up stats showing that US military recruits are less likely to be African Americans, come from poorer neigborhoods, or be high school dropouts, the question asked to Rangel was this: Isn't the volunteer Army better educated and more well to do than the general population?

Rangel answers:

Of course not. I want to make it abundantly clear: if there’s anyone who believes that these youngsters want to fight, as the Pentagon and some generals have said, you can just forget about it. No young, bright individual wants to fight just because of a bonus and just because of educational benefits. And most all of them come from communities of very, very high unemployment. If a young fella has an option of having a decent career or joining the army to fight in Iraq, you can bet your life that he would not be in Iraq.

My experience has been that returning soldiers are generally smarter and harder working than the average college student. By. A. Long. Shot.

It's not even close. If I had a chance to just teach returning Marines, soldiers, sailors, or airmen I'd do it in a heartbeat. They are that good.

Look, no one goes in to the military because it provides them with the opportunity to kill people. Yes, many join because it helps get them into college. But these aren't children. They know what they are getting into.

To think of them as anything other than fully competent adults is an insult to our men and women in uniform.

Charlie Rangel.

UPDATE: You want stats, we got stats! When we aim, we aim to please.

Yet another wrong house no-knock raid on another elderly woman's house.

At least they didn't kill this one...

h/t : Glenn

November 25, 2006

News.com.au:A YEMENI court has sentenced a journalist to a year in jail for reprinting Danish satirical caricatures of Islam's Prophet Mohammed which provoked outrage among Muslims around the world earlier this year. The court convicted Kamal al-Aalafi, editor-in-chief of the al-Rai al-Aam, of offending Prophet Mohammed and also ordered the independent weekly to close for six months, his lawyer Khaled al-Ansi said.

The cartoons, one of which depicted the Prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban, first appeared in a Danish daily in September 2005, sparking protests early in 2006 in which more than 50 people were killed in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

The editors of two other Yemeni publications, the Yemen Observer and al-Hurriya, are facing similar charges though President Ali Abdallah Saleh has promised to scrap jail terms for journalists convicted of violations in publishing.

Aalafi says that he reprinted the cartoons, seen by many Muslims as blasphemous, to raise awareness among Yemenis about what had appeared in the Danish press, not to insult Muslims.

Fatwa?

Yeah, Yeah, we know, "Death to America!" Stick a sock in it bub.

Hat Tip: Big White Infidel.

That's right. You heard it hear first. Trojans beat the Irish. Give or take 3 points.

This time we'll win without Reggie Bush's nudge.

And, as long as we're making predictions, I'm thinking I might get myself an early Christmas present. Better yet, maybe a once overzealous and now soon to be depressed Michigan fan has a ticket that he will no longer be needing?

But if I'm going to go to the game, I'm going to need some cash. Mostly for the brauts. I can eat a lot of brauts. Two words: Tip. Jar.

Oh, and what was all that 'hook 'em horns' stuff in the last set of comments about college football? Bwahahaha!

A big shout out is also necessary to the LSU Tigers. Yeah, I know the LSU victory over Arkansas doesn't help Southern Cal in the strength of schedule area.....but it feels so nice!

But I will be crossing my fingers for the Razorbacks come the SEC championship game. Just to shut all the SEC fans up. Shut up already!

I have nothing to say about that one game. You. Won't. Get. The. Satisfaction.

But, heh!

And just to make this relevant to all of you "this has nothing to do with the war on terror" naysayers: If USC loses the terrorists have already won.

Think about it.

Update by Vinnie: I don't need that satisfaction. I'm going to this, and I didn't have to beg for donations to get there. Peasant.

UPDATE by Rusty: I hate being wrong. Mwuhahahahahahaha!!!

Next up from the Palestinian freedom fighters, the toy we all wish we had as a kid: C-4 Play-Doh!

Palestinian terrorists are busy building stuffed-animal bombs, yet the international community continues to believe that Israel is a terrorist state? What a bizarro Orwellian world we live in. Black = white, war = peace, intentionally murdering civilians = the right of self determintation, killing terrorists = terrorism. Will the UN demand an investigation into Palestinian terrorists violating the Geneva Conventions? Right.

JPost:

Overnight Friday, IDF troops and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) operatives uncovered a number of baby dolls filled with explosive charges in addition to suicide bombing belts during an raid on an explosives laboratory in Nablus....

Among the materials seized in the raid were sacks ready to be filled with explosives, 40 liters of acid, and a variety of explosives-rigged stuffed animals. The lab was destroyed in a controlled explosion.

In other let's give these people a state related news: Hamas threatens violence unless they get a state. Ironical.

Suicide granny said to have told grandkids: you'll shoot your eye out, kid.

Update by Howie: An IDF video of the discovery of a bomb hidden in a childs toy.

Not everyone pays attention to the reader comments. For those you who do, you may have noticed a wide variety of commenters here at The Jawa Report. I've heard the comments section described as the "Mos Eisley Cantina" of The Jawa Report. You can certainly find all manner of "species" there. At times, those who yell the loudest and are the most abusive have their voices heard most clearly. It can be an uncivilized place--even by local standards. On the bright side, only the Sith Jawas and their padawans carry weapons, so if you can handle some yelling and a little shoving, you'll probably get in and out in one piece.

I've noticed there's a certain group of Jawa commenters for whom the answer to every problem seems to be to "nuke Mecca," to nuke this or that Arab city and/or otherwise kill massive numbers of Muslims in some genocidal campaign. To my knowledge, none of the commenters offering these solutions have ever been able to explain how this plan is supposed to work out in practice to our benefit. I suspect there's a reason for that. I suspect that "nuke 'em" is a knee-jerk, emotional reaction, and little (if anything) more than that. Little (if any) thought given to winning the long-term conflict. Little (if any) thought given to a long-term strategy.

If you really think nuking Mecca, Riyadh, Cairo, Beirut, Damascus, Islamabad or all of the above is a good strategy for winning this conflict, then you really ought to do the rest of us the courtesy of laying out what you expect to happen in the aftermath of the suggested nuclear holocaust and why. If you haven't really considered what happens in the aftermath, then you shouldn't be surprised when others are disinclined to take the idea seriously.

Tales of burning mosques, like this one from Reuters were apparently fabricated by Sunnis and swallowed whole by a gullible world press.

As well, the sensationalized accounts of six Sunnis being burned alive by Shiites are unconfirmed, and all appear to come from the same source, police Captain Jamil Hussein, whose entire career appears to be issuing statements about Shia violence against Sunnis. Curt at Flopping Aces has researched Hussein and found a remarkable number of atrocity stories for which he is the source.

From the Multi-National Force's Iraqi Freedom website:

BAGHDAD — Contrary to recent media reporting that four mosques were burned in Hurriya, an Iraqi Army patrol investigating the area found only one mosque had been burned in the neighborhood...

...An alleged attack on a fourth mosque remains unconfirmed. The patrol was also unable to confirm media reports that six Sunni civilians were allegedly dragged out of Friday prayers and burned to death. Neither Baghdad police nor Coalition forces have reports of any such incident.

It's official: war between Ethiopia and the African Taliban of the Islamic Courts Union of Somalia. The Somalian Islamists have declared jihad against Ethiopia and Ethiopia has sent troops into Somalia.

We have been warning the world about the rise of the Islamic Courts Union for some time now. The dhimmis of the European Union and the US State Department have repeated the mistakes of Afghanistan and some even welcomed the Islamists to power by declaring that at least the group would bring stability.

But stability at what price? The same stability bought by years of ignoring the growing threat of Taliban Afghanistan.

Many of the so-called warlords of Somalia, such as Mohammed Farah Aidid, were intimately connected to the global jihad. It was Osama bin Laden's succesful support of Aidid that seems to have convinced him and many of his followers that 'the Shiekh' possessed mystical foretelling powers.

It seems that both the Europeans and the State Department have awakened to the threat posed by the Salafi jihadis in Somalia. In our public statements we hope for a diplomatic solution, but privately, it seems, we know with whom our collective fates lie. We hope that the State Department's continued calls for diplomacy are simply tactical. Perhaps they believe we can win by keeping the war a matter internal to Somalia? We cannot imagine that they belive their own press.

Like the Afghani Taliban before them, the Islamic Courts Union declares that all they want is peace, stability, and prosperity. But in deeds they are receiving funding from Islamists around the world --including reliable reports that al Qaeda and other foreign jihadis have flocked to the country-- and they are aready exporting jihad. If Somalia completely falls to the Islamic Courts Union it will become a haven for international terrorism and Salafi jihad.

That is why the US military has been quietly aiding the Ethiopian and other governments in the Horn of Africa. The US has a large presence in the neighboring country of Djibouti.

The US military has recently helped flood relief efforts in Ethiopia. The US has also been quietly training the Ethiopian military for the fight to come with the Somalian Islamists.

US military observers are also in neighboring Kenya.

Now, for the first time, the Ethipian government is admitting that it has sent troops into Somalia. Civilians are clearing out as the battlefield is prepared to go from small to large-scale war.

The question remains, though, whether or not the war can be contained in Somalia? The African Taliban of Somalia are being supported by Eritrea. Eritrea and Ethiopia have been involved in several hot wars recently and many consider the present Somalian conflict to be a proxy war between the two states.

These analysts are wrong only inasmuch as they fail to comprehend the global dimensions of the conflict. Somalia is the battleground for a proxy war, but not simply between Eritrea and Ethiopia--it is a proxy war between global Islamists forces trying to establish a foothold for the future caliphate against the West.

This explains Iran's involvement in aiding the Somali Islamists. Even though they come from different branches of Islam, the Sunni Islamic Courts Union and the Shia Mullahs of Iran share a hatred for secularism, liberalism, and the West. Further, they share the goal of sharia and the Caliphate. Where they part company is over who's sharia and where the Caliph should live--Tehran or Baghdad?

Such long-term differences are easily overlooked when short term interests are congruent. The Iranians help Sunni groups such as Hamas and the Islamic Court's Union in efforts to defeat common enemies and win future influence.

This is The Clash of Civilizations. We can hope and pretend that such a global clash does not exist, but it does. This is reality. Why is this clash being fought in Somalia? Simple, because Ethiopia is bordered by Muslim states. As Huntington said, in his prophetic book that now seems like it was published an eternity ago: the borders of Islam are bloody.

Ethiopia can wait for the Islamic Courts Union to solidify power and then begin to export jihad or it can go to Somalia and fight. And for the US, we have the same options: wait for another bin Ladenist state to emerge and then suffer the consequences or choose strategic allies now and make sure they win.

Unfortunately, it's not always easy to see which allies have a chance and which don't. In the present conflict, the CIA already picked the wrong horses by supplying arms to Somali clan leaders who were easily beaten by the jihadis. We already tried to contain the fight to Somalians fighting other Somalians, but failed.

Now open war looms. The US should make it clear which side of this conflict we are on. We stand with Ethiopia and Somalians who are terrified of the coming sharia state. A state which outlaws music and proscribes the death penalty for any Muslim who should dare renounce his religion.

Supporting Ethiopia is not only the right thing to do, it is also in our national interest.

Several press accounts below. I'd urge you to notice that the African Taliban have now declared jihad, or holy war against Ethiopia. I have a feeling they don't mean an inner struggle kind of jihad. Both sides are now sending troops to the front lines and are digging in. Be skeptical of numbers, though, as eye witness accounts are generally inflated by civilians in fear of the coming conflict.

The Star (South Africa):

Ethiopia has completed preparations for war with neighbouring Somalia's Islamist movement, alongside faltering peace efforts.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said yesterday that the Islamists, who have declared holy war on Ethiopian troops deployed to Somalia to protect the weak internationally backed Somali government, represented a "clear and present danger" to his country.

Less than a hour after Meles' announcement, the Islamists gathered in a war council in Mogadishu and said they were ready to defend Somalia from invasion by a "reckless and war-thirsty" Ethiopia.

"This group represents a clear threat to Ethiopia," Meles told lawmakers in Addis Ababa....

With a large ethnic Somali population, Ethiopia fears radicalisation of its sizeable Muslim minority by the Islamists, who have imposed strict Sharia law in areas they control.

Somalia's Islamic Courts said on Saturday that it had poured thousands of fighters and heavy equipment into frontline positions as they braced for clashes with the weak government and its Ethiopian allies.

The courts said it had reinforced areas outside the government seat of Baidoa, about 250km northwest of Mogadishu, anticipating imminent attack and accusing neighbouring Ethiopia of sending air power. ....

The courts have declared holy war on Ethiopian troops in Somalia protecting the transitional government.

Robow said his fighters had full confidence in winning the battle against the "forces of the devil"....

Fighters from all sides are encamped at positions less than 20km apart, near the court-held towns of Mode Mode and Burhakaba areas.

WaPo:

Hundreds of Ethiopian troops arrived to protect Somalia's government Friday as witnesses said a powerful Islamic militia massed nearby, raising concerns of clashes between the two forces.

More than 130 trucks carried the Ethiopians into Baidoa, the only town controlled by the government, residents said....

Residents as far away as Bur Hakaba _ 40 miles east of Baidoa _ were evacuating.

"We are seeing strong military movements from both sides," said Mohamud Ahmed, a father of six. "We don't believe we will be able to continue living in our town peacefully."

Ethiopia said on Saturday it did not need the blessing of major ally, the United States, or any country to defend itself from any threat from neighbouring Somalia where Islamists have launched a holy war.

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi pledged to explore all means to peacefully resolve the bitter standoff between his country, which backs the interim government in Somalia, and the Islamists, who control much of southern Somalia.

The Islamists have declared jihad against Ethiopia, accusing it of sending troops into Somalia to prop up the government. "It is our country that is being attacked. Naturally, we do not seek any light, green, red or yellow from anyone to protect ourselves," Meles told a news conference.

"If, and when, we are convinced that all options of resolving the invasion through peaceful means are exhausted, only then we may act to respond in kind," he said, adding the Islamists had trained, armed and smuggled hundreds of Ethiopian rebels into the country.

Meles said he had explained Ethiopia's position on Somalia to Western powers, who have scrambled to respond to the Somali crisis since Islamists seized Mogadishu in June in a direct challenge to the Addis Ababa-backed interim government. "Both Brussels and Washington appear to believe that any military response on our part might be counter-productive, saying that dialogue is the best way forward," Meles said.

"We too agree that dialogue is the best way, nevertheless as the direct victims of the aggression, we feel we might be forced at some stage to respond with force." Senior Islamist Sheikh Sharif Ahmed has accused Washington of giving Ethiopia the go-ahead to fight his movement.

CAMP LEMONIER, Djibouti, , Oct. 22, 2006 – Doing good here in the Horn of Africa is a key to ensuring that terrorism doesn't gain a foothold in the region, the commander of Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa told visiting civilian leaders yesterday.....

"The conditions out there to support terrorism are ripe," Hunt told the group of business, academic and community leaders. "Our job is to diffuse that situation."

As Hunt sees it, the United States and its coalition partners have two basic choices. "Africa is the new frontier that we need to engage with now, or we are going to end up doing it later in a very negative way," he said....

Hunt calls this work "phase zero" of warfare, aimed at preventing the conflict before it starts. "What we're trying to do here is change the conditions and the environment people exist in to keep that kind of conflict from happening," he said.

Part of those efforts goes toward ensuring host nation militaries have the capabilities they need to defend their governments. Special operations forces here travel throughout the region, teaching not just military skills, but also about human rights and the law of armed conflict-relatively foreign concepts for regional militaries, Hunt told the group....

A visit to the CJFT-HOA headquarters here and communities in the region reveals the faces of the other, less traditional warriors in the fight against terrorism here.

They're doctors like Army Lt. Col. Dan Shoor, who goes out with his team into local villages to treat patients and share medical expertise with local care providers. They're civil affairs specialists like Army Spc. Eric Hayes, an Army Reservist from Florida who coordinates with local officials to identify community needs and help come up with a plan to address them. They're Seabees like Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Dennis Ryan, who's building a dormitory at a local school so young girls from distant villages can get an education.

Through these efforts, members of CJTF-HOA say they're establishing trust and building relationships that not only improve people's lives, but also discourage terrorist ambitions.

"We're about rebuilding countries that need help and building a partnership with the U.S.," said Hayes. "We're winning hearts and minds, hands down. So if al Qaeda were to move into this area, the people here would choose to side with us."

"You don't want another Afghanistan, with (terrorists) coming in here," said Navy Petty Officer Tensely Worthy, who supports law enforcement and security operations here. "We're here showing the people here a better life, helping them become self-sufficient and helping them realize that you don't have to succumb to terrorism," he said.

Yeah, I realize Vinnie already covered this below, but his whole "African-American African Taliban" thing is a kind of inside joke that I'm afraid few people get. It comes from a reader's comment.

The loons from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals mistakenly targeted an Alaska church for harassment because they didn't realize that the "animals" in the church's manger scene were actually humans in costume. PETA was happy though, to use the mistake to highlight the hideous abuse of manger scene animals:

"Those animals are subject to all sorts of terrible fates in some cases," Vergerio said. "Animals have been stolen and slaughtered, they've been raped, they've escaped from the nativity scenes and have been struck by cars and killed. Just really unfathomable things have happened to them."

PETA: people with too much time on their hands, and too few brain cells to use it wisely.

Previous PETA hysteria: Mommy and Daddy are murderers.

How to take over the campus "chapel" for Islam:

Step 1 : Have the Christian chapel converted to an "interfaith" chapel

Step 2 : Remove the cross.

Step 3 : Fill the "interfaith" chapel with Islamic decorations.

Step 4 : Permanently book the "interfaith" chapel for Muslim prayers.

The New York Times reported recently that an Iraqi-Canadian citizen is part of the leadership of the Sunni Arab militants fighting in Iraq. He's identified as Abu Abdul Rahman, a Wahabbi fundamentalist. Some jihad websites have even named Rahman as a possible contender for Al Qaeda leader in Mesopotamia, filling the position once held by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Unfortunately, nobody in Canada has ever heard of Abu Abdul Rahman. Canadian Security Intelligence Service keeps track of numerous terrorists and commanders under a variety of aliases, but not anyone known as Abu Abdul Rahman. Following up, a spokesman said the Department of Foreign Affairs would be "looking into the newspaper report" to find out why nobody knows what's going on.

Interestingly, this case supports the contention that citizens must leave Canada for a foreign country to make names for themselves. And even after they do, they may not be recognized in Canada.

Indeed.

The jihad doesn't care how about how long you stood in line to get the PS3. It just keeps chugging along.

Madrassas will surely follow:

BANGKOK, Thailand - Hundreds of schools in Thailand's restive south will shut their doors in response to increasingly vicious attacks by suspected Muslim insurgents against teachers and schools, a regional education representative said.

The closure, which begins Monday, affects all 336 primary and secondary schools in the province of Pattani, where two teachers were shot and killed by suspected insurgents in the past two days. In one of the killings, attackers shot a school principal Friday, and then set his body on fire.

"Teachers can't bear what has happened," said Bunsom Thongsriprai, president of Teachers' Association in Pattani. "They are paranoid, worried and afraid." He said the schools will reopen when teachers feel safe.

November 24, 2006

Quick question:

Some folks have expressed their opinion that we shouldn't concern ourselves with Darfur while we have problems at home or worse disasters elsewhere around the world.

How is this different from saying that we shouldn't have invaded Iraq because we didn't take military action against more flagrant proliferation violators, such as North Korea, or depose more despotic regimes, such as Zimbabwe?

There's evidently a more subtle point I am missing that animates this flavor of critique, and I'm just trying to better understand that point of view.

Chechen jihadi forgets to clean his gun. Allahu akhbar! (There's a warning, but the vid is not really graphic)

A Palestinian grandmother has become the latest smithereen commando:

JEBALIYA, Gaza Strip - A 64-year-old Palestinian grandmother blew herself up near Israeli troops sweeping through northern Gaza on Thursday, and eight other Palestinians were killed in a day of clashes and rocket fire.

The militant Hamas, which is in charge of the Palestinian government, claimed responsibility for the suicide attack and identified the bomber as Fatma Omar An-Najar. Her relatives said she was 64 — by far the oldest of the more than 100 Palestinian suicide bombers who have targeted Israelis over the past six years.

Pic of the sexagenarian smithereen commando.

Update: Thanks to Howie for uploading video of this fool droning on mindlessly about the glory of murdering people in Allah's name.

Several press release from the al Qaeda umbrella organization which masquerades as a shadow government in Iraq proudly proclaim that the 'mujahidin' have killed a number of women. The Islamic State of Iraq (formerly known as The Mujahideen Shura Council) claimed over a hundred attacks in the Baghdad area in November.

These women were all murdered in the Baghdad area. As always, the Salafi jihadis claim the women were 'executed' for a number of crimes. All of them seem to be Shia women working in some capacity or another for the Iraqi government or are suspected of being 'spies'. If you cook or clean for Western troops, you are a 'spy'.

Of course, there is no evidence any of these women were anything other than innocent victims. It is also important to note that the Islamists who murdered them are publicly bragging about it in a press release. Yes, the terrorists have press releases. They even have an 'Information Minister' and a public relations arm called the Alfajr Media Center:

Assassinating a spy called Ma’souma Jaffar, she worked for the interior affairs holding Iranian citizenship, and her husband Abd Hussien Abdul Allah, on Saturday 11-11-2006 all praise and gratitude be to Allah.

Assassinating a spy-woman worked for the Crusaders, in Falak in Ald-Dora, on Saturday 6-11-2006 all praise and gratitude be to Allah.

Assassinating a spy-woman worked for the Crusaders, in Alexandria, on Thursday 2-11-2006, all praise and gratitude be to Allah.

Assassinating a spy-woman worked for the interior affairs, in Ald-Dora, on Friday 10-11-2006, all praise and gratitude be to Allah.

Liquidation of two interior affairs spies-women in Ald-Dora, on Wednesday 8-11-2006, all praise and gratitude be to Allah.

That's what one trustee of the Orange Coast College system believes. I have a nephew that goes to one of the OCC Community Colleges. The trustees stopped the Pledge of Allegiance, the students voted it back in. I hope my nephew was one of those pushing to reverse the lunacy.

Daily Pilot:

Trustee Coyotl Tezcatlipoca, who voted along with Ball against the final decision, said he had a personal contention with the American flag but believed that others should be allowed to salute it during the public comment session.

"That represents genocide to me, and I'm not going to pledge allegiance," he said, in a statement that drew a number of angry retorts from the audience.

Because the mainstream media is invested in propagating only bad news from the War on Terror, here's the CENTCOM roundup of stories the mainstream media refuses to run.

FOUR TERRORISTS KILLED, SIX SUSPECTS DETAINED

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Coalition Forces killed four terrorists and detained six suspected terrorists during a mission to disrupt an al-Qaida vehicle-borne improvised explosive device cell in Tarmiyah Friday.

As ground forces made their way toward the targeted building, they received enemy fire from the vicinity of a mosque. Coalition Forces returned fire, killing four terrorists, and continued toward the targeted building.

At the targeted building, the ground forces detained two suspected terrorists. After they left the building, they returned to the vicinity of the mosque and six individuals, including two wounded men, exited the building.

Four suspected terrorists were detained and the two wounded men were treated by ground forces on scene. They were then medically evacuated to a nearby military medical center.

KABUL , Afghanistan — Afghan and Coalition forces captured eleven terrorists during an operation early this morning on a compound near the village of Badal Kalay in Khowst Province.

Credible intelligence indicated the compound was a refuge for terrorists operating in Khowst Province. During the search of the compound, terrorist propaganda was found.

Eleven men were taken into custody during the operation. Several women and children were present within the compound and all were unharmed.

BALAD, Iraq – Coalition Forces killed a terrorist and detained two suspected terrorists Wednesday evening during a raid in Balad.

The raid targeted an individual associated with a suspected senior leader of the Iraqi al-Qaida network.

As Coalition Forces approached the target area, they engaged and killed an armed terrorist. Coalition Forces continued their mission and detained two suspected terrorists armed with weapons and ammunition.

BAGHDAD – Special Iraqi Army Forces, with Coalition advisers, conducted a raid Nov. 23 in Sadr City, Baghdad to capture a kidnapping and murder cell leader reported to have knowledge of the whereabouts of a missing US Soldier and who is allegedly responsible for attacks against Iraqi civilians.

The missing Multi-National Division-Baghdad Soldier was abducted in Baghdad on Oct. 23.

Five suspected cell members were detained by Iraqi forces.

A vehicle displaying hostile intent was identified as an immediate threat to Iraqi forces. Iraqi forces fired on the vehicle to neutralize the threat.

BAGHDAD – Special Iraqi Army Forces, with Coalition advisers, conducted a raid Nov. 23 in Baghdad to capture an insurgent facilitating the movement of foreign fighters who kidnap and murder Iraqi civilians and conduct attacks against Coalition Forces.

Iraqi forces entered a mosque in the Samir neighborhood where the insurgent and other suspected insurgents were reportedly located. Iraqi forces detained 6 suspects. No Coalition Forces entered the mosque.

Iraqi and enemy forces exchanged small arms fire, resulting in one enemy wounded. The wounded person was treated and placed into Iraqi Police custody.

An unknown ignition source caused a fire to start in a trash pile located next to mosque.

BAGHDAD – Special Iraqi Security Forces, with Coalition advisers, captured four insurgents Nov. 23 in a raid in the Al Doura district, Baghdad who are allegedly responsible for improvised explosive device attacks and other attacks against Iraqi civilians and Iraqi Police.

The insurgents are linked to Al Qaeda in Iraq and are known to harbor terrorist fighters in the area and conduct attacks against IP and Coalition Forces checkpoints.

Three additional suspected insurgents were detained by Iraqi forces.

Charles suggests that everyone read the review at the Huffington Post, if for no other reason than to experience the full measure of vitriol the leftists visit on their own heretics.

As you all probably know, conservatives are more charitable than leftists. How better to exercise those charitable habits than to support causes that promote freedom in the world?

Michelle has some suggestions for giving:

*A group from one of my favorite, indispensable blogs, My Pet Jawa, is headed to Darfur to film footage for a documentary. They're asking for donations. Please help them out.

*Bill Ardolino of INDCJournal, one of the best citizen journalists on the 'net, is headed to Iraq next month as an embed. He's being sponsored by The Washington Examiner, but could use help covering some of the initial expenditures of the trip. Please help out here.

*Bill Roggio, another pioneer, is returning to Iraq. He deserves your support, too.

*Operation Gratitude sends CARE packages to the troops. Give, give, give.

A $250 token scholarship, whose recipients must be at least one quarter Caucasian, is generating more anger and "buzz" than its creators expected: From ABC:

All the media attention is focused on a $250 Caucasian Achievement and Recognition Scholarship offered by Mroszczyk and the BU chapter of the College Republicans. Applicants must have a cumulative grade point average of 3.2 or higher; they must write two essays; and, here's the kicker, they must be at least one-quarter Caucasian.

The application itself offers an explanation: "We believe that racial preferences in all their forms are perhaps the worst form of bigotry confronting America today."

According to Mroszczyk, his group is offering the scholarship to point out "how ridiculous it is to have any sort of racially based scholarship."

Mroszczyk also points out that there are many economically disadvantaged whites who would be helped by scholarships. Unmentioned in the ABC story is a trend among young people, even those who view themselves as liberals, who have no memories of the racial oppression and civil rights struggles of the fifties and sixties, to view minority students as being given preferential treatment. Many see Affirmative Action programs such as minorities-only scholarships as counter-productive holdovers from that era, which promote mediocrity and maintain racial divisions.

Via Stop the ACLU.

The lovely and talented Pim's Ghost, blogging at "What Would Charles Martel Do?" features an interesting essay highlighting Hilaire Belloc and his writings on Islam:

Millions of modern people of the white civilization—that is, the civilization of Europe and America—have forgotten all about Islam. They have never come in contact with it. They take for granted that it is decaying, and that, anyway, it is just a foreign religion which will not concern them. It is, as a fact, the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had, and may at any moment become as large a menace in the future as it has been in the past.

November 23, 2006

After the Democrats won in November, I wondered just how long it would take for their influence to see real world results.

NYT Via AP: BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Sunni Muslim insurgents blew up five car bombs and fired mortars into Baghdad's largest Shiite district Thursday, killing at least 161 people and wounding 257 in a dramatic attack that sent the U.S. ambassador racing to meet with Iraqi leaders in an effort to contain the growing sectarian war.

Shiite mortar teams quickly retaliated, firing 10 shells at Sunni Islam's most important shrine in Baghdad, badly damaging the Abu Hanifa mosque and killing one person. Eight more rounds slammed down near the offices of the Association of Muslim Scholars, the top Sunni Muslim organization in Iraq, setting nearby houses on fire.

Two other mortar barrages on Sunni neighborhoods in west Baghdad killed nine and wounded 21, police said late Thursday.

Good job Democrats. You've really turned things around for Iraq.

Update: I've er, uh, received a lot of feedback over this post. See email below the fold.

Hat Tip: Bluto

I just want to thank you for calling out that stupid bitch NoFear over at Jawa. I'm so sick of the bullshit comments she's been posting (along with PD, but he's another story). They kill me how they're so proud of them damn selves for attempting to interrupt the forum. And they act like they're so morally upstanding and offended when they're called names, but if you go check NewsHounds, they react the same way to anyone who disagrees with their points of view. So, they're liars and hypocrites. I tried to call them out twice and expose them for what they are, but I'm not so good at it. So, thank you.

I may not agree with everything that goes up on Jawa, and you and I have
disagreed once, but I go into it with an open mind. I'm a proud
conservative and a proud American. It's a shame that people aren't proud
of their country anymore.

Thank you, for being a proud American and for helping expose the bullshit.

One of TJR’s founding fathers tears into the border security issue. I’ll just get out of his way.

See Dubya at Junkyard Blog: There is a principled, intellectually honest case to be made for increasing the security of America's borders. Part of it is pretty obvious to those of us aware of the simple need to keep terrorists, criminals, and drugs out. And, um, the freakin' Mexican Army. There is a more abstract point, though also a critical one, about whether America has the guts to act like a sovereign nation and do what sovereign nations do….

…But most of them are simply people who disagree with me--they are people who have thought about the issue and weigh the risks and costs differently than I do. They're loyal Americans and they want what's best for the country. They just happen to be wrong about it--and, I think, dangerously so.

I'm talking to you, Tom Tancredo. And I'm talking to you, Hot Air commenters. You guys are waving around the link to this government site like a bunch of "No Blood For Oil" Moonbats pointing to a PNAC memo. It proves just about as much, too. Oooh, they have a website! So I guess that means I'm going to get issued my mandatory sombrero any day now.

I'm even talking to you, Andy McCarthy, who ought to know better. The Council on Foreign Relations drafted a paper saying something ridiculous? Dude, that's what they do. Get together and draft dumb internationalist ideas, and squint and frown and wear pinstripes.

Look, the case for tight borders sells itself. It sold me. You don't need to believe in these goofy Bilderberger conspiracy theories to realize that knowing who and what comes over the border--and stopping some of it--is probably a good idea. Spouting this hogwash makes the entire movement look like a bunch of nuts.

Also See Hot Air and Blue Crab Boulevard.

Judging by the newly arrived décor I am seeing in storefronts, the holiday season is evidently upon us once again. As you already know, two friends and I are going to spend our holiday in Chad to film footage for a documentary (Christmas in Darfur), capture the feel of conditions on the ground, and interview the extraordinary people who have given and risked so much to lend a hand in a portion of the world that needs all the help it can get. I would like to thank those who have already contributed for their help and generosity in getting us started towards our goals.

Our estimated budget for this project will run about $20,000, and we’ve been successful in scraping, begging, and borrowing enough to cover airfare and our basic film equipment. This does, however, leave us at something of a disadvantage with respect to providing the remainder of the gear we’ll need to do this both competently and safely, not to mention funds we'll need on the ground.

So, I would like to ask for you or anybody you know to lending a helping hand. The main problem we’re facing is uncertainty. If we were certain that this was suicidally stupid, we wouldn’t be going. If we were certain there was no risk, we wouldn’t be asking for help. But one can hedge against uncertaintiy in risk through insurance, liquidity, preparedness, equipment, and all of these cost money.

You can show your support to the great and noble cause of my personal safety by clicking the PayPal button below. But in general, any way you can help us will be most appreciated. If you possess a quarter million frequent flier miles that need to be used by the end of the year, then we can devote our resources to basic equipment and tools of the trade.

All I Want For Christmas (in Darfur)...

CHRISTMAS IN DARFUR DONATIONS ABOVE.

The Paypal and Amazon donation buttons in the sidebar and in the comments below are for donations to help keep this website up. The Paypal button ABOVE is to help make the Darfur documentary.

It's somewhat disturbing to me to learn that everything I thought about Thanksgiving is apparently wrong. However, thanks to a report today in The Arizona Republic, I'm now aware of the academically accurate version of the story of Thanksgiving.

From AZCentral.com:

Teaching about Thanksgiving can be fraught with problems anyway, given that there are so many misconceptions about the holiday.

Teachers no longer rely only on textbooks but use the wealth of information available through the Internet, historical research and the media. They show children first-person accounts, photographs and artifacts.

First-graders in Luz Campos' class at Herrera School in Phoenix learn about Thanksgiving as part of their ongoing study of Native Americans, researching how the Wampanoag Indians lived compared with other Native people.

"We're teaching more from a historical and more-balanced perspective," says Elie Gaines, a first-grade teacher at Grayhawk Elementary School in Scottsdale. "Because of the multicultural emphasis over the last 10 or 15 years, people are much more aware that there is more than just one side of the story."

"There were good things that the Pilgrims learned from the Indians, and there were good things that the Indians learned from the Pilgrims," Campos says.

"They exchanged ideas and things. They taught each other."

Children also may learn in school that the Wampanoags lived in wigwams instead of tepees and that celebrating the harvest, as they did that first Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims, was a regular tradition.

In third- and fourth-grades, teachers are asked to tackle the more difficult subject of how exploration affected the Indians, of how they lost their lands and their way of life.

"We don't want to set the stage that everything was wonderful and perfect," Warren says.

She taught third- and fourth-graders in Sacaton on the Gila River Reservation for more than 25 years. She understands that some Native American groups consider Thanksgiving to be a day of mourning.

Surely, thanks must be given to the Arizona public school system for assuring that the true story of Thanksgiving is told. Unfortunately, the Republic report only came out today so many people will likely sit down for Thanksgiving dinner without reflecting upon how the Indians lost their lands and their way of life.

November 22, 2006

To wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving.

And I'd also like to say, don't forget to watch the Colorado Buffalo Chips and the Notre Dame Drunken Potato Farmers get their asses handed to them this weekend.

thatisall

F.E.T.E.

Peace out.

Hat tip: LGF

You must read Tony Blankley’s post at Real Clear Politics.

The decisions made on Iraq over the next few months will take the measure of America's maturity and sense of responsibility. Because, whether we like it or not, our decisions -- and our decisions alone -- will determine whether the barely containable murderous pathologies of the Middle East will just be dumped into the face of humanity -- or whether rational efforts will be persisted at to contain and mitigate its civilization-threatening forces.

We have the most profound obligation to attempt to calculate the consequences of the impending American decision to wash our hands of the Iraq unpleasantness. In that regard, the words of President Kennedy come to mind: "There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction."

If we, the most powerful force on the planet, in a fit of disappointment and anger at our bungling policies to date, decide to shrug off our responsibilities to the future -- we will soon receive, and deserve, the furious contempt of a terrified world. In fact, even those Americans who today can't wait to end our involvement in the "hopeless" war in Iraq will -- when the consequences of our irresponsibility becomes manifest -- join the chorus of outrage.

Related: NPR ATC.

A Jawa …uh...conhgtsiracknutpht....um..coughtrollcough… Reader,who shall remain unnamed because he is loathed above all others by the management at TJR, noted that today is the 42nd anniversary of JFK’s murder. It’s appropriate then that JFK’s words are remembered in this post. Hey Democrats! Ya’ll remember JFK? He fought the commies? Wake TF up.

Did you know you can fight the jihadis without ever leaving your living room? That goes double for you fat asses still living in your mother's basement. It's true.

Should you accept your mission to become a member of the 101st Fighiting Keyboard Batallion, you will find yourself spending hours and hours chatting to wanna be terrorists from around the world. You will become accustomed to hearing praise for acts of terror. You will become numb to beheading snuff films.

More importantly, you will spend much less of your time surfing for free porn.

Below are a couple of interesting stories. First is one about a UK based private intel organization called Vigil. As you know, I've become acquainted with one of its members who feeds me all sorts of stuff that I get to break way before the MSM 'breaks' it.

For instance, this story from the Observer (reposted by Chad) reveals that convicted al Qaeda terrorist Abbas Boutrab visited the Dublin airport in a dry bombing run. The Observer then relates how Omar Bakri Mohammed 'last week' had urged followers to bomb the Dublin airport.

Bakri Mohammed actually said this some time ago. It was only last week that the British press finally reported it. I'm looking at my copy of the Bakri speech and it was sent to me by a member of Vigil on August 10th.

The point? There is a whole lot more that you can be doing. And you don't even have to join the CIA to do it!

How do you start? Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves here. I would tell you.... but then I'd have to kill you.

Reuters:

It says its members brought about the conviction of radical Egyptian-born cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, uncovered insurgent tactics in Iraq and are now working to provide intelligence from North Korea.

The organisation is not the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency or Britain's security agency MI6 but "Vigil", a shadowy network of retired spies, senior military personnel, anti-terrorism specialists and banking experts.

The group's director Dominic Whiteman said he set up Vigil with two other businessmen last year to act as an interface between retired spies who were still party to good, raw intelligence, and the police and security services.

"This evidence was just getting lost in the system," Whiteman told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Vigil numbers more than 30 members and is spread across the globe from India to the United States, working with contacts ranging from a maid in Bangkok and a Mumbai train driver to senior intelligence figures.

"We just recruited a guy who's a senior figure in police training in Iraq," Whiteman said.

Sixty percent of Vigil's work involves gaining information via the Internet, by infiltrating online chatrooms, while the remainder is face-to-face or telephone work.

The information gleaned is passed on to authorities like the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, the New York Intelligence Unit and British police's Counter Terrorism Command (CTC).

A CTC spokeswoman said the group was treated seriously.

...everywhere, But a "Special Thanks to Howie" gets you a link from The Jawa Report. Big White Infidel has a new video up at the Jubasucks blog. (Warning: NSFW--Graphic Images)

Iraq will execute Hussein Fahmi. The al-Qaeda terrorist will hang for his role in beheading Japanese hostage Shosei Koda. May his neck fail to break and he suffer as Shosei suffered. He deserves no less.

Gulf News Baghdad: A member of Al Qaida has been sentenced to death in Iraq over the kidnapping and beheading of a Japanese hostage in 2004, reports said on Wednesday.

Hussein Fahmi, who was arrested earlier in the year, confessed to beheading Japanese backpacker Shosei Koda.

Fahmi said he had carried out 115 other beheadings. He was sentenced by the Iraqi central criminal court.

Koda was killed in October 2004 by a group then led by Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, after Japan refused to bow to their demands and pull its troops out of Iraq.

The group claimed responsibility for the kidnapping and beheading in an internet posting that included a video of the killing. Koda's decapitated body was found wrapped in an American flag in a Baghdad street.

And may God give Hussein Fahmi what he deserves.

Giuliana Sgrena has written a book. What do you call a person who uses her victim status to insulate herself from public criticisms and then proceeds to say and write the most vile anti-American drivel unimaginable?

I mean besides her.

Thanks to Todd who first noticed this. Here's how that lying stupid whore, who went to Iraq saying she was there to uncover US war crimes and in the process actually became the victim of real war crimes committed by the jihadis, describes the real goals of the US:

U.S. intent in Iraq is to partition the country into Sunni, Shiite and Kurd areas, and that steps towards this goal have already been taken.

Of course, there's the normal stupid drivel you'd expect about a vast conspiracy by the US to murder her and Major General Nicola Calipari. And her whining about why the insurgents would want to hold her hostage since she was on their side.

We felt sorry for Sgrena when she was an actual victim, but now that she's using her victim status for political gain, the gloves are off.

The only redeeming value in the book, that I can see, is that at least the reader is warned that she is an unapologetic Communist shill.

CSI has a fauxtography scandal inspired episode. Has Roger been moonlighting at CBS or what?

Okay, okay. The title would more appropriately read TeeVee imitates LGF, but where's the self-aggrandizing in that?

Yo, got a beef with the man and you wanna stay and play it out? Is the man trying to send you packing just because of a few links to "freedom fighters?" Yo, Muslim Voice can teach you how to game the system and get your props:

Welcome to another edition of Immigration Korner™, a monthly article which brings you the information you want and need to know about your particular immigration concerns or immigration in general. In January, I received many questions about what options are available when the BCIS begins the process of trying to deport you. Accordingly, this article focuses on one form of relief known as Cancellation of Removal.

What is Cancellation of Removal?
Cancellation of removal is a form of relief from removal from the United States when one is placed in removal proceedings in immigration court. There are certain requirements you must meet in order to be eligible to apply and if you win, your removal is cancelled and you are given a greencard.

Thanx to Greenwyn.

Picture this:

You're a 92-year-old woman. You live in a rough neighborhood--the kind of neighborhood where you feel the need to have bars on all the windows of your home. A gang of men in REGULAR CLOTHES shows up on your front porch and smashes in your front door. What should you do?

Apparently, you're expected to assume they're cops unless you're sure they aren't. Otherwise, you're likely to end up dead.

As always, I'm reserving final judgment until all the facts are in, but it looks pretty bad so far.

It's a damn shame, really, that the radical lefties have done such a great chicken little job on the government with their constant cries of "POLICE STATE!!! POLICE STATE!!!" Like the word "RACIST" and "BIGOT," people's ears have just become deadened to the sound of those words.

Obviously, we DON'T live in a police state--as evidenced, for example, by the fact that lefties are allowed to fly the flags of our enemies in massive rallies, the fact that government critics can publish blatant lies without consequences and the fact that government employees can leak national security secrets with impunity. If we're living in a police state, it's the LAZIEST damn police state in the HISTORY of police states.

At the same time, at least some of our law-enforcement agencies have acquired some very bad habits as of late--including the overbroad and sloppy use of no-knock warrants.

Jason at Texas Rainmaker was hacked by the online jihadis. If you visited his site in the past few days and found the hacker's message, make sure to do a virus check on your computer.

He's back up and running now. My guess is that it was a teenager from Saudi Arabia. Check out the screenshot Jason took. The flag is that of Saudi Arabia, and KSA in "K.S.A. Hacker" stands for Key Scheduling Algorithm, which is part of the encryption process. KSA Hacker's tracks are all over the place discussing with other online jihadis how to hack websites. And he has a homepage which he claims is under construction but he uses it to hide files showing other hackers how to do their work.

Heh, e-mail an online jihadi: ssss447@hotmail.com UPDATE: just our luck, e-mail doesn't work. Try this one on for size: S__3@hotmail.Com

Oh, and to all the wannabe online terrorists who have recently tried to shut down The Jawa Report through denial of service attacks:

Mwuahahahahahaaaaaaaaa!!!!!

Sadly, a leading anti-Syrian voice in the Lebanese government, Pierre Gemayel, was assassinated yesterday. Gemayel is the fifth prominent anti-Syrian Lebanese figure killed in the last two years.

Meanwhile, probably simultaneous with the Gemayel murder, Syria's grand mufti was pumping smoke up the skivvies of yet another Westerner in the country.

From SANA.org:

Syria's grand Mufti Sheikh Ahmad Badre al-Din Hassoun on Tuesday underlined the importance of work to spread culture of peace, tolerance and human fraternity in the world to overcome seeds of conflict and extremism among nations.

"The reason behind instability in the region is that Israel is based on a religious basis… and this is a dangerous concept in life which paves way for more conflicts among nations… thus efforts should be intensified to bring up nations on national basis," the Mufti said during a meeting with the Canadian Ambassador in Damascus Mark Belli.

For his part, the Canadian Ambassador expressed admiration over tolerance and coexistence in Syria, stressing the important role of clergymen and scholars to spread culture of fraternity and peace among peoples.

Regarding the other Westerners, notable recent visitors to Syria included American Protestant Pastor Rick Warren and Reverend Joan Brown Campbell, who both presumably became moist while listening to the grand mufti's eloquent statements about the religion of peace and tolerance.

He [Warren] met with Assad and the Grand Mufti of Syria, Sheikh Ahmad Hassoun, saying, according to the Syrian Arab News Agency, that "80% of the American people rejected what the US administration is doing in Iraq and considered the US policy in the Mideast as wrong." SANA added, "Pastor Warren expressed admiration of Syria and the co-existence he saw between Muslims and Christians, stressing that he will convey this image to his church and country."

And then there's the involvement of Reverend Joan Brown Campbell, head of a delegation of senior American clergy, who also recently visited Syria. The Americans met with the Grand Mufti of the Republic Dr. Ahmad Badruddin Hassoun who explained that Islam is the religion of tolerance and "asserted that man was the most sacred creature on Earth." In response:

Members of the delegation expressed pleasure over the climate of tolerance they had seen in Syria, stressing that realities in the country were different from what the negative image given about Syria in the past.

Members of the American delegation expressed admiration for what they had seen in Syria and for the example of coexistence and fraternity among Moslems and Christians, adding they were going to convey what they had seen in Syria to the American people.

Just lovely.

November 21, 2006

Today's feature : Pierre Rehov's "Suicide Killers".

Update by Vinnie: The hostages have been freed.

A Canadian and an Italian aid worker have been kidnapped in the Gaza strip. If past experience is any guide, we should see them released unharmed. The Palestinians are very aware of their PR image. Killing Jews doesn't seem to bother the European audience much, but killing Red Cross workers is quite another matter.

No Burqua is following the story closely.

CNN:

The Red Cross said Claudio Moroni, 36, and Gianmarco Onorato [a dual citizen, living in Canada], 63, were abducted in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza after their car was stopped by gunmen. One was carrying a Canadian passport, Palestinian security officials said. It was not immediately clear which one.

"We are doing our utmost to ensure their immediate and unconditional release," said Red Cross spokesman Simon Schorno, adding that there was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Palestinian security officials said they were searching for the men, and mediation efforts were underway. An official at the Italian consulate in east Jerusalem said two Italians were involved, and the consulate was trying to confirm what happened.

I’d imagine that would be a ticket seller for some of their other passengers. It turns out the Imams were being intentionally ornery. Also they are already getting with CAIR to sue the airline. Bluto is right, it’s a setup.

Minneapolis Star Tribune: One of the Muslim scholars removed from a US Airways flight on Monday today called for imams around the country to boycott the airline after employees refused to sell him new tickets for his flight home.

On Monday, Omar Shahin and five other imams had gone to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport to fly home to Phoenix after attending a conference in Minneapolis of the North American Imams Federation. Shahin is president of the group…

… "I want to go home. I don't want phone numbers," Shahin said. "I want to buy six tickets."

"They have no reason to refuse service to us just because of the way we look," he said "It's terrible. We want America to stay the way it is because we love this country."

The supervisor asked Shahin to leave the ticket counter.

"This is prejudice," he replied. "This is obvious discrimination. No one can argue with this."

"I am calling for a boycott of US Airways because I'm not going to stay silent," said Shahin, who is Jordanian. "I came to this country to enjoy justice and freedom."…

Much more below the fold.

Pat Hogan, spokesman for the Metropolitan Airports Commission, said that witnesses to Monday's events told police that before the flight that besides praying, the imams were spouting anti-American rhetoric, talking about the war in Iraq and Saddam Hussein.

One of the imams was heard saying that he would do whatever is necessary to fulfill his commitment to the Qur'an, witnesses told police, Hogan said. Other witnesses said some of the imams were repeating "Allah, Allah," he said.
And a couple of the imams asked for seat-belt extensions, even though it did not appear they needed them, Hogan said.

All of this made passengers, the attendants and the pilot uncomfortable, Hogan said. As a result, the pilot called police to have the imams escorted from plane.
Airlines have the right not to allow passengers on a plane, Hogan said.

"It's up to the airline," he said. "From an airport standpoint we're out of it, once it was determined no crime occurred."

Others LGF (currently offline), Hot Air and Jihad Watch and Powerline.

Note Robert’s post at Jihad Watch has some more very interesting background on this so called Imam. I thought that Islam teaches that there is no intermediary between a Muslim and God. For Muhammad to have said that there is some irony in the fact that an awful lot of people are making a living at it.

It seems that barely a week goes by that I don't read a story about censorship of a conservative or pro-American speaker or writer through one of a number of mechanisms. Michelle and Charles have been doing excellent work highlighting the truth about what cesspools of anti-American nastiniess our university campuses have become. Conservative and pro-American speakers routinely have their campus speaking events cancelled or restricted by university administrators. Campus events that aren't cancelled by administration officials are stopped by physical action or bomb threats. In the broader context, many conservative writers live and work under death threats. Though university campuses have become ideal environments for making good on such threats, the universities often refuse to cooperate with adequate security measures.

This is the state of our world today. The most unruly and difficult are getting their way by throwing tantrums and threatening death and destruction. The civilized are asked to contemplate the "root causes" of the unruliness rather than condemn these actions. The civilized are asked to avoid taking any action which might further antagonize the "disaffected youth."

Over the last ten or fifteen years, encompassing the current wave of left-wing anti-American temper tantrums, many of our leaders have told us that just "taking the high road" would pay off for us in the long run. Some assured us that there would be a public "backlash" against those who don't know how to behave properly in public.

Here we are, ten years on. Much has changed, but in any good direction. The left-wing protests have only gotten more vociferous. We've been accused of being "digital brownshirts"--while the other side has an army of REAL, PHYSICAL brownshirts who are not at all shy about doing very real, physical "brownshirt" things. The left-wingers and campus Islamic groups very effectively use violence and the threat of violence to shut down dissent on the university campuses. In the meantime, there's been little, if any "public backlash" that I can ascertain--not even within the Boards of Trustees who are supposed to be paying attention. As near as I can tell, the public has just come to expect this sort of thing from the left, and it's taken in stride. In the meantime, a valuable point of view is silenced through the raw exercise of power. Right under the noses of the campus administrations, a thugocracy has taken over.

I don't have a solution to this problem as of yet. I don't think physical violence by our side is the answer. Setting aside the moral issues, creating martyrs (even bruised martyrs) would be counterproductive. I'm sure the jihadis would dearly love to have a photo of a white male College Republican punching an Arab kid. If there was a picture of the Arab kid punching the white kid first, we all know that picture would never make the papers. I'll admit I'm better at identifying problems than proposing solutions. What I do know is that our current strategy of being polite and taking our lumps graciously certainly doesn't appear to be working too well.

Interesting article, my opinion is that a culture that treats women as property of men encourages pimping and prostitution. Also the failure or Iran’s government to properly address economic issues also contributes.

Asia Times: Wars are won by destroying the enemy's will to fight. A nation is never really beaten until it sells its women…

…To understand Iranian politics, cherchez les femmes: the fate of Iranian women sheds light on the eccentricity of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. By Spengler's Universal Law of Gender Parity, the men and women of every place and every time deserve each other. A corollary to this universal law states that the battered Iranian whore is the alter ego of the swaggering Iranian jihadi…

…Nothing is more threadbare than the claim of Islamists to defend Muslim womanhood. Islamist radicals (like the penny-a-marriage mullahs of Iran) are the world's most prolific pimps. The same networks that move female flesh across borders also provide illegal passage for jihadis, and the proceeds of human trafficking often support Islamist terrorists. From Jakarta to Kuala Lumpur to Sarajevo to Tirana, the criminals who trade in women overlap with jihadist networks. Prostitutes serve the terror network in a number of capacities, including suicide bombing. The going rate for a Muslim woman who can pass for a European to carry a suicide bomb currently is more than US$100,000. The Persian prostitute is the camp follower of the jihadi, joined to him in a pact of national suicide.

Note Dale’s comment on Captian Ed’s post.

Good comments as well at Protein Wisdom

I spent some time trying to find a bit of humor in this. There wasn't any.

Because the mainstream media is invested in propagating only bad news from the War on Terror, here's today's CENTCOM roundup.

TERRORIST CACHES SEIZED IN RAID

11/21/2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq – Coalition Forces conducted an operation against terrorist activities in the vicinity of al-Habbaniyah Tuesday.

Intelligence reports indicated two targeted buildings were being used for terrorist activity. Coalition Forces discovered a weapons cache consisting of rocket-propelled grenades, multiple explosives and small arms in the first targeted building.

After breaching the second targeted building and discovering another weapons cache, Coalition Forces realized the building was a mosque. There were no external markings on the building to indicate it was a mosque.

Both the weapons cache from the mosque and the weapons cache from the first building were destroyed.

11/21/2006
BAGHDAD – Special Iraqi Army Forces, with coalition advisers, detained an illegal armed group kidnapping and murder cell leader during a raid Nov. 21 in Sadr City, Baghdad. The raid was launched to target this individual and to obtain information on the whereabouts of a kidnapped U.S. Soldier.

The person detained is reported to have first-hand knowledge of the control and movement of Spec. Ahmed Al Taie, the Soldier who was abducted Oct. 23.

Six additional suspected cell members were detained.

During the operation, Iraqi forces received small-arms and rocket propelled grenade fire from enemy fighters. Supporting coalition aircraft received enemy ground fire; coalition aircraft neutralized the threat with precision fires at identified enemy targets.

There were no reports of Iraqi Forces or Coalition Forces casualties. Civilian and enemy casualties could not be determined.

11/21/2006
TIKRIT, Iraq – Soldiers from the 3rd Brigade, 5th Iraqi Army Division and Task Force Lightning Soldiers from 6-9 Armored Reconnaissance Squadron, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, apprehended four suspected insurgents, recovered two kidnapped victims and seized a sizeable weapons cache Nov. 19 during an operation north of Muqdadiyah.

Iraqi and coalition forces discovered the individuals, along with a cache, while conducting an intelligence driven operation on a suspected insurgent safe haven that is responsible for launching attacks on the Iraqi government and civilian population.

The cache consisted of 15 various projectiles including three 155-mm artillery shells, two anti-tank mines, three grenades, 15 pounds of explosives material, and other IED making materials with anti-Iraqi propaganda.

Task Force Lightning forces also discovered and disarmed seven IEDs near the sight.

The two rescued victims were not identified and were taken to the Joint Coordination Center, placed in the mayor’s care and taken to the Muqdadiya Hospital for medical treatment.

11/21/2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq – Coalition Forces killed three terrorists and detained four suspected terrorists during a raid in Baghdad Tuesday.

Upon approaching the objective, ground forces received small arms fire. Coalition Forces returned fire killing three terrorists.

Coalition Forces continued their mission and approached the first targeted building. As they breached the building using a small explosives charge, some linen inside the room caught fire. The fire was quickly extinguished and no one was injured.
During the search of the second targeted building, Coalition Forces detained four suspected terrorists and found four machine guns, ammunition and ammo cartridges.

Michael Fumento is on the ground in Ramadi, and he says yes. You really have to read the whole thing. It's amazing to hear the tactics we're using. It's also amazing to realize that the vast majority of 'reports' from Iraq come from Arab stringers (we know how reliable those are) or from Westerneres who rarely leave the Green Zone. Here's how Fumento concludes this excellent piece:

Are We Winning?

People always ask how the Iraqis feel about Americans and the war in general. I respond that they just tell you what they think will prove advantageous to them, a combination of complaints and praise for Ameriki (America). Non-embedded American reporters run into the same thing. I asked one of the north Ramadi farmers through the translator if he thinks Ramadi is getting safer. He starts out with a few complaints, such as lack of water from the Euphrates for his fields because of rationing, and then tells me: "But safety is 100 percent better now that the Americans have come along." Baloney. Things got a lot more dangerous when we first came along. They may or may not be safer now than a year ago, but this guy isn't going to tell me. None of them will tell me.

Soldiers also give different accounts of the extent of progress in Ramadi. A Cougar driver told me nothing had changed since his last deployment, yet the very fact that he was driving into Ramadi in a convoy of just four trucks indicated otherwise. Another told me Ramadi is now "a thousand times better." Ultimately each was simply another blind man feeling his part of the elephant. With my three embeds in Anbar, I'd like to believe I've felt quite a few parts of the elephant.

Ramadi is not Baghdad, with its roiling sectarian violence and militias. As we've come to learn, Iraq probably cannot find peace until those militias are disbanded and suppressed. But neither will it find peace if the insurgents and terrorists of the Sunni strongholds like Ramadi continue to ply their trade; and despite the media focus on sectarian killings in October, Sunni insurgents still accounted for more than 80 percent of American military deaths in Iraq that month.

Put it all together – the Forward Observation Bases, new Combat Operation Posts, new Observation Posts, tribal cooperation, ever more Iraqi army and police, better intelligence, and public works projects. There's no "stay the course" strategy here; the course changes as necessary and it's continually changed for the better. I believe we are winning the Battle of Ramadi. And if the enemy can be beaten here, he can be beaten anywhere.

I do not know the answer, but since Ramadi is the center of the Sunni terrorist insurgency, and since these groups are now referring to us by the name "United States of Losers" (an allusion to what they believe is an impending pullout in Iraq because of the Democratic victory--ie, we lost) I do know that we cannot pull out in the way people like Barack Obama are now saying we should. That would be a disaster.

The Army of Ansar al Sunna, a terrorist group in Iraq, is claiming that it shot down a "US spy plane" near Latifiyah, Iraq. A video produced by the Sunni terrorists shows the 'downed' airplane. The video and images from it are posted below.

However, the "spy plane" is actually a toy model airplane which has a camera attached to it. Images from the video, shown below, show the plane carries the logo of "Thunder Tiger" a Taiwanese toy model company.

The brave mujahidin at work.

It's fascinating that the group, which is mostly known for its gruesome beheading murders of hostages, has now resorted to claiming victory by showing a downed toy model plane.

People in the military tell me that these kind of UAVs are so cheap that they are considered one time use and are routinely abandoned. They are used in forward deployments by troops on the gound and are not so much 'spy planes' as they are reconnaissance tools. So, in addition to not really being a 'spy plane' its also unlikely that it was shot down. Probably just ran out of juice and was abandoned.

UPDATE: Thanks to the dilligence of readers and from the guys over at Military Photos I've learned that this plane was probably not used by the military at all. The most likely scenario is that it is just what it appears to be: a model airplane. Some kid in Iraq is wondering where his toy went off to.

Terrorists in Iraq: Losing hearts and minds one toy airplane at a time.

Hat tip: Thalja...thanks to Howie for uploading the vid.

Looks like our efforts against al-Manar broadcasts being hosted on US servers has born fruit. Hell Yeah and good work Jawa Readers and supporters.

Via CHRON:NEW YORK — A man was charged Monday with supporting terrorists by enabling customers to obtain satellite broadcasts of a Hezbollah television station, the second person accused in a case that has drawn scrutiny over how far the government can go in claiming someone is aiding terrorist groups.

Saleh Elahwal, 53, of Matawan, N.J., and Javed Iqbal, 42, of Staten Island, could each face up to 110 years in prison if they are convicted of all 11 counts in a rewritten indictment unsealed Monday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. They pleaded not guilty.

Lawyers for both declined to comment outside court. Prosecutors said weeks ago they planned to bring additional charges as they as they collect evidence and build a case.

Iqbal, a Pakistani businessman, was charged in August with helping his customers receive broadcasts of al Manar, which was designated by the U.S. government this year as a global terrorist entity. At the time, the charges against him carried a potential prison term of five years.

Al Manar, launched in 1991, features news programming that promotes Hezbollah's positions and shows statements from the terror group and speeches from its leader, the government has said.

As part of their probe, FBI agents searched two storefronts in Brooklyn where Iqbal worked and at his residence, where multiple satellite dishes helped him distribute the broadcasts to New York-area customers through a Brooklyn company called HDTV Limited, prosecutors said.

The indictment accused the men of carrying out the scheme from September 2005 through August.

Iqbal's representatives criticized the government's case after his August arrest, saying his First Amendment rights were violated.

In this case the 101’st keyboarding division has done well. Thanks to all who helped us with email and phone calls. Thanks to US officials for taking us seriously.

And special Thanks to Dr. Rusty Shackleford for giving us the tools to harass, annoy and in this case hopefully imprison terrorist supporting assholes.

Note: We are unsure that our find of the al-Manar internet feed from Atlanta is related. That is internet and this is cable. But the new charges and the timing suggests they may be related. We'll continue to monitor for any links. Rusty thought I should point that out.

The incident I wrote about last night, in which six Muslim imams were removed from a plane at Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport, is looking more and more like a deliberate provocation. From the Associated Press [emphasis added]:

"They took us off the plane, humiliated us in a very disrespectful way," said Omar Shahin, of Phoenix.

The six Muslim scholars were returning from a conference in Minneapolis of the North American Imams Federation, said Shahin, president of the group. Five of them were from the Phoenix-Tempe area, while one was from Bakersfield, Calif., he said.

Three of them stood and said their normal evening prayers together on the plane, as 1.7 billion Muslims around the world do every day, Shahin said. He attributed any concerns by passengers or crew to ignorance about Islam.

"I never felt bad in my life like that," he said. "I never. Six imams. Six leaders in this country. Six scholars in handcuffs. It's terrible."

Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, expressed anger at the detentions.

"CAIR will be filing a complaint with relevant authorities in the morning over the treatment of the imams to determine whether the incident was caused by anti-Muslim hysteria by the passengers and/or the airline crew," Hooper said. "Because, unfortunately, this is a growing problem of singling out Muslims or people perceived to be Muslims at airports, and it's one that we've been addressing for some time."

UPDATE by Rusty: A friend of Lilek's was at the conference hotel. Much anti-American sentiment. And Charles Johnson links the spokeman for the imams to a terrorist fundraising organization masquerading as a charity.

Outspoken critic of Syria, cabinet minister, and one of the most influential Christian politicians in Lebanon Pierre Gemayel has been assassinated. Sources in Lebanon are already pointing the finger at Syria.

Lebanon is also already bracing for possible civil unrest and retaliation.

Gemayel was a member of the Kataeb Social Democratic Party, more commonly referred to as the Christian Phalange. The armed wing of the Phalange was the most important Christian faction during the Lebanese civil war. His father was the former President Amin Gemayel and his uncle, Bashir Gemayel, was also assassinated shortly after his election as President.

During the civil war the Phalangists forces were allies with Israel. In 1982 it was this same Christian militia, not Israel, that massacred Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Shatila camps.

Reuters:

Gunmen opened fire as his convoy drove through the Christian Sin el-Fil neighbourhood, they said. Gemayel, who was in his 30s, was rushed to hospital where he later died of his wounds.

Local television footage showed angry and weeping supporters gathering at the hospital.

The killing is certain to deepen a political crisis pitting the anti-Syrian majority against the pro-Damascus opposition led by Hezbollah.

"We believe the hand of Syria is all over the place," Saad al-Hariri, son of assassinated former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, said from Beirut shortly after Gemayel was shot dead.

UPDATE: Sunni jihadis? al Qaeda? This comes just days after Sunnis in Lebanon declared jihad.

UPDATE: Protests have already begun.

UPDATE: Way more at Hot Air.

I'm sick of the pessimism permeating the blogs about the war.

If I'm sick of it, just think of what those fighting it must think.

Below the fold, three NSFW videos reminding them that we are still here.

Could this article signal a renewed effort to end this once and for all?

Maybe, just maybe, Bush has one trick left up his sleeve. For the next month and some change, total, unrestricted warfare before the Esmay...er...Kos Kidz control Congress.

I don't know. If I were an arrogant SOB, I'd pretend to tell you that I think I know, but I'm not, so I won't.

All I know for sure right now is that more and more jihadis are being sent to their 72 raisins. Allaaaaaaaaaaaaa Hu Fubar!

November 20, 2006

Witnesses said the men were chanting "Allah, Allah, Allah" as they were taken off the plane. From 5News KSTP:

5 EYEWITNESS NEWS has learned that federal investigators and airport police are questioning six Middle Eastern men who had to be escorted off of a plane Monday afternoon at Minneapolis/St. Paul International.

U.S. Airway officials tell 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS' Aviation Expert Bob McNaney that Monday while Flight 300 was preparing to take off from Minneapolis to Phoenix, a passenger passed a note to a flight attendant saying they noticed 'suspicious behavior,' among the men.

The men would not get off the plane when asked, 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS has learned, and had to be removed by police.

Khaled and three of his companions had gone to New York for several days in January. He told of how uncomfortable his trip up to NYC had been. He felt like he was being watched, and thought he was the victim of racial profiling.

Khaled and his friends were pretty unhappy about it, and while in New York, they came up with a plan to "teach a lesson" to the passengers and crew. You can imagine the story Khaled told. He described how he and his friends whispered to each other on the flight, made simultaneous visits to the restroom, and generally tried to "spook" the other passengers. He laughed when he described how several women were in tears, and one man sitting near him was praying.

The others in the room thought the story was quite amusing, judging from the laughter. The imam stood up and told the group that this was a kind of peaceful civil disobedience that should be encouraged, and commended Khaled and his friends for their efforts.

It is with sincere thanks to our reader, Garduneh Mehr, who spent the time and effort to translate the following article from Persian for the other readers of the Jawa Report, that I post the following:

[This is a translation of a Persian article entitled “Persecution of the Church in Iran” from http://www.hra-iran.blogfa.com/post-257.aspx The translator’s notes are enclosed in square braces.]

In the Name of Liberty

In recent months we have witnessed persecution of religious minorities in Iran, including threats, [unlawful] arrests and murders. Our Christian compatriots are constantly targets of torment and harassment. The following describes a small portion of the murders, threats and arrests that Christian Iranians have been subjected to:

Murders:

1. In 2005, Mr. Ghorban Tarani a Christian missionary was murdered under strange circumstances in the town of “Gonbad”.

Arrests:

2. In the town of “Gorgaan” a church custodian was arrested and imprisoned on the charge of being a Christian. During his imprisonment he was subjected to constant interrogation.
3. One of the parishioners of the Church in the town of “Hamadan” by the name Dr. Mehrdaad along with his wife and eight year old child were arrested and imprisoned by the agents of the government Ministry of Intelligence.
4. In 2004, four parishioners of a Church in the town of  “Chaa-Loos” were arrested by the agents of the regime and tried in “Revolutionary Court”; some were handed death sentences. The four were freed only after international pressure was brought to bear on the regime.
5. In the town of “Chaa-Loos” a Christian family including their children (one thirteen year old and an eighteen year old) were arrested by the [regime’s] ministry of intelligence.
6. In the town of  “Mashhad” Ms. Freshteh Dibaaj daughter of Rev. Mehdi Dibaaj was arrested while in Church along with her husband and imprisoned by the [regime’s] ministry of intelligence. The two were interrogated for more than two weeks. The reader is reminded that this is the same “home Church” that was run by Rev. Say’yed Sudmand who himself was put to death for his faith. [“home church” refers to people converting their homes to churches and holding services there. It is worth noting that the prefix Say’yed in the name of Rev. Sudmand signifies that he is actually descended from the family of Mohammad and was convert to Christianity.]
7. In the town of “Sanandaj” Mr. Ghane a parishioner of a home Church who had been repeatedly harassed and threatened by the agents of the regime was arrested; nothing is known about his fate.
8. In the town of “Shahin-shahr” the spouse of one of our Christian compatriots was arrested and imprisoned where he was subjected to torture which result in him being hospitalized.

Families who inquire about their imprisoned children [and loved ones] are either told nothing or are threatened by the ministry of intelligence.

Some of the ways in which Christians are harassed are as follows:

9. The agents of the regime videotape and photograph parishioners entering and leaving church services.
10. Carrying more than one Bible with you is considered a crime.
11. Importation and printing of religious texts are forbidden by the regime; and anyone involved in such activities is arrested.
12. Active individuals receive threatening phone calls.

In the past years many of our Christian compatriots [Iranians] have, as a result of persistent persecution, been forced to abandon their homes and homeland and seek refuge in foreign lands.

[It is worth noting that the “Three Wise Men from the East” who foresaw the birth of Christ and worshipped the newly born Jesus were Iranian Magi. The Magi were the cast of the learned whose social function was to literate their fellow citizens in material and spiritual matters. Their line was brought to a brutal end by the Islamo-Arab hordes who believed that the only thing worth
learning is the Qoran.]

The state run Iranian Arabic language TV station, al-Alalam, has broadcast a video from a terrorist group which claimed the abduction of four American and an Austrian.

Some media reprts indicate that "The Islamic Mujahedeen Battalion" was trained in Iran. The fact that the video was broadcast on Iranian TV indicates that that there is at least some connection. However, unlike most hostage videos released by terror organizations in the past, this one did not actually show the hostages.

The US and Iraq has consistently levelled accusations that the Iranian government funds, trains, and encourages acts of terror in Iraq.

Local Iraqi sources indicate that one of the hostages, an Austrian, is dead. One American is also thought to have been freed, say locals in Basra. But there are still conflicting reports over this and no official confirmation. Officials in Baghdad say that the locals are mistaken and that all five hostages are still missing, presumed alive.

From al-Alam's English language website:

A previously unknown group has claimed responsibility for abducting a private security team of four Americans and an Austrian in southern Iraq.

The group, called Islamic Companies [trans: Islamic Mujahidin Battalion], claimed responsibility for the kidnapping.

The group released a videotaped message saying that it was holding the five men.

An unidentified man whose face was covered with a checkered Arabic head dress read a statement in which he demanded the withdrawal of US forces and the release of all prisoners in Iraq.

During al-Alam's broadcast, the man's voice was inaudible and the station's presenter said the video was from the group that claimed to have kidnapped the contractors and killed four other Americans.

WaPo reports on the 39 year old Paul Reuben:

One of the four U.S. contractors abducted by insurgents in southern Iraq is a former suburban police officer described by friends and family as an "easygoing, fun-loving type of guy" who was ready to come home.

"He had that classic teddy bear disposition that made people like and care about him," St. Louis Park Police Chief John D. Luse said of Paul Reuben, who has been working as a private security contractor in Iraq....

Their mother said Friday that she hopes the men holding her son "remember their own mothers."

"I want them to think what it's like for a mother to want her son back," Johnnie Mae Reuben told The Associated Press. "I want my son back."

Update by Vinnie: Via Cheese eating surrender monkey Press, Iraqis claim to be closing in on the whereabouts of the hostages.

"We have identified the area where they are held. I can't disclose the place," Mohammed Ali al-Mussawi, chief of operations at police headquarters in the southern city of Basra, told AFP.

Previously: Four Americans Kidnapped in Iraq, Austrian Civilian Killed

Update: by Howie. Rusty asks that we keep up on this story. Good news that we and the Iraqi police are working this hard. Bad news is they have not been found. Has anyone looked in Iran? It seems to me if an Iranian supported group took these men they might try and take them into Iran for safety. iran should look into this. The return of these men could generate some goodwill from the US that Iran amy find to its advantage.

International Herald Tribune: BASRA, Iraq: British and Iraqi forces raided homes in southern Iraq on Monday and arrested four suspects in the kidnapping of four American security guards and their Austrian co-worker, an official said.

The raid, which began late Sunday and ended early Monday morning, took place in Zubair, a mostly Sunni-Arab enclave about 30 kilometers (20 miles) south of Basra, Capt. Tane Dunlop, the British military spokesman, told The Associated Press. Most of Britain's 7,200 soldiers in Iraq are based in the city.

On Sunday, Iraqi police showed the media 200 suspected insurgents they had arrested the night before while raiding several areas north of Basra, which is 550 kilometers (340 miles) southeast of Baghdad.

Both raids failed to find any of the hostages in southern Iraq, a mostly Shiite region.

The four American security guards and their Austrian co-worker have been missing since Thursday when a large convoy of trucks being escorted by their Crescent Security Group company was hijacked on a highway near Safwan, a largely Sunni Arab city of 200,000 people on the Kuwait border.

Another update by Vinnie: From the "it's an older code, but it still checks out, m'lord" files... Group that took the hostages linked to Mookie.

UPDATE 11/21: Second American hostage identified as 23 year old Jonathon Cote. Hat tip: No Burqua

A lengthy article from the Times (U.K.) shows a side of the conflict in Iraq you usually don't see outside CENTCOM press releases.

In other words, good news.

It's well worth reading it all.

While the world’s attention has been focused on Baghdad’s slide into sectarian warfare, something remarkable has been happening in Ramadi, a city of 400,000 inhabitants that al-Qaeda and its Iraqi allies have controlled since mid-2004 and would like to make the capital of their cherished Islamic caliphate.

A power struggle has erupted: al-Qaeda’s reign of terror is being challenged. Sheikh Sittar and many of his fellow tribal leaders have cast their lot with the once-reviled US military. They are persuading hundreds of their followers to sign up for the previously defunct Iraqi police. American troops are moving into a city that was, until recently, a virtual no-go area. A battle is raging for the allegiance of Ramadi’s battered and terrified citizens and the outcome could have far-reaching consequences.

stein hoist to Larwyn, via the Howienator.

Update by Howie: Vinnie and I stepped on each other's posts, so I moved my post to my other blog.

Fox will not run OJ's interview and Newscorp will not publish his book. OJ maybe you should try CNN?

Nancy Pelosi is a what?

Hint: It rhymes

Ed Morrissey, one of my favorite bloggers, hits it on the the head, as usual:

[O]ne has to wonder why Republicans felt so rushed in selecting their leadership. The various candidates for those positions insisted that they had to hit the ground running in order to get the staffers they needed, and to start playing counter to the Democrats in the opening days of Congress, and so on. But as Hugh Hewitt said during one of those interviews, no organization in the world would make decisions on leadership after a significant setback within ten days, at least not without serious reflection on a new direction and the necessary qualities of new leadership to succeed in that new direction.

...

The only thing that's kept the Republicans from completely dissipating their base of support is the foolishness of the Democrats. Unfortunately, we cannot rely on Nancy Pelosi to pull our chestnuts out of the fire for the next two years. The Republicans had better determine what they want to represent, and then rethink the leadership choices that clearly represent business as usual, if they want to return to the majority in 2008 or beyond.

Via Gateway Pundit

CNN decided to revamp one of its hummers, "Warrior One", that CNN used to cover the War in Iraq. The TLC show "Overhaulin" did the work on the hummer by airbrushing scenes from the Iraq War on the side panels.

CNN will embark on a tour of the country with the Warrior One hummer before they auction it off in January.

But then again we know who’s army is foreign to CNNJazeera, ours. What I would like to see happen is some guy buy this thing and have it crushed.

Definition Mercenary: Using your giant news network to publish enemy propaganda for profit.

Of course CNN knows most people have not seen the entire video so they can claim it’s not enemy propaganda.

But I happen to have the first half of the original IAI terrorists Juba sniper video here. See for yourself. (Frame grabs below the fold).

So CNN chose to only play the “money shots”. No reference to the slick production complete with English subtitles. That’s because it’s directed at English speaking audiences. I’ve been holding back on uploading this until after the election. I mean I would not want to actually help the terrorists get this message out before the election like some people we all know.

Here’s another video from the Islamic Army in Iraq. Why don’t they(CNNJazeera) show you this one. No Americans dying maybe?

Note: available by download only. Only way I could get it to play. I don’t know why Google wants to semi reject my stuff. I mean, Google is the home of al-Qaeda’s new blog as well as the IAI’s Juba blogs.

Update I note the juba video post has been removed from the Juba Online blogspot blog.

Progress with Google? Or did IAI just move it because of our pestering?

My Samoan friend was watching Juba with me as I got some frame grabs. He has been in the lower 48 for quite a while. Still can't vote though. Why can't Samoans vote? Anyway he said to bomb them.

Via Centcom:

He’s a fresh face for the station,” said Army 2nd Lt. Jill M. Glasenapp, PTT platoon leader, from Mauston, Wis. “He’s prepared to be the rock that holds this station up.”

Within the first half hour of his arrival, the commander was already pushing his team.

“We had a mortar attack as soon as we arrived,” Glasenapp said. “He immediately posted security around the station.”

The commander also immediately began issuing uniforms, weapons and a hefty paycheck to each member of his team."

He even began rewriting the stations Standard Operating Procedures,” Glasenapp added.

“The new lieutenant is definitely taking over smoothly and quickly,” said Cpl. Steven A. Dickson, an amphibious assault vehicle driver and security team member from Bakersfield, Calif. “You can see the IP’s are listening to him and following his orders. He’s really putting them in gear to work.”

The new commander is the fifth this year at the Iraqi Police station.

“We’ve had problems with the last four,” explained Army Staff Sgt. Brian S. Leslie, PTT team chief from Crystal River, Fla. “The first commander was shot, the following three ran off to Syria with money and supplies.”

The new commander was selected by Iraqi Police District Headquarters in Fallujah after being recommended by the executive officer, Leslie said.
“He was identified as a strong leader,” Glasenapp said. “Plus he lives in the area, so he was an obvious choice to command the station.”

If something happens at the station, the new commander is always available to help out, Glasenapp added.

“He’s responsible for everything that happens in the station,” she said. “He oversees all their missions and investigations. He has the last word and is always on call.”

Iraqi Police Station Ferris is expected to be increasingly productive with their new commander in charge. The policemen are eager to please their new commander and are working hard to do it.

“They see him as a hero since he brought discipline, order, and most importantly, paychecks,” Glasenapp said. “Hopefully he’ll be here for a long time, and we’ll always see great things from his leadership.”

By Lance Cpl. Bryan Eberly Regimental Combat Team

Germans arrested six people they say were involved in a plot to bribe a Frankfurt airport employee to plant explosives on an El Al plane.

The story sounds like a victory for Western security until you get to this part:

The six, who could face charges of belonging to or supporting a terrorist organization, were temporarily detained Friday, but five of them were released Saturday after questioning. The remaining suspect was kept in custody over an unrelated matter.

Under German law, authorities must release suspects after a maximum of 48 hours unless they have enough evidence to convince a judge that they can be held in long-term investigative custody.

The Washington Post is reporting that three basic strategies for Iraq were being debated by the Pentagon and that military leaders have settled on a hybrid plan, combining "Go Big" and "Go Long.":

The group has devised a hybrid plan that combines part of the first option with the second one -- "Go Long" -- and calls for cutting the U.S. combat presence in favor of a long-term expansion of the training and advisory efforts. Under this mixture of options, which is gaining favor inside the military, the U.S. presence in Iraq, currently about 140,000 troops, would be boosted by 20,000 to 30,000 for a short period, the officials said.

The purpose of the temporary but notable increase, they said, would be twofold: To do as much as possible to curtail sectarian violence, and also to signal to the Iraqi government and public that the shift to a "Go Long" option that aims to eventually cut the U.S. presence is not a disguised form of withdrawal.

The MSM uses CENTCOM only for American body counts, they never report on the daily successful operations, which militate against Democratic defeatism. That's the real reason for the rejection of the "Go Big" option, not the lack of US troops, as the Post claims.

Because all those men spilled their blood so that American blood would not longer be spilled on American soil. 149 years ago yesterday Nov 19th. Abe Lincoln Via Don Surber:

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Take note Islamists.

Because. you know. Allah has a goat shortage in heaven and pitching a live goat into boiling mud makes Allah happy.

That is how NPR translated what protesters in Idonesia were saying about George Bush. But we have The Big White Infidel who points out they are saying Kill Kill Kill Bush

Habib Rizieq, leader of the Islam Defenders Front (FPI), (seen above) said the deaths of Muslims across the globe should be revenged.

"His blood is halal (permitted) to be shed. Not only is it halal, but it is obligatory to kill him," Rizieq told a crowd on Sunday as quoted by AFP.

"Kill, kill" the crowd yelled, pointing their fists up, when Rizieq shouted Bush's name, while the shouting of "America" was greeted with shouts of "Destroy, destroy".

That's one disappointed cow. NSFW.

This is a step BACK from the previous reports that they were building 100,000 centrifuges. So that's good news. Sorta. I guess.

But have no fear, folks--I've no doubt Hans Bricksh (or his current incarnation) will be sending a sternly worded letter to Mahmoud any day now.

WE MUST bomb Iran. That’s the opinion of Joshua Muravchik at the LA Times.

It has been four years since that country's secret nuclear program was brought to light, and the path of diplomacy and sanctions has led nowhere.

First, we agreed to our allies' requests that we offer Tehran a string of concessions, which it spurned. Then, Britain, France and Germany wanted to impose a batch of extremely weak sanctions. For instance, Iranians known to be involved in nuclear activities would have been barred from foreign travel — except for humanitarian or religious reasons — and outside countries would have been required to refrain from aiding some, but not all, Iranian nuclear projects.

So if sanctions won't work, what's left? The overthrow of the current Iranian regime might offer a silver bullet, but with hard-liners firmly in the saddle in Tehran, any such prospect seems even more remote today than it did a decade ago, when students were demonstrating and reformers were ascendant. Meanwhile, the completion of Iran's bomb grows nearer every day.

If you are not willing to put a couple million boots on the ground and win the right way, then the Iranians would probably rally and rather than weaken the Mullah’s control it would probably do the opposite.

I feel the proper action is to ignore the nuclear issue. What? Yes ignore the nuclear issue at least in public. The nuclear issue is a card they play to distract from their oppressive totalitarian regime.

We should make some sort of mad type policy. If a nuclear bomb is used that traces back to Iran, Iran becomes a giant glowstick night light for the middle east. If Iran attempts to "wipe Israel from the face of the earth", we will wipe Iran from the face of the earth. A sweet and simple policy that I’m sure even Ameninutijhad can grasp.

Afterward we point out all the other things, like the oppression of the Iranian people and press. The oppression of women. Point out the terrible economic problems and lack of upward mobility.

Iran is a nation with plenty of oil that has to import gasoline. While the regime plays, glow in the dark, with nuclear power the nation still cannot refine it’s own oil in sufficient quantities.

Yes the leadership of Iran has its priorities all F^cked up. It focuses on external issues to draw attention from its failings. We need to undermine the Mullahs support with the truth and settle in for a long cold war with Iran.

If not we should….

Ace says,"Do it!"

There's never been such a vile, violent, racist, mannichean enemy in our past, so it can't happen in our future.

Except... the one problem is... it did happen before. And it's not exactly a secret. There have been like five or six books written about it and everything.

And that war didn't stop until more than sixty million people were dead.

An atomic weapons were only invented at the end of that war.

Discuss.

Coming soon to a dashboard near you?

Fahrenheit 12/7?

Rusty's friend Professor Chaos claimed in a comment that we Jawa's have, and I quote, "jumped the shark."

Without directly calling Professor Chaos a dirty, rotten, filthy, stinking bastard, who has sweaty jockstraps for breakfast, (not to mention a traitor to the cause) I'll let you dear readers prove him right or wrong.

Oh, one last thing. He's an alumnus of the USC Condoms.

Hot-linking is bad enough.

Look what happens if you're an Islamotard doing the hot-linking.

It gets even better!

November 19, 2006

Apparently, you heard it here, first.

A Special Forces captain, killed in action in Iraq, delivers a powerful message in his own style.

From The Seattle Times:

LAS VEGAS — Shortly after Jeffrey "Toz" Toczylowski's last mission in Iraq a year ago this month, friends received a message.

"If you are getting this e-mail, it means that I have passed away," the missive said. "No, it's not a sick Toz joke, but a letter I wanted to write in case this happened."

The Army Special Forces captain, 30, said he would like family and friends to attend his burial at Arlington National Cemetery, "but understand if you can't make it."

The message, distributed by a fellow Green Beret after Toczylowski's family had been notified of his death, added: "There will also be a party in Vegas with a 100k to help pay for travel, room and a party."

"Don't ever think that you are defending me by slamming the Global War on Terrorism or the U.S. goals in that war," Jeffrey Toczylowski wrote. "As far as I am concerned, we can send guys like me to go after them or we can wait for them to come back to us again. I died doing something I believed in and have no regrets except that I couldn't do more."

Via Hot Air.

I thought the time was long since passed when I might have a reason to use the phrase "Saturday Night Live" and the word "balls" in the same sentence, but I think I just did.

If this "humor"-type stuff keeps up, I just might have to start watching that show again...

Pamela has a very graphic set of pictures of what Muslims have been doing to Christians people beheaded in Indonesia.

WARNING : I wouldn't go there if you have a weak stomach.

h/t : Michelle.

UPDATE : Big White Infidel had the following comment:

These photos are from Sampit and Sambas in Kalimantan (from 1999 to 2001) and are pics of Madurese Muslims being dealt with by Dayaks and locals. The Madurese are hot-tempered hardcore Islamists from the island of Madura, off the northeast coast of Java and the Dayaks are spiritualist/animists who eat pigs and keep dogs. The Dayaks are the legendary Wild Men of Borneo. The Madurese obviously would have a problem with the Dayaks and their culture being haram. Even local Muslims dislike the Madurese. The Madurese took over a lot of the criminal activities in the area, demanding protection money from businesses, etc. They started persecuting the Dayak and the Dayak are former headhunter/warriors. When the Dayaks slaughtered the Madurese, they were seen as heroes for standing up to the hated Madurese. I'm not sure 100% but I don't believe there were any Christians in the pictures and any Chinese were probably Buddhists. The Dayaks kicked ass and the West needs to take note of how the Dayaks handled the hardcore Islamic problem.

November 18, 2006

It's not just an opinion. According to this encyclopedia, it's a fact:

In general the theme behind the Star Trek movies is the underlying goodness of humanity. This is why it is referred to as science fiction. The Star Trek universe, unlike the gritty Star Wars universe, serves up a vision of a very sanitary, well-vacuumed and quite modular future with cool toys like the holodeck. The holodeck is a large room which can take on the appearance of any time/place imaginable and can be populated with palpable replicas of people, aliens and things for you to interact with. It is obviously a place where your wildest fantasies could come true but is routinely used by the show's characters to play poker with Stephen Hawking.

Hi everyone.

This server will be going offline for up to two hours on Tuesday 21 November, between 5am and 7am CST, while our hosting company works on their power distribution.

Also, I have now transferred all DNS functions away from our old hosting company to the new servers. I think some people are still having problems with our old DNS setup, and hopefully this will fix that. There was a brief glitch while I was setting this up, and if you caught that glitch you might not be able to reach the comments system (which has its own IP address) for a couple of hours, but after that it should automatically resolve itself.

Glenn hosts an Insta-poll indicating that 60% anticipate a "dead heat of dumbness" between the GOP and Dems over the next two years. Dems take 2nd place, with 34% thinking they'll be dumber.

Glenn also posts an email commenting on the "dead heat" mentality:

There's an old saying among fantasy roleplaying gamers: "You don't have to be faster than the dragon. You just have to be faster than the elf."

I think that the Republicans have gotten spoiled by having the Democrats as their opponents. They don't think they have to be good, or principled, or honest; they think they just have to be perceived as being less bad than the Democrats. In 2006 that strategy failed -- but by gum, they're going to give it another try over the next two years.

And I think he may have a good point:

Crude oil has hit a 17-month low. National security conservatives and anti-carbon greens should get together now -- before Americans readjust to inexpensive gasoline -- and push through a reasonable tax on carbon-based fuels in return for an extension of the most economically efficient aspects of the "Bush tax cuts."

I would concur on one condition.

All collection from increased fuel taxes would be put toward research, developement and purchase of more fuel efficient vehicles.

These guys say they can do it:

It would cost about $17 to produce a barrel of synthetic oil at the Hom Tov facility, meaning giant profit margins in a world of $45 to $60 per barrel crude. Yearly earnings are forecasted to be between $159 million and $350 million, Shahal said.

h/t : Glenn.

November 17, 2006

Awareness is breaking out all over.

Fox News is re-running their truncated version of "Obsession" tonight at 10 p.m. Eastern, 9 Central.

I don't know how that translates to Mountain or Pacific times, because I never go left of the Central time zone.

Granted, this is an isolated incident, but...

Khalid Chahhou, who was in his first year of teaching in Johnston County, gave students a worksheet in which they were to translate words and find them within a word-search puzzle.

Some students started uncovering strange words in the process.

"There were words like 'kill,' then I saw it said 'destroy America,'" Eric Herrera said.

Not to mention:

"Allah help destroy this body of evil making humanity miserable."

In his defense, the teacher says:

Chahhou, who also teaches Arabic at a religious school affiliated with the Islamic Association of Cary, told WRAL in a telephone interview that students got the wrong message from the assignment.

"When I made the assignment, I was upset and angry about a story I recently saw on the news. If any message appears, it is more of a message to myself, not to my students. I never meant to hurt or upset any students or parents," he said.

Yeeeeeeah, right, Mr. Chahhou. Most teachers insert messages to themselves into school assignments when they're upset over a news story.

What's most troubling about this to me isn't that he pulled this with his public school students, it's that he teaches at a Muslim school as well.

God only knows what he's teaching them in Arabic.

I urge you, once again, to listen to the words of an American citizen calling for shari'a law.

Stein hoist: Tim via the Sandcrawler

Update: Better late than never.

UPDATE II by Rusty: Dan Riehl has much more on the teacher's ties to radical Islamists.

Oh, and Death to America!

I received an e-mail from Blogger, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Google. It seems they don't think it's a big deal that they are providing free hosting to al Qaeda.

Thank you for your note. Blogger is a provider of content creation tools, not a mediator of that content. We allow our users to create blogs, but we don't make any claims about the content of these pages. In cases where contact information for the author is listed on the page, we recommend you working directly with this person to have this information removed or changed.

Since al Qaeda in Iraq is the site owner, I'm thinking that if I had their e-mail address that writing a letter of complaint would be kind of way down on the priority list.

Because hosting terrorist propaganda has no real world consequences.....

Yusuf Islam, aka Cat Stevens, has been granted permission to enter the US. Brilliant!

When he gets here, will somebody in the media grow a spine and ask him about allegations levelled by a radical cleric that he once was associated with the jailed Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman?

UPDATE: 11/18/2006: Terror group with ties to Iran claims Western hostage taking. More recent updates posted here.
--------------------------------

Four American and one Austrian civilian have been kidnapped in Iraq. The five men were part of a convoy heading through the Shia dominated south of Iraq, but are thought to be held in a Sunni area. That part of Iraq is generally patrolled by British forces.

14 people were taken hostage, but the 9 non-Westerners have since been released. The implication I draw from this is that the hostages are being held for money, and that we should expect a ransom demand soon. UPDATE: Speculation is already abounding that the abductions are related to the issuing of an arrest warrant for the top Sunni cleric in Iraq. If this is the case, then the kidnappings are politically motivated. This is bad news if true.

Only the name of one of the Western hostages has been released to the public. he is Paul Reuben of Minnesota. UPDATE: The Austrian hostage, I'm sad to report, has been found dead. One American has been found alive, but wounded. Three Americans still missing. UPDATE: New reports that a second American freed. UPDATE: Reports in flux. New reports indicate all 5 possibly still missing!

Scroll down for updates. Most recent updates near bottom.

The five men work for The Crescent Security Group, which provide security for military, civilian, and diplomatice convoys in Iraq:

Crescent Security Group conducts convoy escort duties for an ever growing number of Coalition Militaries, Embassies, Government Contractors, Private enterprise, transport and freight forwarding companies.

Crescent operates with a minimum configuration of 3 'gun trucks' per convoy with an emphasis on the safety of life, goods under transit and vehicles in our care.

Gun trucks are civilian vehicles upgraded and in house maintained to operate in hostile and extreme climatic environments. They can be of an up-armored, semi-armored or soft skinned configuration, with each carrying all necessities to be self sufficient for extended periods of time

Coalition forces have begun searching for the hostages. CNN:

Coalition forces Friday were searching "aggressively" for five security contractors, including four Americans, who were abducted Thursday during an ambush on their convoy, a military source said.

A spokesman for Crescent Security Group said five of their security personnel were "unaccounted for." The contractors disappeared near Basra on Thursday afternoon....

The supply convoy was traveling from Kuwait, where Crescent operates, to Tallil Airbase near Nasiriya in southern Iraq when it was ambushed, the Crescent spokesman said.

Local militia masquerading as Iraqi police attacked the convoy, using a fake police checkpoint, according to a military source.

British ground forces and U.S. military helicopters fought with gunmen Friday in southern Iraq where four American security contractors and their Austrian co-worker were abducted in a convoy hijacking.

The Austrian was found dead and one of the Americans was found gravely wounded, an Iraqi police officer said. The three Americans who were among the five Crescent Security Group employees taken hostage remained missing in the largely Sunni area....

Capt. Tane Dunlop, a spokesman for British forces who were fighting gunmen in the area where the kidnapping took place, said in a telephone interview from Basra that the hijacking occurred at 1 p.m. Thursday in Safwan, an Iraqi city near the Kuwait border. He said the convoy was coming from Kuwait.

At dawn Friday, British ground forces and helicopters searched an area of Safwan for gunmen who had attacked coalition forces in the past few days when about 10 of them opened fire from farm buildings, Dunlop said. The British and U.S. forces returned fire, Dunlop said.

But a spokesman for the Kuwait-based company employing the contractors said in the early evening that all five victims were still missing.

We also hope that all will put aside partisanship and ideology in rallying around these hostages. You'll remember that when American security contractors were murdered and their bodies desecrated in Fallujah, that Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, of the Daily Kos, said "Screw Them."

MORE UPDATES BELOW

UPDATE: Now reports of two Americans freed.

Iraqi police freed two American hostages in a raid on Friday but a third foreigner was found dead a day after they were kidnapped when their truck convoy was hijacked at a bogus security checkpoint.

UPDATE: No Burqa e-mails the latest. New reports indicate that there were two incidents. The first, a shoot out between Iraqi police and private security officers. The second, the kidnapping of the 5 Westerners. Fox News:

But Basra police Maj. Gen. Ali al-Moussawi later said none of the kidnapped security company employees had been freed and claimed the governor had confused separate incidents in the region involving private security forces.

Al-Moussawi said the five kidnap victims — four Americans and an Austrian — were still in the hands of a criminal gang that had demanded a ransom.

Al-Moussawi said the governor's confusion arose out of a separate incident on Friday in which a member of a private security team leading a convoy was killed.

Developing....

If you have any information about Paul Reubens or any of the other hostages, please e-mail Rusty at the contat information above.

Spc. Ahmed K. Altaie is still hostage in Iraq. Friends of his inform me that they are hopeful that he will be released alive.

Other American hostages in Iraq still missing:
Dean Sadek
Aban Elias
Jeffrey Ake

PS--If there are any developments in the story that I miss, please e-mail me with tips to mypetjawa@gmail.com.

The House Republicans voted this morning 168-27 to keep their current leader:

WASHINGTON — Republicans Friday chose Rep. John Boehner as minority leader, succeeding Speaker Dennis Hastert in the top GOP leadership post for the Democratic-controlled House that convenes in January.

Boehner defeated Indiana conservative Mike Pence. The vote tally was 168-27 with one vote for Texas Rep. Joe Barton. Boehner's election cements the Ohio conservative's resurrection within GOP leadership ranks. His elevation to succeed Hastert, R-Ill., as the party's front line leader came despite unrest within the rank and file and a spirited campaign by Pence.

Arizona GOP Rep. John Shadegg lost his bid to become the House's number 2 GOP leader Friday in a campaign in which he promised to return the party its "reform-minded principles."

In losing the House minority whip post, Shadegg was defeated by Rep. Roy Blunt, of Missouri, the current GOP whip.

Shadegg lost the election in a 137-57 vote conducted by Republicans in private balloting.

Our guys decided on business as usual in the House. Score two more for the Dems.

In other news, we just brought porkmaster Trent Lott back into the Senate GOP leadership. Lott's considered an effective organizer, but his face on TV will be a constant reminder of GOP business as usual. Advantage: Dems.

To cap it off, we just hired an inexperienced party chairman who'll be working part time. I'm willing to give Mel Martinez the benefit of the doubt for now, but given the Bush campaign's incredibly poor track record on choosing the right man for the job, coupled with his part-time status, the honeymoon will be short. The Harriet Miers of RNC Chairmen? Maybe not quite--but still not encouraging.

Some of you are confident the Dems will crater within the next two years.

From what I'm seeing so far, I wouldn't be counting on that. So far, we're getting out-played. This is not good.

UPDATE : Human Events has a round-up.

If you didn't see Glenn Beck's important documentary on the radical Islamist agenda, you need to.

No, I take that back. It is your friends and family that are still in denial. They need to see this video.

Most of our readers already know about the Islamist agenda. If you have friends who are still in denial about the threat of political Islam, then why don't you do something useful with your e-mail contact list and send them a link to the video? It is a much more productive use of your contact list than, say, a forwarded letter promising doom if you break the chain.

See the Glenn Beck "Exposed" video here.

You might also want to listen to Glenn interview a member of the Islamic Thinker's Society of New York here. You might remember them from such classic's as 'Next time, we will get all of NYC' and 'Death to America!'

PS-Death to America!

Mary Katharine's message to the GOP: "Get off the couch. Go to the gym. Step AWAY from the pork rinds. There's a lot of changes that need to be made before anyone's coming back to you."

Amen to that.

h/t : Allah

UPDATE by Rusty: I call shenaningans! I can spot a Funyun at 20 yeards.

UPDATE II by Rusty: Funyungate!

Looks to me like this kid, Mostafa, is trolling for a juicy civil rights lawsuit. Apparently, a library staffer approached him and asked for his student ID. He refused to show it and the university cops asked him to leave the library. Then Mostafa starts in with this:

Here's your PATRIOT ACT!!!

Here's your fucking ABUSE OF POWER!!!

I SAID I WOULD LEAVE!!!

I SAID... I WOULD LEAVE!!!

I got tased for no reason!

I was leaving this GOD-FORSAKEN place!

You stopped me!

You're abusing your power!

Here's your justice and where the university stinks.

Fuck off!

November 16, 2006

Well, that was fun. We seem to have had a bit of an outage. It was Vinnie's fault. He was drunk and tripped over the extension cord again.

I was going to post on this earlier, but couldn't make heads nor tails of it. In my mind Sisayehiticha Dinssa seems like an unlikely terror suspect.

He's an Ethiopian by birth, and an American citizen by choice. My experience is that most Ethiopians in the US are here because they fled during the Communist takeover during the Cold War. Maybe my Ethiopian readers could clarify?

The large amount of cash found on the unemployed man seems more of a sign of criminality than of latent jihadism. And the cyanide and nuclear info? Hell, you should see what's on my computer.

It wasn't until Allahpundit pointed out this from the Blotter that I became a bit more alarmed:

According to two senior U.S. government officials briefed on the matter, the files appear to be beyond what someone would normally download from the Internet. According to U.S. officials, Dinssa may have been researching the materials extensively.

Hopefully it will turn out that he's just your run of the mill Heroin dealer or something. But the Ethiopian community is a small one. Any one know Dinssa?

Michelle sums up my feelings on it:

Could be something. Could be nothing. In a post-9/11 world, we cannot afford to take chances.

But let me throw this and this into the over-the-top speculation pot, which might urge caution as the better part of valor. Better safe than sorry.

Not content with inciting the world to murder Jews, a Reuters stringer is caught selling goods stolen from them as well.

A warrant has been issued for the top Sunni cleric in Iraq. Harith al-Dhari is the head of the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars.

Al-Dhari is one of these 'moderates' you so often hear about who in one breath condemns violence and then in the next supports the insurgency.

This will turn out badly, in the end. The last time a cleric's office from Association of Muslim Scholars was raided, outrage ensued. The Association of Muslim Scholars was implicated in the Jill Carroll kidnapping.

Townhall:

On Tuesday, President Jalal Talabani called al-Dhari a hard-liner with "nothing to do but incite sectarian and ethnic sedition."

Actually the minister's words were an indirect threat to Muqtada al-Sadr, or more like a direct one because he said, and I'm paraphrasing, "there are two neighboring countries that are causing trouble in Iraq and anyone who cooperates with these countries will not be safe from prosecution"

Hat tip: Editor in Pajamas

The Google owned Blogger network is hosting an al Qaeda linked website. The website, The Caliphate Voice Channel, appears to be part of the growing media arm of the al Qaeda umbrella organization which once called itself The Mujahidin Shura Council.

That group recently changed its name by declaring itself The Islamic State of Iraq.

You can see the al Qaeda linked website here.

If you do visit the website, you will see several of the posts link to various translations of the Global Islamic Media Front's latest installment of the Voice of the Caliphate news program. In it, al Qaeda forces declare that they are winning the war in Iraq. You can see this bit of terrorist propaganda with English subtitles here.

Does Google know that it is hosting a terrorist website? A website from the same group that beheaded Shosei Kodai and Nick Berg? Probably not as of this writing. But I just e-mailed them about it.

Keep your fingers crossed that they will do the right thing, but don't hold your breath.

UPDATE: Howie reminds me that the Baghdad Sniper Juba website is still online. Oh, and it's also still hosted by the Google owned Blogger network. But so is the Juba Sucks website.

UPDATE 11/17/06: Blogger just e-mailed me. It was your typical "we are not responsible for the content" yada yada yada. Read: Yeah, we're helping al Qaeda, go jump in a lake you fascist censorship Nazi!

Geeks, nerds, dweebs, and other social outcasts of the world are demanding that their 'religion' be taken seriously. That religion? Jedi Knight.

I. Kid. You. Freaking. Not.

That, according to an article in the UK's Daily Mail today. It also claims that:

390,000 people in the UK belong to the religion of 'Jedi Knights'. There are also an estimated 70,000 Jedi knights in Australia, 53,000 in New Zealand and 20,000 in Canada.

Numbers for how many Jedi living in the U.S. were not available, but rumor has it that more Americans think of themselves as Sith than Jedi. Hey, we're just trying to bring order to a chaotic universe!

Actual. Freaking. Quote.

We therefore are calling upon the United Nations Association to change November 16 to the UN Interstellar Day of Tolerance, to reflect the religious make-up of our twenty-first century civilisation.

‘Tolerance is about respecting difference where ever it lies, including other galaxies. Please don't exclude us from your important work. May the Force be with you.’

Hat tip Hauke, who also finds this in the comments:

"I would bet there are more TREKKIES out there - what about OUR relgion? What about OUR basic human rights? We've suffered more, and longer, than those Star Wars nerds! We've been Geeky since the 60's! When is OUR day coming?

UPDATE Bonus: Video! Including retard speaking Wookie, and loser 'translating'!!!!!!!

From Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A week after winning back control of the U.S. Congress, divided Democrats in the House defied incoming speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday and elected Steny Hoyer to be majority leader, a Democratic Party aide said.

Via Stop the ACLU.

On Verteran’s day I noted that the supporters of the Mujahdeen Shura Council were celebrating the Democratic victory in our elections. They called it “the final victory” in their quest to create as Taliban like state within Iraq. I begged the Democrats to respond to these terrorists.

Rusty Followed as well with the statement.

I pray that many in the sane wing of the Democratic party who are not critical of the mission but only the failed tactics of the Bush Administration will win the day.

Rusty also explained their plans here why we cannot let the terrorists succeed in Iraq.

The Mujahadeen Shura Council (aka The Islamic State of Iraq) has released a new video claiming victory.

Description of the Video Via MEMRI:

The masked announcer reports that the Shura Council of the Jihad Fighters in Iraq has announced the establishment of the Islamic State of Iraq, and gives a "preliminary analysis" of the country's current events.

He says that the "Crusaders" and their Shi'ite allies have met with defeat in Iraq, and are therefore spreading lies in a last-ditch effort to weaken the mujahideen. For example, he says, they are claiming that Abu Hamza Al-Muhajir is not an Iraqi so as to propagate the myth that the Iraqi people welcome the occupation, and that only a handful of foreign fighters are opposing it. The announcer adds that the Crusaders had also, as part of their "psychological warfare" against the mujahideen, reported that Iraqi tribal heads had met with Iraqi President Al-Maliki, when in fact those who had met with him were merely "puppets" controlled by the occupiers. Also mentioned is the video of Abu Osama Al-'Iraqi, [2] which is likewise claimed to be a forgery.

The announcer then states that the Islamic State of Iraq was established in order to counter this "fierce attack," and that it will spearhead the war to liberate Palestine. Finally, he declares that Abu Hamza Al-Muhajir is calling on all clerics and professionals in Iraq to participate in the establishment of the Islamic State.
Throughout the film, a screen behind the news presenter shows scenes from the fighting in Iraq.

The Islamic State in Iraq/Mujahadeen Shura Council are terrorists of the worst sort. They created many beheading videos. Including Americans Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong.

In celebration, last week a video claiming to be from the “El Haraman Media Center” was released showing a summary of ten beheadings carried out by these groups. The video has a similar banner to older videos from the group. The video glorifies the beheadings and credits Zarqawi for, "terrorising the westerns."

The Video ends with an angelic image of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi smiling down at the beheadings with approval.

Zarqawi is being portrayed as some kind of sick Patrick Henry in al-Qaeda’s propaganda. See this post at Armies Of Liberation.

The Amir of Martyrs, Abu Mus’ab Al-Zarqawi, God’s mercy be upon him, Operation–[These two took place] in the Crusader port of Al-Dabbah in Hadramut region.

I will not post that video as it is far too graphic. I have a list of the victims below and some stills.

If we exit Iraq, we will leave a good portion of Iraq to al-Qeada. They are already celebrating the victory. They must be stopped. An Iraq in Chaos is dangerous. An Iraq under the control of al-Qaeda is unacceptable.

Note the shape of the funnel leading from western Iraq into Jordan. To leave that for al-Qaeda is a mistake. They will use for their stated goal of carrying the fight to Palestine.

List of Victims in the Video

In order of appearance:

1)
Name: Barea Nafie Dawoud Ibrahim
Nationality: Iraqi
Group: Ansar al-Sunnah
Release date of execution video: 02-10-2004

2)
Name: Luqman Hussein
Nationality: Iraqi-Kurdish
Group: Ansar al-Sunnah
Release date of execution video: 11-10-2004

3)
Name: Hussein Shanoun
Nationality: Iraqi
Group: Ansar al-Sunnah
Release date of execution video: 03-11-2004

4)
Name: Hussein Jassem Mohammad al-Zubaidi
Nationality: Iraqi
Group: Al-Qaeda in Iraq
Release date of execution video: 21-01-2005

5)
Name: Ahmad Alwan Hussein al-Mahmadawi
Nationality: Iraqi
Group: Al-Qaeda in Iraq
Release date of execution video: 21-01-2005 (same video like that before)

6)
Name: Mohammed Mutawalli
Nationality: Egyptian
Group: Jama'at Al-Tawhid Wa'al-Jihad
Release date of execution video: 10-08-2004

7)
Name: Jack Hensley
Nationality: American
Group: Jama'at Al-Tawhid Wa'al-Jihad
Release date of execution video: 21-09-2004

8)
Name: Abbas Dahel Majid al-Obeidi
Nationality: unknown
Group: Al-Qaeda in Iraq
Release date of execution video: 22-10-2005

9)
Name: Eugene Armstrong
Nationality: American
Group: Jama'at Al-Tawhid Wa'al-Jihad
Release date of execution video: 20-09-2004

A banner included with the video post.

First banner

Second banner.

The video continues with disgusting live beheadings. I've left those images out for the time being. Our of respect for the human beings, most of which are Iraqi who are slowly and tortureously murdered by these terrorists.

Next Zarqawi is shown smiling down on the murderous rampage below.

Where are moderate Muslims in the Middle East and do they not make up the vast majority? As I've been saying, well, forever, it all depends on your definition of the word moderate.

Allah has a good discussion about the Glenn Beck program last night in which he links a new report released yesterday by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, “The Militant Ideology Atlas”. In it, the authors recognize that the Salafi are now either a majority or near to it in the Middle East today.

Salaafism is not the same as Wahhabism, it is a much broader movement. Salaafis generally believe in the rule of Islamic law and the restoration of the Caliphate. While Wahhabs also believe this, they are a subset of the Salaafis.

So, according to this report, Salaafis now make up a significant number of those in the Middle East. Can Salaafists ever be moderate?

Again, it depends on your definition of 'moderate'. Something I've been at odds with Dean Esmay over for quite some time. From the report:

Finally, a word about “moderate” Muslims. The measure of moderation depends on what type of standard you use. If by “moderate” one means the renouncement of violence in the achievement of political goals, then the majority of Salafis are moderate. But if by “moderate” one means an acceptance of secularism, capitalism, democracy, gender equality, and a commitment to religious pluralism, then Salafis would be extremists on all counts. Then again, there are not many Muslim religious leaders in the Middle East that would qualify as moderates according to the second definition.

Let me point out, also, that I would slightly disagree with the chart in the report, reproduced by Allah. I've produced my own chart to show what I believe is a more accurate description of where the jihadi ideology falls in the larger scheme of things.

The broadest category is that of Muslims. Islamists are those who believe in a political form of Islam. Since Islam, unlike Christianity, was political from its beginning, it is not difficult to see why it is part of mainstream and historical Islam. Also, why it permeates both major sects of Islam--Sunni and Shia. After all, Christianity didn't find its first warrior king until after nearly 200 years of being completely apolitical. Mohammed himself was a warrior king.

There are liberal reformers in the Muslim world who consider themselves Islamists. But they are not so numerous as we would hope.

The vast majority of Islamists are peaceful--that is, they reject violence as a means to an end--but they also support sharia. What seperates the Salaafi from other Sunni Islamists is their vision of the return of the Caliphate.

The Shia, though, have their own brand of Islamists. While not all Shia Islamists are followers of the former leader of Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini, Khomeinists are to Shia Islamists as Salaafists are to Sunni Islamists.

By comparison to most Salaafi, Khomeinists are quite moderate. They believe in Islamic law, but they also have no problem with democracy. Democracy within limits, that is. Think of a kind of Constitutionalism which limits democracy, but replace the Constitution with Islamic law.

Most, but not all, Salaafi reject democracy out of hand. The participation of Salafi groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt should be seen in much the same way the the Nazis participated in German politics under the Weimar Republic--it is a means to an end.

Jihadis may be either subsets of Salafism or of Khomeinism. Al Qaeda is a Salafist jihad organization. Hizbollah are Khomeinists.

Which brings up a broader point about the roots of two very different problems that we face, and which are often mixed up.

a) The threat of violence from jihadis.
b) The threat of oppression from Islamists.

When we speak of a threat from Muslim quarters of the world, we are usually referring to the threat of violence by jihadis. The authors of this paper seem to suggest that this violence is inspired by Salaafism. But if Salaafism is the inspiration, how does one explain radical Shia jihadis who would reject Qutb (the philisophical founder of modern Saalafism)?

Lest we forget, it was the Khomeinist jihadis of Hezbollah that killed 220 American Marines, 18 sailors, and 3 soldiers in 1983.

Since both major branches of Islam have both Islamists and jihadis, then the inspiration must lie in Islam itself. At least, in Islam as it has been traditionally interpretted.

In fact, the authors even have this to say in defense of their use of the word jihadis:

We recognize that the use of "Jihadi" to designate Salafis of a militant stripe is controversial. Some analysts feel that it cedes too much to militant Salafis to ratify their use of the term—they call their movement al-haraka al-jihadiyya ("the Jihadi Movement")—since jihad has positive connotations in Islam.

And if it is the case that Islam is the root of the problem, then the problem is much bigger than most are willing to admit. Because even if one rejects violence as the means to the end of Sharia law, isn't the end the real problem?

The Nazis came to power only after they rejected the failed policy of a violent revolution. Most Islamists now have done the same. But in the end, for those who were forced to live under the fascist rule of Nazis in the past or of Islamists today, it really did not matter that violence was rejected as a way to come to power. It is what you do with power once you get it that is the true test.

And if the Taliban or the Iranian Mullahs are any example, then we have much to fear from all of political Islam, and not just the most radical aspects of it.

Related: Watch Robert Spencer's latest at Hot Air.

Listen to Salaafists from the Islamic Thinker's Society of New York on the Glenn Beck program yesterday.

See also Douglas Farah at the CT Blog and at his own space here.

For more, just read Jihad Watch every day.

Finally, a Republican grows a pair and tells it like it is:

"We have two factions of media in Boston. On the one hand, we have the Hillary-loving, Ted Kennedy apologists. And on the other, we have the liberals."

The following are not videos. They are actually audio of a member of the Islamic Thinker's Society of New York calling Glenn Beck done in a video format for easier posting. The static picture is of a rally held by the group. Note the black flag of Islam flying over the White House. This is pointed out by Glenn during the call.

It's in two parts due to time constraints.

Part One:

Part Two:

Previous Jawa Report posts about the Islamic Thinker's Society:

The Enemy Among Us: The Islamic Thinkers Society of NY

Muslims in NY: "next time we will get all of NYC"

Flag Desecration Images From the Religion of Patriots

Taliban Supporters Behind New York Rally Against Muhammed Cartoons

More Bakri, Birmingham, Ties to Terror Plot Uncovered (Updated)

Domestic Terror Watch: NY Muslims Rally for Islamic Domination of World

Terror Attack in New York: British Consulate Targeted

American Muslims Protest Mohammed Cartoons, Call for Destruction of America

About That FDNY Muslim Moonbat Who Questions Whether The 19 (Muslim) Hijackers Were Responsible For 9/11 - Does his school have a connection to a 'charitable front' for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad?

(Islamabad, Pakistan) Good news! Unfortunately, it's a mere baby step towards the goal of equal rights for women.

From PakTribune.com:

Congratulating the whole nation over approval of Women Protection Bill 2006 by the Parliament, President General Pervez Musharraf Wednesday vowed to bring an end to all injustice against women and weaker segments of the society.

Regarding the rape, the president said the trouble with it was that if a woman is raped firstly she is being prosecuted she goes to the police station crying she is asked to bring four witnesses otherwise she is imprisoned and she becomes victim of double injustice. This was a dual injustice with out women. We have amended the Zina Bil Jabr (Rape) we put it in PPC and from now on if a woman is raped and if she had an evidence or she lacks it, only the rapist will be adjudged. There will be no bar for producing four witness and raped woman will not be put behind bars.

Nonetheless, the Women Protection Bill 2006 should be considered a major step forward. There remains, however, much more work to be done before true equality between the sexes is achieved.

From the Washington Post:

A showdown over the House majority leader's post today has Democrats bitterly divided only a week after their party took control of Congress and has prompted numerous complaints that Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and her allies are using strong-arm tactics and threats to try to elect Rep. John P. Murtha (Pa.) to the job.

Murtha, 74, a former Marine who was among the first on Capitol Hill to call for a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, may have hurt his own chances Tuesday night when he derided the Democrats' ethics and lobbying package before saying he will push for its passage anyway out of deference to Pelosi. His statement, at a gathering of conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats, was cited by backers of his rival, Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (Md.), as further proof that Murtha's controversial ethics record disqualifies him to lead the party in a new political era.

According to Human Events:

10. U.S.-Taiwan Military Ties - Nay

9. United Nations Funding Cap - Nay

8. Religious Freedom for Churches - Nay

7. End Foreign-Language Ballot Mandate - Nay

6. Eliminate Federal Mandate for English Language Assistance - Nay

5. Government Spending Cuts (1%) - Nay

4. Illegal Immigration Residency Extension - Yea

3. Border Security Measures - Nay

2. No Child Left Behind - Yea

1. Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit - Yea

November 15, 2006

Last year there were several pics that claimed to show Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was present during the hostage crisis at the American embassy in Tehran in 1979. Those images were inconclusive. But these images via Texas Rainmaker leave me with little doubt.

Inka Dinka Doo!

With the Democrat takeover of Congress, Congressman Dennis Kucinich will be the presumptive new Chairman of the powerful Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs and International Relations.

From Cleveland.com:

Kucinich, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee where foreign policy legislation is generated, is likely to play a much larger role on everything from the nation's policies on fighting terrorism to the war in Iraq.

The six-term congressman has sought the recall of troops from Iraq and says the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policies are eroding civil liberties.

From HotAir:

As with immigration, now that the president’s got a Democratic majority he’s free to indulge his dumbest leftist instincts.

God only knows what that’ll mean.

Dean Barnett on the return of Trent Lott:

If there’s one message that the electorate sent the Republican Party last week, it’s that we hadn’t given them enough of Trent Lott. I cannot adequately express my delight that Senate Republicans have moved with such expediency to right this egregious wrong.

H/t : LGF.

From RedState:

Sources tell RedState that Congressman Joe Barton has withdrawn from the House Leadership race after John Boehner had it made clear to Barton that should Boehner win he would strip Barton of his ranking position on the Energy & Commerce Committee.

On a related note, we interviewed Boehner today. For the most part, he tossed out a lot of canned sound bites. He didn't say anything bad, but this was not the voice of reform. The other folks in the interview had few questions for him. I think we'd all already endorsed his opponent Mike Pence, so this was more or less a formality.

I asked him what he had to say to those commentators who believe that his retention as House Leader would send a message of "business as usual" in the GOP. I got some generic language about "changing direction," but no satisfactory answer.

I asked him for his proposals for ethics reform. He suggested more transparency in earmarks and a "quicker" process for handling ethics complaints. I'm not sure what a "quicker" process means. It seems that the "quickest" process would be to "quickly" throw the ethics complaints in the trash, but I'm hoping that's not what he meant.

At any rate, I'd already endorsed Mike Pence, so this interview was just to "dot the eyes" and "cross the tees." I heard nothing that changed my opinion in the least.

A view from across the pond:

The conservative blogs and opinion leaders are rallying strongly behind Pence and Shadegg, who have the virtue of being eloquent and intellectually consistent (and principled), with none of the taint of selling out to big-money lobbyists.

Some may argue with their principles, but nobody can argue that they merely mouth platitudes that they don't really mean. Pence on Tuesday said he brings to the table "a certain cheerful pugilism", which is an apt description of his feisty but good-natured demeanor. In some ways, the model is very Reaganesque.

In the end, the upstarts will find that their best selling points within the jaded Republican caucus is not their right-leaning ideology as much as their well-earned reputation as reformers willing to change internal rules and procedures in favor of transparency, accountability, and more rigorous ethics.

The internal House Republican Caucus elections are scheduled for Friday. The fate of Pence and Shadegg will send a big message as to whether Washington Republicans will continue using the same strategies that have marked their reign for the past six or eight years, or whether they will chart a new course at once more conservative but also more idealistic.

The election for the House GOP leadership is FRIDAY--the day after tomorrow.

The time for TALK is over. It's time for ACTION!

Here is a comment from a Somalian reader calling himself Hajji Dheere. The Hajj in his name indicates he's made the pilgrimage to Mecca. His IP traces to the Univesity of Ottawa. It's great to see that Canada's liberal assylum laws are finally paying off!

I'd start here if I was looking to find Dheere.

I wonder what our good Ethiopian readers have to say to Hajj Dheere?:

Bring it on loser. We'll take you ALL kaafirs on...you, Bush, and your Ethiopian Tigrai Habashi slaves....

Bring it on Ethiopians...your dead will litter the streets of Mugadishu worse than the 19 American special forces (Delta & Rangers), IF you get that far. A 3rd world country like Ethiopia will certainly not defeat us even with US help. If that is the case then we shall go to our Muslim brothers and seek arms too.

We live, eat, and breath WAR. You would be better of keep working your feilds and beggin the west for food Ethiopians. But if you wanna die, then follow Meles Zenawi's regime and come to Somalia and fight us.

One of The Jawa Report's first collaboraters, BRD, is heading to Darfur. Yeah, we actually want to help the Muslim brown people. I'm proud to say that I've actually met this guy. I've been wondering what he's been doing lately. Unlike the rest of us here at the Jawa corporate offices, he's been doing good. Not just wasting company time surfing for porn.

If you can spare some cash, go to the Christmas in Darfur website and donate. If you're in the D.C. area, they're also holding a benefit concert tonight.

In addition to liking brown people and Muslims, BRD also like the J-O-Os. Or maybe he's just blegging at Goldstein's site because those people have all the money?

From a CENTCOM press release:

MOSUL, Iraq – Three terrorists were killed and one was seriously wounded on Nov. 13 when they tried to plant a roadside bomb in the Baghdad Garage neighborhood on Train Station Road in western Mosul.

The terrorists attempted to emplace a roadside bomb consisting of a 155 mm artillery round when it exploded prematurely, killing two of them instantly and injuring two more.

Iraqi Police responded to the explosion, finding the bodies of the two dead terrorists and evacuating the injured terrorists to a local hospital. One of the injured later died of his wounds. Two innocent bystanders, injured in the blast, were transported to Al Jamouri Hospital.

From ABC's The Blotter:

As convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff reported to federal prison today, a source close to the investigation surrounding his activities told ABC News that Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was one of the members of Congress Abramoff had allegedly implicated in his cooperation with federal prosecutors.

A spokesperson for Reid, elected yesterday as the Senate Majority Leader, said the senator had done nothing illegal or unethical.

Of course there's also this:

The AP also reported that Abramoff's billing records showed extensive contact with Reid's office over a three-year period in which Reid collected more than $68,000 from Abramoff's firm, partners and clients.

Update: In the "hoist by his own petard" category, Suitably Flip reminds us of this letter to President Bush, sent in January and still posted on Senator Reid's website, in which the senator says:

There is no reason to wait for indictments or convictions before the American people learn of the role Mr. Abramoff played in the Bush White House. We therefore call on you to make public as soon as possible an accounting of Mr. Abramoff’s personal contacts with Bush Administration officials and the official acts that may have been undertaken at his request.

Via Stop the ACLU.

As amazing as it may seem to some of us, the evidence continues to pile up that it may, in fact, take an electoral beating in 2008 before the GOP management wakes the hell up:

Make no mistake about it, the GOP base is upset, demoralized and disappointed in the performance of the Republican Party, and if the columns, blog posts and comments I'm seeing around the net are any indication, a lot of conservatives still aren't convinced that anyone in Washington is listening to them. That's understandable because conservatives were pointing out many of the problems that cost the GOP the election in 2006 for YEARS without anyone on Capitol Hill, including the President, seeming to pick up on it or care.

Conservatives insisted that we stop wasting money and we got a Bridge to Nowhere. We insisted that we take an enforcement first position on illegal immigration and we got an amnesty plan that was worse than anyone had even imagined a year or two beforehand. We heard calls for ethics reform and we got the Republican leadership complaining because the FBI searched the office of a Democrat with bribe money in his freezer. With that kind of performance, is it any surprise that the base wasn't there for Washington Republicans when it counted, at election time? For too long, Republicans in Washington have lived by one principle, "What are they gonna do, vote for the Democrats?" and it finally caught up with them in 2006.

But, the good news is that it's not too late. Republicans in the House can still bring in leaders like Representatives Mike Pence (R.-Ind.) and John Shadegg (R.-Ariz.), who can get the party back to basics. In addition, Pence has vowed to fight the Senate's amnesty bill if he's elected minority leader and Sen. Jon Kyl (R.-Ariz.) is trying to organize a filibuster of the bill in the Senate. Moreover, Republicans in Congress are going to have a lot of opportunities to articulate their views and prove their mettle as they oppose the tsunami of bad legislation that will be pushed by Democrats in Congress and the son of "Read My-Lips."

If Republicans once again prove that they're the party of Ronald Reagan, not the party of "compassionate conservatism," the base and the American people will support them again. But Republicans in Washington shouldn't forget for one minute that the confidence level in them is very low, even amongst their own biggest supporters, so they're going to have to prove themselves every step of the way.

H/t : Michelle.

Former West Pointers who read James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal jumped on a remarkably stupid comment by the Gray Lady's managing editor, Jill Abrahamson:

Yesterday we noted that Jill Abramson, managing editor of the New York Times, had remarked that "people are always surprised when I tell them that we sell a lot of subscriptions at West Point." Many readers wrote us to explain why this is. Here's one of them, Rob Munden:

Cadets are required to subscribe to the New York Times (fees deducted from your account, no alternatives given), and unless things have changed from the late '80s when I was there, plebes [freshmen] are required to be conversant with every story on the front page and front page of the sports section before first formation (i.e., early). It's a memory-skills development technique, with a side benefit of forcing everyone to learn about what is going on in the world in a broad sense. As an upperclassman, it was helpful to be able to identify and isolate the bias in the news--and to be given so many opportunities to do so. It's a lifetime skill I'm sure you've no doubt developed, being scrupulously nonpartisan.

It's quite one thing to subscribe to the Times when you have a choice; it's quite another to use forced subscriptions to justify your popularity. Legend has it that in the wake of one of the cheating scandals at West Point the Times called cadets "humorless, uptight and driven," and in response, cadets hung a banner asking "How can a newspaper without comics dare to call anyone humorless?" I'd be surprised if more than 10% of cadets support the Times editorial board position on anything.

Adds reader Malcolm Cole, another West Point alum: "Even back in the 1980s we knew of the leftist slant of the Times and asked our superiors why we had to read the New York Times, since it wasn't very pro-military. The reply often was: 'It's good to know what the enemy is thinking.'

Via Larwyn.

Bumped by Rusty......because it's my patriotic duty to support the right of hot Muslim chicks to wear skimpy bikinis. I'm serious.

Scroll through the images below.
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Sehr will be competing in this week’s Miss Earth 2006 pageant representing Pakistan, much to the dismay of some Pakistani officials. Pakistan does not send official candidates to pageants because they consider being a total hottie un-Islamic. Serh was born in Pakistan but hails from the Big Apple. The Koran, err Uh I mean contest rules, state she may represent Pakistan if they fail to send a representative.

Yahoo News: Miss Pakistan, Sehr Mahmood, 25, a contestant of 2006 Miss Earth contest poses at the poolside of a hotel in Manila November 9, 2006. About 90 women from all over the world will be vying for the title Miss Earth on November 26, 2006, with this year's pageant focusing on global warming.

Since Howie, is only posting this story as public service in the name of objective journalism, I’ll not favor either of them. But the competition will be tough.

The Miss Earth Pageant is dedicated to environmental issues. The issue this year is lowering pollution from debris burning and fossil fuel usage. I admit, I was not convinced this was a problem, until I saw this.

I was for fossil fuels before I was against them.

No word on if this is longtime Jawa commenter Amaad's sister.

Rusty adds

It almost makes you want to follow Mark Stayn's advice and start repopulating the West....but with hot Muslim chicks. It's almost your patriotic duty!

Oh, and I added Miss Poland becasue she's unreal and because she hangs with Hot Muslim Babe Miss Albania.

Linked at OTB traffic jam.

The Washington Post's executive editor, concerned about the paper's circulation freefall, has announced changes, big, big changes:

NEW YORK In a surprising memo to staffers today, Leonard Downie, Jr., executive editor, announced several general and specific shakeups "to maximize readership of the printed newspaper, build audience on the Web site and further reduce costs in the newsroom."

This includes a plan to "shrink" the newsroom. "tightening up the paper's news hole," cracking down on story length and moving reporters and editors "within and among staffs." The Post is now suffering from regular circulation declines.

At least, that's the line a lot of people want to feed you. Including the increasingly stupid Bill Maher.

The idealist in me pretty much hates every regime in the Middle East, including our so-called friends. The realist in me understands that the alternatives to many of these regimes would be worse.

So, at the state level, we don't have any friends in the Middle East. What we have are strategic allies.

I mourn for the poor citizens of these countries who yearn for liberty.

Sandmonkey:

So let's recap shall we? The egyptian police stopped a sexual harrassment demonstration- one that was protesting an incident that happend in front of that same police, who didn't lift a finger to stop it -, chased down demonstrators and journalists, arrested two of them and beat up the female one, and then blocked an internet blog. All on the same day! It seems that they are more interested in stopping people from protesting their inability to do their job, rather than actually doing it. Fan-freakin-tastic, no?

This is video of the original event which led to the protests. What Charles at LGF called the 'covered meat' incident.

Jules Crittendon starts a blog.

It was a Palestinian killing an Israeli. That is how WaPo and the MSM continue to frame the debate in their headlines.

It's only as you read the story that you realize that:

a) two terror organizations claim the attack
b) the attack deliberately targetted civilians, no apologies
c) one of the organizations is part of the ruling party of Palestine

When the Isralis hit civilians

a) it is usually on accident
b) sometimes it is because those civilians really aren't civilians, or they are acting as human shields for terrorists
c) in either case, the Israelis apologize

Equivocation.

WaPo:

A Palestinian rocket fired from Gaza exploded near the home of Israel's defense minister on Wednesday, killing one woman and raising the prospect of a new Israeli military offensive against militant rocket squads.

Militants affiliated with the Palestinians' ruling Hamas group and Islamic Jihad both claimed responsibility for the first deadly rocket attack from Gaza since Israel withdrew in September 2005. They said the rocket fire was meant to avenge the deaths of 19 civilians killed last week in an Israeli shelling in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun.

I’m giving Reuters, AP, and AFP 2 days to come up with 17 photos (300 divided by 18) of the funeral and the damage caused by the rocket.

the press is never interested in covering the suffering of Israelis, as it doesn't jibe with their pre-canned, completely idiotic "David vs. Goliath" storyline.

November 14, 2006

Russ Feingold (D-Cheesehead), writing in the loony leftist Huffington Post, says that intercepting calls to and from terrorists in the United States is bad, really bad:

There are a lot of bad bills that the Republicans may try to ram through, but here's the worst of the worst - a bill to legalize the President's warrantless wiretapping program. The White House is desperate to enact this bill, which allows the government to spy on American citizens, on American soil, without a warrant.

More at Gateway Pundit. Via Stop the ACLU.

I'm reposting this link to a lengthy BBC report about homegrown jihad in the U.K. because it is important that you see it.

Watch it here.

It exposes the connection between how jihadi propaganda transmitted over the internet is used to recruit for jihad both abroad and in the U.K. The internet is also used to coordinate the activities of jihadis within Britain.

In addition to the internet, universities and college campuses are used for recruitment. And outside of moderate mosques where the jihadis have been banned, they pass out literature. In one segment, one of them attacks the BBC reporter. Physically.

But it's not just outside of mosques, it's in the back rooms of mosques. Where secret meetings are held and jihadi propaganda distributed. Much of that propaganda depicts the U.S. and Britain as the bad guys, and Muslims as victims. Think Abu Ghraib.

Note also that there is a criminal aspect to the homegrown jihad. These groups of young Muslims jihadis have gangs. Criminality funds terrorism.

Who else is funding these groups? At about 21 minutes into the video the shocker: One of the leading radical leaders of Hizb ut-Tahrir is on the government payroll. And he works for the British immigration office. Nice.

Hizb ut-Tahrir has the worldwide caliphate as its goal.

You need to see this. Anyone who can rip this and put it up at Youtube is encouraged to do so.

The BBC has a new 'investigative' report which concludes that Islamic extremists are using the internet to recruit, train, and incite jihad in the U.K.

Gee, ya think?

Most of what they report is what we've been saying for, I dunno, years. And the specifics? Well, we've been reporting that Shiekh Omar Bakri Mohammed has been leading his followers in Britain from exile for months.

But we do have some news that the BBC still doesn't have or can't release due to British censorship laws. Scroll down for that.

That Bakri Mohammed intimated that it was okay to bomb airports.

That he and his followers praise the 7/7 bombers.

That Omar Bakri Mohammed continued to direct followers of his banned group via the internet from exile in Lebanon.

That a secret group called Vigil has been monitoring the followers of Omar Bakri Mohammed and pressuring the British government to act.

You can watch the BBC story by clicking here (opens page with player)

[UPDATE: Glen e-mails and says that this is BIG NEWS in the U.K. today. Good. He also forwards this link to a much more extensive version of the story. The video runs about 50 minutes. It's worth the watch

Pay attention to the parts where the British government does nothing. Scary.

Joel also e-mails to let me know that this Brit, blogging from Londinistan, also notices the story]

Here is some of the print version:

A banned cleric is still preaching support for terrorism to young British Muslims by appearing incognito on the internet, the BBC has learned.

The joint investigation by File on 4 and Newsnight has found Omar Bakri Mohammed broadcasts hatred for the UK using a variety of pseudonyms.

He was excluded from the UK last August on the grounds that his presence was "not conducive to the public good."

On a recent broadcast he said the 7/7 London bombers were "in paradise."

You'll remember that it was Glen that caught Omar Bakri Mohammed talking about the terrorist ties of Cat Stevens' (aka Yusuf Islam) and sent me the recording the other day.

And speaking of leads supplied to me by Glen Jenvey, he and I have been going back and forth over something else for a few days. Remember Mizanur Rahman? He is the follower of Omar Bakri Mohammed who was just convicted of inciting racital hatred, but who was acquitted of charges of inciting murder.

You'll recall that Mizanur Rahman's arrest came following his involvement in the Danish cartoon protests. At the court hearing, he gave a non-apology apology. The British authorities are now contemplating retrying him.

Well, it seems that while Mizanur Rahman was out of jail on bail, but still on trial, that the 'repentent' Rahman was still chatting with the other brothers in Omar Bakri Mohammed's online group. And what does he say?

If you're in the U.K don't read any further. Why? British censorship laws prohibit publicly airing evidence which might be used at trial. But hell, I'm not in the U.K. Oh, and screw censorship! So, read on.

He hates the Queen. Oh, and it's not a problem for non-British Muslims to kill her.

[I meant to, and still mean to, upload a couple of audio files here. But I'm having trouble convertint them to mp3 format. The .wav files are just way too big

In one of the files, the voice--identified by Glen as Mizanur Rahman calls the Queen 'the enemy'. But Muslims in the U.K. have a 'covenant' with Britain which excludes them, and her, as a target]

What he means by 'the covenant' is that British Muslims have a contract with the U.K. government. They promise to cease the jihad required by the Quran against the unbelievers in return for a British promise to allow them to proseletyze.

But I'm guessing that by this time, he suspected that he was being watched. What he didn't know, was that his voice would be recognized.

Why? Because in another conversation, recorded by Jenvey, Mizanur Rahman calls Osama bin Laden the emir of Muslims. That there is a war against Islam by Bush and Blair, and that there is a religious obligation by Muslims to support Osama bin Laden.

At best its sedition. At worst its treason.

Thanks to Glen for keeping me in the loop on this despite my constant pestering of him to provide more and more evidence before I go public with this stuff. I've listened to several tapes of the man Glen is sure is Mizanur Rahman, and trust me on this one, by any reckoning he is a radical.

And he's not, as he claimed in his trial, just some guy who showed up at the protest, was handed a placard, and was peer pressured into threatening Europe with a nuclear holocaust. He was one of the leaders and organizers of the event.

You can by a new book about some of the terrorists Glen helped put away here.

In the words of Tyler Durden, "Only after disaster can we be resurrected."

Friends, we have now experienced a disaster. We can only hope that THIS disaster was sufficient. If it wasn't, then it will take a bigger disaster--a REAL disaster. A REAL disaster could mean the end of our country as we know it, with left-wing political majorities for years to come. I don't believe I'm exaggerating.

We will now get to experience at least two years of the circus freakshow of political insanity I predicted a couple months ago.

Thanks, W! Appreciate that. Really.

Yes, I pretty much knew this particular disaster was coming. No, I didn't do that much to avert it. I'm comfortable with that.

Yes, that probably causes some of you to hate me. Perhaps you even think I'm completely, bat-shit insane. I'm comfortable with that, too.

If the members of our current leadership team retain their positions of power within the party, I anticipate others will come around to see it my way looking back from 2008. Only time will tell.

Of course, by 2008, it'll be far too late to change course. If we're still meandering around two years from now, we might all get to watch the Dems solidify gains in the House and Senate and occupy the White House.

Doesn't that sound like fun?

If we want to avoid that fate, we have a lot of work to do between now and then.

Some appear to be concerned that open and harsh criticisms of the existing party leadership will harm broader post-election GOP morale.

The stakes could scarcely be higher, and some are worried that we may hurt somebody's feelings, or that lefties might get a chuckle out of our infighting,

I just don't get that.

I agree that morale is important--but my concern isn't that GOP morale is too LOW right now. Quite the contrary.

I'm concerned that it's still too HIGH--especially within the leadership ranks.

Some are peddling that these losses are just what's to be expected in the middle of a President's second term. If someone's peddling that line to you, that's a pretty good sign that they're part of the problem.

Only after the GOP rank and file accepts the full meaning of what just happened to it and sinks to the appropriate level of despair and introspection can we begin to rebuild.

We're not there yet.

Some seem to want to throw a new coat of paint over the existing rickety structure, because they apparently think the party can win if we just dress it up and help it limp along for two more years.

The structure is seriously rotten. Accept it. Rather than fighting us, I ask you to join us in pulling out the rotten studs and replacing them with some solid support.

Not only can this party NOT win again in its current form, it doesn't deserve to.

To paraphrase one of my favorite flicks : "The Republican Majority is dead, and that is a tragedy. But it is dead because it lost its principles--and the voters were watching."

Remember the many fauxtography mysteries brought to you by the MSM in the recent Israeli-Hezbollah conflict? We helped solve at least one of those, but many more remained.

For instance, we knew there was something fishy about this photo. We knew G. Gordon Liddy was a good shot, but even we couldn't believe he had taken out an Israeli fighter with an AK-47.

(photo courtesy of White Trash Republican from one of our contests)

Now, the man who took the actual (and by actual, I mean real) photo, claims that Time magazine knew it was misleading the public when they captioned it to suggest that Hezbollah had downed an Israeli plane. Unless, of course, they bought Hizbollah's propaganda without verification. Which, come to think of it, isn't so far-fetched after all. The Hizbos were fighting the J-O-Os, you know.

Further, he says that other photos taken at the scene indicate that the fire was actually started when Israel bombed a medium range ground to ground missile launcher hidden in a large truck. The evidence, he says, suggests that the Lebanese Army was working with Hizbollah. Go read Bruno Stevens' account here.

And why not run a fake photo of G. Gordon Liddy in the scene? It's no more misleading than the Time caption that ran with the original photo of a Hezbollah terrorist posing (where G. Gordon is above) in front of a fire.

You'll remember that there was a little back and forth over the picture between Allah and Dan Riehl at the time. We bought (my post) Allah's analysis that it was a tire fire at what appeared to be a dump. A dump it may have been, but not as in 'city dump', only in the sense of This is what the parking lot of a Lebanese Army base looks like---a dump!

Ace sums up why what Bruno really said in his caption vs. how Time magazine characterizes the photo matters:

That makes three [mis]representations thus far by Time:

1) Hezbollah did not score a huge victory by shooting down an IAF jet.

2) The target was clearly legitimate.

3) Not only was this a legitimate Hezbollah target, it was parked on a Lebanese Army base, demonstrating cooperation between the Lebanese Government -- depicted as an innocent and abused third-party to this conflict by the media.

Did Time have that photo in hand when it chose to describe the vehicles as nothing more than “Hezbollah trucks”?

The anti-Israel bias of mainstream media has never been revealed more nakedly; the editors who selected this photograph deliberately changed the caption to convey an anti-Israel message, throwing the truth right out the window to do it.

For this to continually happen means that somebody sitting in the Editor's chair is either (a) deliberately trying to shape the news, a gross violation of the public trust placed in them, or they are (b) too completely incompetent to distinguish facts and circumstances from the photographic and captional evidence presented to them.

Dan Riehl, on the other hand:

Well, what would you expect from a magazine which had both Stalin and Hitler as persons of the year.

And Michelle is waiting for the MSM ethics peeps to chime in.

Let me qualify the incompetent excuse. Incompetence mixed with a tinge of hope that Hezbollah actually had shot down an Israeli plane. Why bother to verify what you hope in your heart is true? Yes, I think it's that bad.

I was searching for video of the Mouth of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings movies, and came across this NewsBusters story from July. Mincing metrosexual milquetoast Keith Olbermann actually said, with a straight face mind you, that he is politically "neutral." NewsBusters has the video. Here's part of the transcript:

Olbermann: "But seriously, I tried to not be, to the degree you can be neutral nowadays, I don't, for instance, I don't vote."

Ferguson: "You don't vote at all."

Olbermann: "I don't vote because I don't think I should have a rooting interest in the outcome of an election."

...

Olbermann: "Yeah, again, people would still have that kind of bias that's perceived one way or the other, but at least you could say, well, you know, I didn't vote, I don't contribute. I'm trying to stay out of it to the degree that I can. I don't have a rooting interest other than in what happens to the country."

I fear this will not end well. If history is any guide, this will turn out to be the work of Sunni terrorists who consider all who work for the Iraqi government 'apostates'. Apostasy is a capital offense under Islamic law.

But the Education Minister is Sunni, so it is possible that this is the work of Shia. However, this would be the first time I have heard of a Shia group engaging in mass hostage taking.

I'm disgusted by Democratic calls for withdrawal from Iraq based on the idea that somehow leaving would mean the Iraqi's would pick up the slack. As if Iraqis aren't already dying every day fighting terrorist forces in their own country.

A couple of days ago the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, after hearing about Democratic plans for withdrawal, said he was surprised that the U.S. was planning to leave Iraq so soon. He thought it would take a lot longer to defeat the Americans. He was wrong.

AKI:

Violence-weary Iraq was shocked on Tuesday by an ambitious mass kidnapping in which armed men, masquerading as police, seized more than 100 people from a higher education ministry building in the capital....

A ministry spokeswoman said the gunmen arrived in new pick-up trucks and stormed the ministry's Research Directorate in the religiously-mixed Karrada district at around 9.30 am. They reportedly ordered the women into one room and abducted all the men, including employees, guards and visitors.

The men were then taken into the car park of the Sunni-led ministry, handcuffed and forced into cars before being driven away. One report said that Sunnis and Shias had been divided, but other eyewitnesses say this was not so....

"This morning a large force arrived with many vehicles with tinted windows claiming to be police commandos and they clashed with the guards and then entered the building and snatched all the employees and some visitors," Higher Education Minister, Abed Dhiab al-Ujaili, a Sunni member of the Iraqi National Accord told Iraqi state television.

Long time friend of The Jawa Report, Bill from INDC is going to Iraq as an embed.

The man has balls. I withdraw any and all jokes made in the past about his questionable heterosexuality. The man may orgle Llamas, but he also deserves all the yips you can muster.

The reason he's going? There are currently 9 embeds in Iraq. That's right, 9. We've longed complained that the news from Iraq is shaped by perceptions inside the heavily fortified Green Zone. The truth is I don't know if things are getting worse or better in Iraq. I can't. There are very few reporters there that do anything more than repeat what others are saying. Iraq has become a giant echo chamber.

I really want to know what soldiers in the field are saying. I really want to know what things are like in Anbar Province. I really want to know what the situation is like in the Shia south. But I don't.

If you have some spare cash, you might want to click on over to INDC Journal and leave him a tip.

The wealthiest member of the U.S. House of Representatives and Speaker Elect, Nancy Pelosi, may have been involved in questionable land deals. That, according to Dan Riehl:

Nancy's son Paul, Jr. appears to be President of the Commission on the Environment and also a cousin to [San Francisco Mayor] Gavin Newsome. Isn't that how people get appointed to these commissions? Hm?

And it appears that very lucrative contracts for development are being awarded to individuals with significant links to both Pelosi and Newsome. It also appears that Nancy was involved in transferring The Presidio from the Army to the city, where it would eventually come under control of the commission with lucrative contracts going to firms staffed by Pelosi confidants, as well as family.

Unable to cope with the twin stimulae of a Democratic win last Tuesday and a loud "Boo!" from the general direction of the Middle East, this morning Chris Matthews and Matt Lauer became so excited about statements from Carl Levin concerning immediate troop withdrawal that they wet themselves on camera. Matthews exclaimed in a voiced pitched so high that it frightened the studio guard dogs that the President had "lost the 2006 election" and that he would therefore have no choice but to self-immolate in public, sawing off portions of his anatomy to toss to the throng of starving congressional and media elites calling for raw organic sustenance. In their frenzy they failed to notice that the President had, in fact, not been running for office in 2006, nor that the Democrats are constrained by the US Constitution from taking effective control for two months. Finally, they didn't seem to notice the growing pool of moisture beneath their feet as they wagged their tails so vigorously that the pilot light on the NBC water heater was extinguished and studio lights were upended. Unfortunately there were no adults in the room to calm the newsmen and restore some semblance of order until the commercial break.

November 13, 2006

Here's some advice for the West:

"Stop asking what you have done wrong. Stop it! They're slaughtering you like sheep and you still look within. You criticize your history, your institutions, your churches. Why can't you realize that it has nothing to do with what you have done but with what they want."

He thinks he's Dr. Tawfik Hamid, a former member of the Egyptian terrorist group Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, who trained under Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al Qaeda number two. Dr. Hamid has some other tidbits that will make the head of your average liberal explode:

"We're not talking about a fringe cult here. Salafist [fundamentalist] Islam is the dominant version of the religion and is taught in almost every Islamic university in the world. It is puritanical, extreme and does, yes, mean that women can be beaten, apostates killed and Jews called pigs and monkeys."

Hat tip to Dr. Sanity, via Larwyn.

(Nairobi, Kenya) Disturbingly, political turmoil in East Africa escalates daily. Kenya today imposed a ban on regular flights to and from Somalia. However, with an application completed a week ahead of time, charter flights will be allowed.

From AllAfrica.com:

Concerns about possible terrorist attacks from Somalia have been raised lately, with the United States warning last week that both Kenya and Ethiopia could be targets of suicide attacks by "extremist elements" from Somalia.

The British minister of State, Dr Kim Howells, who visited Kenya early this month also warned that the threat of terrorism targeting British interests in Kenya was real.

The uncertain situation in Somalia, coupled with a porous and expansive border made Kenya a soft target for terrorists, said Dr Howells, who is in charge of counter-terrorism.

Averaging ten departures daily, cargo flights to Somalia customarily transport sugar, textile, electronics, bottled water, fresh vegetables, butter, milk and miraa (khat). Miraa or khat is an addictive, narcotic drug used extensively in East Africa and a major Kenyan cash crop.

One may presume that the 'extremist elements' in Somalia are fairly glassy-eyed from khat as they traipse through the countryside capturing village after village. With khat shipments halted, it's possible that the Islamists will be drawn toward invading the drug-growing region of northern Kenya, through the porous border, of course.

How we know we won in Afghanistan? Phone sex and porn now available.

How we know we might lose in Afghanistan? Serious consideration given to reestablish the Taliban's Ministry of Virtue and Vice to stop said porn.

And, to be honest, it's not so much that I'm for porn....I'm not....as much as I am for the idea that it's not the state's business outlawing pictures of naked people. Unless they're ugly.

The irony is that the same satellite company that brings porn and phone sex to Afghanistan also brings Christian religious programming. Under Afghani law both are illegal, but only one of those two things will bring you the death penalty. Can you guess which one?

Reuters:

On the television screen, the two naked young women writhe together to the sounds of "Hotel California" as the occasional crackle of gunfire punctuates the Afghan night.

Several overseas phone numbers offer an intimate chat with the ladies, or some of their equally outgoing friends.

The heaviest fighting in five years has slowed reconstruction to a crawl in the deserts and oases of Kandahar, where the strict Islamist Taliban movement began in 1994, but pornography, opium and illegal alcohol are flourishing, officials say.

At least one satellite operator offers foreign channels such as eurotictv, allsex, 247Sex and transex, along with the God Channel and the Church, Miracle and Hope channels....

Porn arrived in Kandahar as soon as the Taliban left, but was generally confined to backrooms of teahouses.

Now, it's increasingly there for anyone with the right satellite subscription or a couple of dollars for a VCD. So far, only limited attempts have been made to block some providers.

Explicit VCDs smuggled mainly from Pakistan but also from India are on sale on the streets for a few dollars each, but vendors are secretive and wary.

Sellers at the crowded VCD and CD market, where tunes from blaring Bollywood hits clash with traditional Persian and Pakistani instrumentals, don't like to discuss the trade.

More Imperial good news. Looks like someone will get an all expense paid trip to beautiful tropical Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Enjoy your stay and may it be a long one.

Reuters: KABUL, Nov 13 - U.S. forces in Afghanistan have captured an al Qaeda operative who escaped from the main U.S. military prison in the country last year, a Pakistani newspaper reported on Monday.

The man, identified as Abu Nasir al-Qahtani, was captured recently in the southeastern Afghan province of Khost, the News newspaper said, citing Taliban supporters in the Pakistani border region of North Waziristan.

The U.S. military said on Nov. 6 a "known al Qaeda operative and five other extremists" had been captured during an operation near Khost town early that day.

It did not identify any of those captured. A U.S. military spokesman on Monday referred queries to the U.S. Department of Defence.

Al-Qahtani has been referred to in some news reports as Mohammad Jafar Jamal al-Kahtani.

Four Arab al Qaeda militants escaped from the heavily fortified U.S. detention centre at Bagram air base, the U.S. military's main base in Afghanistan, 50 km (30 miles) north of Kabul, on July 11 last year.

Related Post on the escape of this man here.

Hooray!!!!

Democrats outline strategy for terrorist victory in Iraq:

WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 — Democratic leaders in the Senate vowed on Sunday to use their new Congressional majority to press for troop reductions in Iraq within a matter of months, stepping up pressure on the administration just as President Bush is to be interviewed by a bipartisan panel examining future strategy for the war.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), in line to become Speaker in January, is throwing her support to Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) in the race for Majority Leader, a move that will be an early test of her influence and will weigh heavily on Murtha's contest with Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) for the post.

With Rep. Alcee Hastings a frontrunner to be House Intelligence Committee chairman, he’s already facing unpleasant publicity stemming from his involvement in a corruption case years ago.

Special thanks to those on the Right who sat out the election because their pet peeves weren't addressed to their satisfaction. Enjoy.

What do Somalian Sunni extremists with ties to al Qaeda have in common with the Shia mullahs of Iran? The 'African Taliban' of the Somali Courts Union need weapons to solidify their control and establish an Islamic state in the Horn of Africa. The Mullahs of Iran need uranium to fuel their nuclear ambitions.

Somalia has uranium, Iran has arms.

Is Iran secretly buying uranium from Islamists in Somalia? That is what a new U.N. report which indicates:

Iran may have sought to trade arms for uranium from Somalia or elsewhere in Africa to fuel its nuclear ambitions.

And there is also new evidence that elements of al Qaeda are involved in Somalia, and that Somalia has begun to export the jihad elsewhere. As I've been saying for months, Somalia is the next Afghanistan. An Islamic state in Somalia (which is already a reality in most parts of the country) is every bit as dangerous to U.S. national interests as the Taliban were in Afghanistan.

The report claims that in addition to Afghan trained foreign fighters with links to al Qaeda in Somalia, that over 700 Somali fighters went to Lebanon during the recent conflict to support Hezbollah's war with Israel. In exchange, Iran and Syria have given arms, training, and other supplies to the Somalian extremists who now control most of that country.

That included shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, grenade launchers, machine guns, ammunition, medicine, uniforms and other supplies. Additionally, Syria hosted about 200 Islamist fighters for training in guerrilla warfare, the report says.

The report also gives a hint that Iran, locked in a battle with the West over its nuclear ambitions, may have sought help in finding uranium in the hometown of Somali Islamist leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys

"At the time of the writing of the present report, there were two Iranians in Dusa Mareb engaged in matters linked to uranium in exchange for arms," it says, but gives no more information.

Plenty of evidence suggests that the U.S. is already secretly arming anybody and everybody willing to fight the Islamic Courts Union. In fact, opposition groups in Puntland claim to have retaken some villages from the ICU, which would be a first.

Perhaps this explains why the Ethiopia (and U.S.) backed Somalian interim government (which controls very little actual territory) has rejected a peace deal with the African Taliban. To whatever extent we are arming the opposition, we need to step up our efforts.

Some in the Ethiopian ex-patriot community have reminded me in the past that the Ethiopian government isn't exactly immune from charges of corruption and doesn't have the greatest human rights record itself. Maybe not, but in war you look for help from nations with mutual interests and not ones that are perfect.

The U.S. has plenty of experience fighting proxy wars from our experience with the Cold War. It's high time we began to use that experience in the Horn of Africa.

Meanwhile, al Qaeda is still seeking nukes. The only good thing about this news is that al Qaeda is still seeking nukes. Which implies they don't already have them yet.

John Hawkins interviews Mark Steyn who recommends more unprotected sex to save Western Civilization. I'm not kidding.

We at The Jawa Report are prepared to do our part if it will save the West. Sex. Lots of it. But we'll need some volunteers. Lots and lots of volunteers.

Angelina Jolie. Mother of 3. Doing her part for Western Civilization.

Unrelated: And for Hawkins sake , let me just remind him that Jon Stewart has 1.5 million unique viewers a night. Rush has 20 million a week (give or take 5 million)....but that's (in internet terms) hits. Most of those are return cusomers, if you will. If you use the same methodology that

Rush uses, then The Daily Show gets somewhere between 7.5 and 14 million 'viewers' a week.

Besides, we are talking about a sociological phenomenon here. I argue that Stewart has empowered the young vote in much the same way the Rush once empowered the Right leaning vote. But Rush--or conservative radio--is no longer a big factor in elections. The system has adjusted. But the system has not yet adjusted to these newly empowered voters from the cult of Jon Stewart.

And in close elections, it is the vote at the margins that really matters.

As he is known to do, Novak hits the nail on the head on the House GOP leadership race:

WASHINGTON -- The depleted House Republican caucus, a minority in the next Congress, convenes at 8 a.m. in the Capitol Friday on the brink of committing an act of supreme irrationality. The House members blame their leadership for tasting the bitter dregs of defeat. Yet, the consensus so far is that, in secret ballot, they will re-elect some or all of those leaders.

In private conversation, Republican members of Congress blame Majority Leader John Boehner and Majority Whip Roy Blunt in no small part for their midterm election debacle. Yet, either Boehner, Blunt or both are expected to be returned to their leadership posts Friday. For good reason, the GOP often is called "the stupid party."

While an unpopular Iraq war and an unpopular George W. Bush were primary causes of last Tuesday's Republican rout, massive public disapproval of the Republican-controlled Congress significantly contributed. While abandoning conservative principles, the spendthrift House had become chained to special corporate interests represented by K Street lobbyists.

H/t: Beth at My Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.

I read this article twice, and I still couldn't follow the logic.

At one point, Jonathan Alter infers that the Republicans lost because they governed only for the conservative base:

The Category 4 political hurricane of 2006 was more than a referendum on an unpopular war and president: it signals the end of the conservative tide that began rising 40 years ago; it's the end of a pernicious six-year experiment in "governing for the base,"...

The intellectual vitality and coherence that once characterized modern conservatism have been shattered.

Neocons have been discredited and theocons dispirited. Libertarians feel betrayed by big spenders, incompetent interventionists and moralizing busybodies.

To recover [from the election], conservatives plan to return to what they call the "core principles" of small government and lower taxes. But there's a reason they abandoned budget balancing: it's a loser politically. There just aren't many votes in it, and that's why Republicans didn't cut spending.

[Republicans'] peril has its origins in Bush's highly divisive effort to intensify the conservative movement instead of governing from the center.

A Turkish civilian hostage named Yildram Tek has been murdered by the so-called 'Iraqi resistance'. Tek's body was found near the baghdad airport on Nov. 1st, but the Turkish Foreign Ministry only confirmed the victim's identity today.

In July a group calling itself the Lions of Justice (sometimes rendered Lions of Truth or Lions of Righteousness) Brigade kidnapped a Turkish man named Yeldram Tek. A video of Tek was released in which the unknown group demanded that Turkey close down the company which Tek works for and which it claims has contracts with the Coalition in the South of Iraq.

In September, the Brigades of the Lions of Righteousness group released a new video of Yildram (alt, Yeldram) Tek making the same demands. This time the terrorists threatened to murder Yildram Tek if the company was not closed. Tek, who is from Istanbul, was given 72 hours in the ultimatum.

As expected, no words of protestation from the U.N. or any human rights organizations about Geneva Convention violations. Hat tip: George.

al-Qaeda in Yemen has posted a statement claiming responsibity for these attacks:

CBSNEWS: Al-Qaida has purportedly claimed responsibility for attempted suicide attacks on two oil installations in Yemen and vowed more strikes against the United States and its allies, according to a statement posted on the Internet.

"Let the Americans and their allies ... know that these operations are only the first spark and that what is coming is more severe and bitter," the statement said.

The statement was dated Oct. 13 but was posted this week. Its authenticity could not immediately be verified but it was posted on a Web site frequently used by Islamic militants.

The following are the details of the operations:

The Amir of Martyrs, Abu Mus’ab Al-Zarqawi, God’s mercy be upon him, Operation–[These two took place] in the Crusader port of Al-Dabbah in Hadramut region.

After having surveyed and collected the necessary information about the Crusader port of Al-Dabbah, which belongs to the Canadian Nexen Petroleum Company and is located on the coast of Hadramut between the cities of Al-Shahr and Al-Al-Makla, the mujahidin prepared two booby-trapped cars to penetrate the port….

…Let the Americans and their allies who worship the cross and their agents know that we are people who learned through wisdom and became wiser through experience… Implicit safeties never deceived us and lead us to annihilation. We avoided procrastination which is why most people reach their finality. We did not enjoy the beauty of the rhetoric, while our actions were short of delivery; therefore, we perfected our rhetoric and supported it with actions, and we will be seeking you everywhere…

May God’s peace and prayers be upon our master Muhammad, his family, and all his companions.

The Information Department

Al-Qa’ida of Jihad Organization in the Land of Yemen”

By Howie at 01:24 PM | |

A reader dropped this link in the comments. It is supposed to be Cat Stevens (aka, Yusuf Islam) singing the praises of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

You can listen to it by clicking here. It's called Afghanistan: The Land of Islam.

I'd love for somebody to debunk it. I just don't have the time right now for extensive Google searching. The brief Google search that I did seems to indicate that Yusuf Islam really did write and perform the song about 'the land of the free'....you know, Taliban Afghanistan.

I want to believe that Cat Stevens is just a dupe who didn't really support terrorism. That he's like the millions of Muslims around the world that gives to charities and doesn't really know that the money is going to terrorists.

Of course, since audio of Omar Bakri Mohammed claiming that Yusuf Islam used to associate himself with convicted terror master mind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, and that he used to send money to the families of the 'Mujahidin", it's becoming harder and harder to believe that.

Hat tip: The Welsh Witch

UPDATE: Yusuf Islam's new album comes out today.

UPDATE II: I've done some more Google searching. From what I gather, the song was written by Yusuf Islam, but never recorded by him. Also, at least one Islamic website claims the Islam wrote the piece after the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union.

So, giving him the benefit of the doubt, the mujahidin that he is praising are anti-Soviets, ie our former allies. Some of whom became the Northern Alliance....others, well, you know who they became-

Here are the words to the song:

Afghanistan Land of Islam
Afghanistan Land of Islam
Afghanistan Land of Islam
Afghanistan Land of Islam
Afghanistan Laa ilaha illa Allah
Muhammadur Rasul Allah
Alaihi Assalatullah

Oh the people are dying,
They're willing to give
Every drop of their blood
For the freedom to live

Oh the people are dying
To get back their land
And the home of their fathers
Who died for Islam
And the home of their fathers
Who died for Islam

Afghanistan Land of Islam
Afghanistan Land of Islam
Afghanistan Land of Islam
Afghanistan Land of Islam
Afghanistan Laa ilaha illa Allah
Muhammadur Rasul Allah
Alaihi Assalatullah

There's five million homeless
Over one million dead
How can the world go to sleep
With injustice out there

Oh the orphans are crying
It's loud and it's clear
For the ones who have heart
For the ones who can hear
For the ones who have heart
For the ones who can hear

Afghanistan Land of Islam
Afghanistan Land of Islam
Afghanistan Land of Islam
Afghanistan Land of Islam
Afghanistan Laa ilaha illa Allah
Muhammadur Rasul Allah
Alaihi Assalatullah

Yaa Muslimun, Yaa Muslimun
Yaa Muslimun, Yaa Muslimun

Oh victory's coming
And history'll tell
Cause the disbelieving army
Is heading for Hell
And Paradise belongs
To the pious and firm
Who say "To God we belong
And to Him we return"
We say "To God we belong
And to Him we return"

Afghanistan Land of Islam
Afghanistan Land of Islam
Afghanistan Land of Islam
Afghanistan Land of Islam
Afghanistan Laa ilaha illa Allah
Muhammadur Rasul Allah
Alaihi Assalatullah

Yaa Muslimun, Yaa Muslimun
Yaa Muslimun, Yaa Muslimun
Yaa Muslimun, Yaa Muslimun

It's his way with er....uh...words I always did like.

Hippie’s question.

"If you were going to give yourself a letter grade for your performance as Secretary of Defense, what grade would that be?”

Rummy’s Response.

"Oh, I'd let history worry about that,"

Howie translates: “Screw you, hippie”

Via Noel Sheppard at News Busters

Was it an innocent scratching of the nose, or a classic Goose moment right out of the movie “Top Gun?” I report, you decide.

I’d give Rummy a C+ by the way. A- on the invasion of Iraq. I’d have liked to have seen us siege Baghdad and force surrender. Nothing says, “you win” like a surrender.

Full Video below the fold.

Hat Tip Larwyn.

Google Video copy here.

I've enjoyed "The Simpsons" for years.

But last night, emboldened by the Democrat victory in the midterm elections, Matt Groening and the other writers let America know just how they feel about the folks who protect us with their lives. They disagree with John Kerry, but only because Kerry didn't go far enough in betraying our soldiers.

Update: Hot Air has video.

According to The Simpsons writers, anyone who enters the military is not only stupid, but evil, and eager to kill American civilians. Plus, (and despite the fact the recruitment goals have been met consistently in the real world) Army recruiters will come to elementary schools and make children sign contracts to enter the military.

If this was simply an aberration, Groening should apologize profusely and move on.

If this is a new direction for the animated sitcom, they'll go there without me.

Below is Matt Groening. This is the smug, aging hippy face of a man who hates any American wearing a military uniform.

Update by Rusty: Whatever happened to Grimey?

Let me also add that I haven't seen the episode. But I did go home and watch the Simpsons tonight. It was an episode where Homer goes to rock'n'roll fantasy camp. It totally sucked. At no point in time was I ever entertained by it.

Why did I watch it? I guess like long time soap opera fans, I just couldn't help myself. Really. My mom has been watching As The World Turns for nearly 40 years now. No joke. I guess I'm just tuning in to see what happens.

So, the Simpsons stopped being funny years ago.

I'll also add, that it's very improbably that Groening had anything to do with this episode. Or any episode for over a decade. That's why he hires Harvard educated writers---who share the liberal conventional wisdom. For all that education nothing they teach in the Ivy League can give you the funny.

The reason stereotypes are so long-lasting? Because they're usually true. From the land of retreat and appeasement, news that fighting back is now official French policy.

There might be a good joke here in the making if it wasn't so tragic:

Q: What do you call a Frenchman who fights back?
A: Indicted.

Hat tip: Ghost of a Flea, who remains your number one source of all things related to Kylie Minogues fantastic backside.

Congratulations!

(Baghdad) At the Faw Palace near Baghdad airport yesterday, a total of 75 U.S. Army soldiers and Marines, including seven women, recited the oath of citizenship and became naturalized American citizens. The new Americans came from 33 different countries from all points on the compass. Among the many, U.S. service members from Uganda, Jamaica, Ivory Coast, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, Bosnia, Uzbekistan and the Philippines were represented.

About 25,000 U.S. service members have been naturalized since President Bush signed a 2002 Executive Order which accelerated the process. Yesterday's event was the seventh citizenship ceremony to be held in Iraq, naturalizing a total of 800 U.S. military members.

Think about it. People from around the world enter the U.S. military, with many placing themselves in harm's way, just for the opportunity to become Americans. Fortunately, it appears that proposed immigration and amnesty legislation will eliminate the need for military enlistment and citizenship will be attainable by purchase for a few thousand dollars.

Hat tip : HotAir.

November 12, 2006

What happens when you empower an aging political hack whose sole qualification for public office is his skill at race-baiting? Nothing good.

From Investor's Business Daily:

Congress: The likely new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee says he's just fighting bigotry in leading a Democrat jihad to deny law enforcement key terror-fighting tools. But he is in the pocket of Islamists.

John Conyers, son of a leftist Detroit union activist, represents the largest Arab population in the country. His district includes Dearborn, Mich., nicknamed "Dearbornistan" by locals fed up with cultural encroachment and terror fears from a steady influx of Mideast immigrants.

Conyers, who runs an Arabic version of his official Web site, does the bidding of these new constituents and the militant Islamist activists who feed off them. They want to kill the Patriot Act and prevent the FBI from profiling Muslim suspects in terror investigations. They also want to end the use of undisclosed evidence against suspected Arab terrorists in deportation proceedings.

And the 77-year-old Conyers has vowed to deliver those changes for them.

Sout al-Kuffar (of All Your Fakes Are Belong To Us fame) has another startingly effective moodpiece to get you all fired up for the unenviable task of cleaning out the current GOP House and Senate leadership.

For old time's sake, All Your Fakes is below the jump.

ht: Allah

UPDATE by Rusty: Bonus video added below. It's a Sunday "Reclaiming the GOP" twofer! I'm not a big Gingrich for Prez guy, but I do support him for elevation to Sith Master and possibly even Galactic Emperor.

Double Update: Since when did The Jawa Report's own Sout al-Kuffar start working for Hot Air? Whatever Malkin is paying you to make videos, Sout ol' buddy, I'll double it. (What's zero times two again?)

Triple Update: It's not Allah's fault. I'd sent him a link to the YouTube vid instead of the Jawa Report post. My bad.

The Army of Ansar al Sunnah, a terrorist organization in Iraq, has posted the photo ID of a Marine it claims to have killed. Because the Marine is not on any KIA list, the terrorists are using the ID (pictured below) as evidence that the US military routinely lies to the American public about the real numbers of casualties in Iraq.

Groups like The Islamic State in Iraq (formerly the Mujahidin Shura Council of Iraq), Ansar al Sunna, and other Salaafist terror organizations routinely publish claims that dozens of American troops have been killed for every one on the official list. Sadly, many Arabs, Muslims, and Leftists believe these claims.

The only problem? David Leddy is alive and well. Oorah! Semper Fi.

Bonus video on the way in which the terrorist media influences the American Left. Or is that vice versa?

Marine Corps News:

The 19-year-old Marine from Schaumburg was on foot patrol Sept. 29 when he passed by some graffiti on a wall.

The sergeant who was with Leddy asked him to take a photograph of it.

As the Schaumburg High School graduate did, a homemade bomb buried in the ground 10 feet away suddenly exploded. The young man’s rifle was broken in half, two fingers barely dangling from his left hand. A shark-bite-like gouge was left in his upper left calf.

Suddenly a firefight broke out between the Marines and those responsible for the remote-controlled explosive, delaying Leddy’s immediate removal from the scene.

From a hospital room in Betheseda, Md., his mother, Debbie Leddy, recounts the rest of what her wounded son told her of the incident.

“He thought, ‘If my rifle looks like this, I wonder what my body looks like,’æ” she said.

Though it might have been only a few minutes’ delay before his transport from the scene, the young Marine said it felt like hours. He doesn’t remember losing consciousness, but by the time he was aware of anything, he already had a tourniquet on his leg.

After being stabilized at an Air Force base nearby, Leddy was flown to Balad, Iraq, for further treatment.

Within a day and a half after being wounded, he found himself at an Army hospital in Landstuhl, Germany. And two days later he was in Betheseda, on his father George’s 50th birthday.

Here is Leddy's photo ID that he apparently dropped when he was wounded and is being used by The Army of Ansar al Sunna as evidence that the U.S. lies about casualty numbers.

Mike Pence's staff has released the vision statement that will be distributed tomorrow morning to the GOP members of the House. The money shot:

Our campaigns must value winning, but as candidates we cannot be seduced by the political opportunities of the moment and find ourselves swayed from our principles just to win the next election. As I wrote then in defeat and believe now, in order to attain a strong and lasting Majority we ought to be a new breed of candidates that seek to leave a foundation of arguments in favor of policies that will stand the test of time. We must run not just "to win," but "to stand." And if we stand on that foundation, we will win and usher in a new Majority-one that will be concerned with far more than continuing to retain itself.

H/t : The Political Pit Bull.

(Fremont, California) Attention, readers! Tomorrow is "Wear a Hijab/Turban to Work/School Day" in Fremont. Among others, the event is being promoted by the Foundation for Self-Reliance, the American Muslim Alliance and SEMAH, a domestic violence group.

From InsideBayArea.com:

"This is more than just 'wear a hijab or turban' day," said Samina F. Sundas, founder of the Newark-based American Muslim Voice and Global Peace Partners. "It's about educating each other about our differences and recognizing that we should focus on what binds us together."

The idea for the event originated days after Alia Ansari, a 38-year-old Afghan woman from Fremont, was gunned down Oct. 19 as she walked with her 3-year-old daughter to pick up some of her other children from an elementary school.

Police have yet to declare a motive in the Ansari case, but the perception among some in the community is that the shooting had to be a hate crime because Ansari was wearing a hijab, the traditional Muslim head scarf.

Presumably, the next time a Jew is killed in a suspected hate crime, organizers will promote a "Wear a Star of David/Yarmulka to Work/School Day." Of course, don't expect the media to pleasantly encourage the public to participate.

November 11, 2006

The Jawa Report has obtained evidence that Yusuf Islam, the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens, was once connected to radical clerics Omar Bakri Mohammed & Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman. According to at least one credible source, he was also involved in terrorist financing.

In an online voice chat from exile in Lebanon where he fled after British authorities banned several groups connected to him, Bakri told followers that various prominent Muslims would once frequent his office. Among those listed is Cat Stevens.

Bakri Mohammed has urged Muslims in the U.K. to fight British troops in Iraq and elsewhere, justified the 7/7 London bombings, and has publicly called for the murder of all who blaspheme the Muslim prophet Muhammed. Several followers of Bakri Mohammed have been arrested for their public calls for the murder of blasphemers. At least one has been recently been convicted.

The online chat was captured by Glen Jenvey who is part of an organization that secretly monitors the activities of radical Muslims who support terrorism. Jenvey, who we have worked with in the past and who has helped convict several high profile terror supporters, contacted The Jawa Report about the recorded conversation shortly after he captured it. The audio recording was made in what Bakri Mohammed believed was a private chat between himself and his radical followers.

But there's more. Bakri also claimed that Cat Stevens was an intimate of convicted terrorist Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman. When the Egyptian born cleric, better known as "The Blind Sheikh", would visit Britain, "Yusuf Islam used to sit near to him and ask him whatever he want [sic]."

Bakri then suggests that Cat Stevens also helped support Abdel Rahman's family financially. He also claims that Yusuf Islam knowingly sent money to the families of "the mujahidin" in Egypt. Giving money to the families of so-called 'martyrs' is a way for Muslims to support terrorism indirectly and yet remain shielded from most legal ramifications.

Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman is head of the same group that murdered 58 tourists near Luxor, Egypt, and he is currently serving a life sentence in the U.S. for a conspiracy to blow up targets in the United States.

Yusuf Islam was denied entry into the United States in 2004 after his name appeared on the "no fly list". The Muslim convert sued two British newspapers, The Sun and The Sunday Times, for libel because they had claimed that the U.S. Transportation and Security Administration had correctly identified him as a supporter of terror in the past. The papers settled the lawsuit out of court and apologized to Yusuf Islam.

But the new recordings by Glen Jenvey of Omar Bakri Mohammed call into question the denials made by the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens. In the past, Islam has appeared at numerous fundraisers for the charitable arms of terrorist organizations. At least one of those organizations has been tied to al Qaeda.

When a death fatwa was issued by top Iranian clerics on the head of Salman Rushdie, Islam said that he would turn Rushdie over to the Ayatollah Khomeini or his followers should the author show up on his doorstep. Islam later apologized but has continued his "peace work" by supporting Islamic charities with ties to radical groups and terrorist organizations.

Yusuf Islam has also been invited to perform at this year's Nobel Peace Prize ceremony.

However, if there is one redeeming aspect of Bakri Mohammed's conversation about Yusuf Islam it is this: the broader context is one of famous British Muslims who used to be true believers but who have taken to working too closely with the "kaffirs". The first British Muslim to be knighted, Lord Nazir Ahmed, is also mentioned as a Muslim who had sold out by compromising with the unbelievers.

But if Yusuf Islam used to associate himself with Bakri Mohammed and Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman then clearly his persona non grata status in the United States is justified. And if Islam has truly given money to the families of 'the mujahidin', then the claims by the two British papers sued by Cat Stevens are also correct.

Yusuf Mohammed owes us a pretty big explanation. Either Bakri Mohammed is lying (which would not be the first time) or Cat Stevens' past support of radical Islam goes much deeper than he has admitted. But what would Bakri Mohammed's motivation be if the claim was not true? Normally Bakri Mohammed's lies are in the direction of denying his support of terrorism.

Like many Muslims involved in charity work (thanks to Allah and Newyank for pointing this out), though, Cat Stevens may simply not know where his money is going. Which would say more about Islamic charities than about Islam's character. But Islam continues to openly support Hamas linked charities, has been arrested in Israel for this support, but---like many in the world--simply denies organizations such as Hamas are really 'terrorists'. See also CAIR's defense of Yusuf Islam here.

You can download the audio of Omar Bakri Mohammed tying Cat Stevens to terrorist activities here [right click and "save as"]. Alternative format available for downloading here.

For more on the various terrorist connections of Omar Bakri Mohammed and his followers, please see scroll down through our U.K. Terror and U.K. Terrorism archives, or here. For more video and audio of radical terror supporting Muslims in the U.K., please see Glen Jenvey's extensive archive here.

UPDATE: Some are now claiming that these accusations are either a) old or b) timed to coincide with the release of Stevens' new album or c) politically motivated since this website is on the Right.

A) As far as I can tell, this is a completely new set of allegations against Yusuf Islam. He has been accused (and arrested) for funding terror organizations, but I have never heard the specific allegation that he was intimated with Omar Bakri Mohammed & Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman. Also, this is the first time that I have heard that he had funded the families of the "mujahdin".

B) I did not know Cat Stevens had a new album coming out until I began working on this story and did a Google News search. Since the source of this information is Omar Bakri Mohammed, you'll have to ask him what the motivation was.

C) My motivation is no different than any other journalist's, namely the chance to break a big story. Certainly the information came to me because of my long time fight against terrorists and those that support them directly or indirectly. From that fight I became associated with Glen Jenvey.

But what does my motivation have to do with the veracity of the allegations made by Omar Bakri Mohammed? That Bakri Mohammed is a liar is not in doubt in my mind. But, as I have said before, the nature of those lies usually revolves around the his constant denials of being a terror supporter, when clearly he is. I have never heard of him lying about his association with other Muslims.

I suspect Pakistan may have killed or injured Ayman al-Zawahiri or critical elements responsible for his ability to communicate and release statements. Of course al-Qaeda’s response to the elections coming from the Iraqi wing of the organization may have been a strategic propaganda call, but it also may be designed to carry attention away from a huge loss.

Historically the trend has been what when a claim was made that Zawahiri was a target, or killed in an attack, that he acts quickly to refute these claims with an audio or video message.

It has not been 12 days since reports he was targeted on October 30th and nothing, nada, silence, zilch. He may very well be dead. And if you are not dead Mr. Zawahiri, you murdering, lying, piece of terrorist filth, Show me.

“Show Me!”, ain’t a motto here in the US for nothing. Zawahiri’s statements sometimes follow al-Qaeda in Iraq’s by a few days but Mr. Zawahiri, if we don’t here from you very soon, I’m going to celebrate your death over a big pork chop and an ice cold beer.

George W Bush and all of America, left and right, are going to be able to start celebrating another victory in the war against al-Qeada, namely your rotting stinking corpse. You have failed miserably. We are still standing. You have failed to attack us. We are still fighting in Iraq. You, Mr. Zawahiri, are an utter failure.

I may be counting my chickens before they hatch but al-Qaeda is counting them before the eggs are liad.

If you have a question you'd love to ask the current House Republican leadership or those who are challenging them, I encourage you to go here and submit it.

You can also review the previously-submitted questions and vote on the best.

I hereby challenge the newly elected Democrats to get off their duff and refute Al-Qaeda and Iran’s gloating over the election.

Iran believes they have won and the Democrats will allow them free reign oppress the people of Iran and export their influence into Lebanon and further deepen their interference in Iraq amongst the Shia in the south.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq believes that their campaign of terror has worked. That losing 3000 soldiers will drive us off the battlefield and we will abandon the people of Iraq. By the way the terrorists have murdered 150,000 Iraqi civilians. Yes 150,000 civilians. Will you allow the Iraqi people to again be ruled by those that murder them?

I don’t believe that is part of Liberalism. How can anyone be for freedom to the extent that they want murderors and terrorist oppressors to be free to destroy it?

Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, DICK Durbin, you now represent not only the people who voted for you but also those who did not. You now carry the burden of prosecuting the war. War powers lie with the congress. The President can only execute those powers given to him.

I don’t think a single voter voted for surrender to terrorists and terrorist supporting states. But the terrorists do.

I call on the new Democratic leadership to quickly rebut Iran and al-Qaeda in Iraq. Every minute that passes is another minute their perception of victory grows. Every minute you delay is a boost to their morale. I call on conservative and moderate Democrats to make sure they do.

Evan, Brad, Nancy, Harry, DICK?

Show me!

You must show me and show them too, and do it quickly. Wipe the smile from the enemy’s face.

Related: Captain's Quarters.

A word of warning to the terrorists: The Democratic Party has a record of being able to fight hard and fight well when the have to. Your confidence maybe misplaced. Should you attack America while they are in control, seeking to dominate us, you may be quite surprised at the reaction. Democrats have never been know for restraint in killing the enemy when required to do so.

In fact they have gone harder and faster and bigger than Republicans have in the 20th century. Watch out what you wish for, you just might get it.

Though most Republicans are still watching from the sidelines, the first battle to wrest GOP control from the K-Street crowd is raging. That battle, of course, is the fight over the GOP House leadership. The incumbents (Boehner and Blount) are fighting hard to keep their positions, but the challengers (Pence and Shadegg) continue to pick up momentum. Dan Burton (IN), Tom Feeney (FL), and Jeb Hensarling (TX) have delivered a letter to their GOP colleagues asking them to support Mike Pence for the House leadership position:

What we need now is a proven leader and who has a track record as an agent of change and reform within our Conference and who will take the opposition party to task on their failings. We have witnessed first-hand Mike's dynamic leadership within our Conference and in the United States Congress. He has boldly led over 100 Members of the Republican Study Committee, where he has built consensus within that group to fight for the principles of limited government and to work with the Republican Leadership to help pass important agenda items. Mike encourages a healthy dialogue within the RSC and wants all Members' voices to be heard before deciding on a plan of action.

If you care about what happens on Election Day 2008, I suggest you call (and even better, write) your House member ASAP and pressure him or her to back Pence and Shadegg.

H/t : Jeff Emanuel at RedState.

UPDATE : The Wall Street Journal is arguing for changes:

The problem is the House, where Speaker Dennis Hastert has already announced he won't stand for minority leader. Others in the leadership are claiming to have learned their lesson and promise a new beginning. That's for Members to judge. But we'd be wary of leaders who stake their claim to power on their ability to soak the lobbying mecca of K Street, or who refused to challenge the Appropriators who did so much to besmirch the image of the current, and soon-to-vanish, GOP majority.

Republicans might also recall what happened to Democrats when they tried to regain the House in 1996 by running with the same leadership and agenda that had been ousted in 1994. Those Democrats failed, despite Bill Clinton's victory at the top of the ticket, because too many voters saw the same old story. If Republicans lose again in 2008, they could be in the minority for a long time.

November 10, 2006

The people of this country just handed a branch of the feddle gubmint to the same party that claims the battle for Iraq is a failure on a scale comparable to Vietnam, even though that is the very same party that got us into Vietnam in the first place.

And they did it, according to the analyzers, mostly because they're dissatisfied with the way the battle for Iraq is going.

What a way to win a war, vote for the same type of people who engineered the only defeat* in war in this nation's history.

*Note to stupids, the U.S. did not lose the Vietnam War militarily. From a military point of view, it was a smashing success. After the Tet Offensive, the VC ceased as a viable fighting force. The enemy lost 1.4 million troops in the war, the North Vietnamese economy was crushed, and to this day has never recovered.

The U.S. lost that war in geopolitical terms only.

And that defeat was brought on by the same type of politician that will attempt to re-create history come swearing-in time.

Okay, that's it for me, I go kill deer now.

I alluded to it a few days ago.

It's time for a little R&R from the online propaganda war. Time to take a couple of days away from the worries about jihad, and watching politics and world events.

Jack London said it best in The Call of the Wild:

"He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time."

Deer season starts tomorrow, the only time of year I get up before 9 a.m. on a day off.

Good luck to my fellow hunters who share this tradition with me.

And to my fellow veterans, since tomorrow is also Veteran's Day, God bless you and thank you.

Oh, and with luck, hopefully I'll be able to post an image of a nice rack that even Oyster would approve of.

Happy birthday to the U.S. Marine Corps.

Tomorrow is Veterans Day. Thank you Dad for your service in the U.S. Marine Corps. Once a Marine always a Marine.

Thank you Grandpa for sacrificing your life for your country, for a young wife, for your two children who you would never live to see grow up, for your fellow Marines, on the shores of an island you'd never heard of, far away in the South Pacific. Your sacrifice is not forgotten.

I noticed a few weeks ago that The Mujahidin Shura Council (MSC) in Iraq had started issuing statments differently. The MSC is the Sunni insurgent umbrella organization that includes al Qaeda. The new name?

Islamic State of Iraq

Today's audio statment from al Qaeda in Iraq was actually released by the "Information Ministry / the official spokesman of the Islamic State of Iraq"

You'll recall that before they were al Qaeda in Iraq the same group was called Tawid [unity] wal Jihad), so rebranding is not a new thing for these particular terorrists. It's the name that worries me.

It is meant to convey the message that al Qaeda and its allies are no longer just a group of disperate fighters trying to expel the U.S. from Iraq. It is meant to convey the notion that they are now a shadow government. That once the U.S. has left, they will be ready to take over and govern.

We have seen what kind of government they want. We have seen it in the Taliban. We are seeing it emerge with the African Courts Union in Somalia. We saw it when al Qaeda and its affiliates ruled in Fallujah--the torture chambers, the killing of women who looked too 'Western'.

We cannot let them succeed in Iraq.

Normally, an artillery shell causes its damage in a fraction of a second.

We're not sure exactly how it works, but those crafty Zionist scientists ("Ziontists") have apparently developed an artillery shell that slowly destroys a Palestinian building over a course of days, in super-slo-mo. Amazing.

H/t : LGF.

I'm scheduled to be on the Ron Smith Show on WBAL Radio in Baltimore at around 3:35 Eastern. I'll be discussing Jon Stewart as the Democratic majority kingmaker. You can listen here, just click the "Listen Live" link at the top of the left hand column.

UPDATE: Done. So, was Max Power the only one who caught me on the show?

I love the argument that al Qaeda somehow supports Bush because invading Afghanistan and Iraq was exactly what they wanted. Right. And Roosevelt played right into the hands of the Japanese by responding to Pearl Harbor.

It's more than bizarro world logic, it simply overlooks the facts. I've read dozens and dozens of al Qaeda statements and they are consistent in that they want the U.S. to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan. Not stay there!

The goal of al Qaeda in Iraq is the setting up of a Taliban-like state. In fact, most Americans are not aware that the group formerly known as the Mujahidin Shura Council, of which al Qaeda is a member, has just changed its name to "The Islamic State of Iraq." That's right, the al Qaeda umbrella organization is now calling itself a shadow government waiting for the U.S. to withdraw.

The latest communique from al Qaeda in Iraq applauds the American people for the first step in reaching their goals: voting for the Democrats. Of course, they then go on to say they will not be satisfied until they have blown up the White House.

I pray that many in the sane wing of the Democratic party who are not critical of the mission but only the failed tactics of the Bush Administration will win the day.

Oh, and Iran's ruling Mullahs also extend a laurel and a hardy handshake to what they see as the party of appeasers.

Click below for video.

Yawn. More Euorweenies doing what Euroweenies do best. I'd like to see a German court try to extradite Rumsfeld or Gonzales.

Things are moving fast in the race for the House GOP leadership. If you haven't been paying attention, John Boehner (current House GOP leader) and Roy Blount (current House GOP whip) are seeking to retain their House leadership positions against Mike Pence and John Shadegg, respectively. According to Captain's Quarters, Pence just picked up the endorsements of immigration hawks Tom Tancredo and Steve King. Apparently, Captain Ed likes him, too:

House Republicans need to demonstrate a commitment to certain principles ahead of policies in order to win the trust back from their constituents. Chief among those should be a commitment to reform and support of limited government. Pence has demonstrated all of those qualities, as well as having a reputation for clean politics. Republicans should strongly consider having Pence lead them during the next two-year period, in which they will be rethinking their direction. Pence seems like the right navigator for that journey.

Pence has been criticized by some over concerns on the immigration, but Dan McLaughlin at RedState opines that Tancredo's endorsement will be likely to silence those critics:

Some people in the tough-on-immigration crowd (you know who you are, both the restrictionists who want to reduce overall immigration and those who merely want to replace illegal with legal immigrants) have been skeptical about Mike Pence for Minority Leader because of Pence's immigration proposals.

Perhaps you should take a second look, because Tom Tancredo, the hardiest of the immigration hard-liners in the House GOP, has endorsed Pence.

Earlier today, I frowned on the idea of seeing Mike Pence move into a leadership position, despite the fact that he's a hard nosed, reform minded, fiscal conservative, because Pence proposed an absolutely horrible amnesty plan last session.

...Since, in my book, Tom Tancredo is the gold standard on illegal immigration, that turns me around 180 degrees. That's because if Tanc is going to support Pence, it means that Pence must have given him some reassurances about how he'd handle illegal immigration. Otherwise, there's no way Tom Tancredo would support him.

So, I am now officially reversing my stance and rooting for Mike Pence to be the new Minority Leader in the House.

John Stewart is the Rush Limbaugh of 2006 and faux news the talk radio. Forget The Daily Kos, it was The Daily show that put Democrats over the top in key races. Just as the new phenomenon of nationally syndicated talk radio is what helped propel Republicans into the majority in 1994 it was faux news and the cult of Jon Stewart that led to this year's Democratic landslide.

That's what I argue in my latest Townhall column:

Jon Stewart is an unlikely player in national politics. He's not a pundit, he's a comedian. As unlikely a candidate for Democratic kingmaker as he may be, he's a force to be reckoned with.

Ratings for The Daily Show's coverage of the '06 elections were second only to The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News. 2.0 million Americans tuned into Comedy Central on Tuesday to follow election results. That's right, more people were watching a comedian talk about the news than an anchor on CNN.

And just who is it that is tuning into The Daily Show? Young people. Lot's of them.

In fact, in the 2004 election nearly as many young people cited The Daily Show as a source of news as any other source. And Jon Stewart's Daily Show audience has only grown since then.

On the college campus where I teach, Jon Stewart's is the first and last word on all things political. His is the only name that all recognize. It’s more than that: his views are the only views considered socially acceptable. When Jon Stewart believes something, students believe it. He who Jon Stewart hates, students hate.

UPDATE: Since I know some of you didn't click on the link to see the statistical basis for the argument (lazy...) here it some of it:

The 2006 election saw the youth vote at its largest in 20 years. While younger Americans continue to vote in smaller numbers than older Americans, 2 million more voted in this election than in that last midterm.

And that vote is becoming more Democratic. According to the bipartisan Goeas-Lake exit polls, Democrats bested Republicans among 18 - 29 year olds by a 50 - 35 percent margin.

In nationally pivotal races, it was the young voter who put Democratic candidates over the top. Exit polls indicate that in Pennsylvania 68% of those under 30 voted for the Democrat over the Jon Stewart maligned Rick Santorum. Much higher than any other age group.

In the overwhelmingly Republican state of Montana, where the race was decided by less than 3,000 votes (at last count), 56% of young people voted for the Democratic challenger over the scandal tainted incumbent. The incumbent, Burns, had once argued that President Bush had a secret plan to win the war in Iraq. John Stewart joked that a vote for the challenging Democrat was a vote for blowing President Bush's super-secret plan for Iraq.

November 09, 2006

What sends Milton over the edge: was it the Swingline incident or the excessive TPS reports?

If you don't think that's funny, then you are banned for life. I'm serious. And mind the commenting rules while you're at it.

A terrible event has struck a family of one of our nation's Airmen. An Airman First Class from my unit has an eleven year old brother who was severely injured when he was hit by a garbage truck.

The eleven year old brother had to have part of his liver removed, doctors are trying to repair his broken pelvic bone, and his right arm had to be amputated just below the shoulder. As of yesterday morning, he had undergone six surgeries and doctors don't know how many more are needed.

Our Airman is currently in North Carolina helping her family the best she can. I'm here in Colorado helping her other family (US Air Force Family) help her family.

The father is a proud veteran who is covered by TRICARE for most of the medical needs. However, at this time the family has to come up with over $6,000 to cover the medical bills that TRICARE will not cover. This is an incredible burden on our Airman and her family.

I'm asking that you open your wallets and see if you can help. Please use the donate link at Conservative Thinking if you can spare a few dollars to help out. I will be handing that money to another Staff Sergeant who is heading up the collection here in my squadron.

Every bit helps.

Thanks,
Chris Short

Mizanur Rahman was found guilty of inciting racial hatred but acquitted of charges of inciting murder for his involvement at a rally protesting cartoon depictions of Mohammed in which he called for the killing of British soldiers, the murder of blasphemers, and prayed for 'another 9/11 all over Europe'.

The follower of exiled cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed was seen in front of the Danish embassy carrying a placard (depicted right) which said, "Behead those that insult Islam".

Report of the verdict here. I don't agree with laws that make it illegal to incite to hatred, but surely urging on your enemies in a time of war is sedition if not treason.

He will be sentenced at a later time. Here is some of what Mizanur Rahman's said at the rally. Prepare for the worst:

'Oh Allah, we want to see another 9/11 in Iraq, another 9/11 in Denmark, another 9/11 in Spain, in France, all over Europe. Oh Allah, destroy all of them, Amen'."

"Bomb, bomb France. Bomb, bomb France. Nuke, nuke France. Nuke, nuke France."

"We don't want to see them [British soldiers] in Baghdad or in Iraq any more. We want to see them coming home in body bags. We want to see their blood running in the streets of Baghdad and Fallujah."

"We want to see the Mujahideen shoot down their planes like the way they shoot down birds. We want to see their tanks burnt, just like we burn their flags."

"We want to see their freedoms destroyed. We want to see all of them removed from Muslim land. Oh, Allah don't leave any of them alive in Iraq, don't leave any of them alive in Afghanistan, don't leave any of them standing in France."

"I feel almost ashamed. I feel the words didn't make sense. I didn't think anyone would take me seriously."

Hat tip Glen Jenvey for the e-mail.

What a difference a day makes. Texas Rainmaker notes these two headlines.

Before Elections:

Poverty, anger with government fueling Taliban support in Afghanistan

After Elections:

Poll: Afghans express confidence in country’s direction, security

Then there's Ace's observation that MSNBC links the Democratic victory to the all time high stock market--never mind the fact that the stock market had broken all time high records for the past two weeks.

Hella good.

What do you call a protester who sets himself on fire to atone for America's sins in Iraq? A good protester.

I really did think this was a spoof when I first saw it:

Far Right Soley Responsible for Democratic Gains
Leadership Ignored Centrist Concerns,
Chose to Pursue Far Right's Legislative Agenda
...

"Republican candidates all across the country were hit by Democratic ads attacking the GOP for failure to raise the minimum wage, failure to advance embryonic stem cell research, and failure to pass strong ethics and lobbying reform," continued Resnick. "If leadership had listened to our centrists members, we could have taken issues like this off the table. Centrist Republicans in the House and Senate pushed all session for an increase in the minimum wage, for expanded embryonic stem cell research, and for real ethics and lobbying reform."

NZ Bear is organizing a blogger initiative to make sure the new GOP House leadership is comprised of true reformers and not the old guard that got us into this mess. Time's a wasting--looks like the vote's taking place next week.

NZ's post is here.

Hugh Hewitt's talking along similar lines.

The new House GOP leadership will be the first battle to wrest control of the GOP from the business-as-usual crowd. I suggest that those of us in the reformist camp show up--and that we show up ready to fight.

Remember the little ballerinas at Camp Lejeune who needed help for their recitals?

Reposted from Pam at Iraq War Today:

Thank You from Camp Lejeune's Ballerinas
From Lauren:

To all who so generously gave to these Camp Lejeune Ballerinas:

Yeah! We've reached our goals! You all not only helped us raise the money for the December recital, but you also helped us raise the money to cover the May recital! I want to thank you all so much for your efforts and your generous hearts. These little girls are SO excited. When I told them in class on Thursday that we have enough for both recitals, they all started clapping and squealing "yeah!" Many of the costumes have already started being shipped. So on Thursday, I took a few of them in to make sure that they were going to fit some of the kids. Their eyes were as big as quarters! I wouldn't let them touch the costumes (white) until they washed their hands. You've never seen little girls so eager to wash their hands. They were so careful touching them. And of course, the parents kept coming up to me saying, "Thank you Lauren, this means so much to us." Many of them had tears in their eyes, (including Marines). So you all have touch the hearts of not only my dancers and me, but also the parents. Thank you all again for your generous gifts to my little dancers. This will be something they remember for the rest of their lives. And since several of their dads are deployed and will be gone during this recital, I know that it comforts them to know that their sweet daughters have something so wonderful to look forward to this holiday season! Thank you again!!!

Lauren Kelly-Hill

*****************************************

Thank you to all the bloggers, Angels, readers, and others who helped to make these recitals special for these wonderful little girls and their families. You all ROCK!

I was going to write something along these lines, but the folks at RedState summed it up just fine:

Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh said he felt liberated because he was "no longer going to have to carry the water for people who [he doesn't] think deserve having their water carried." A lot of people got bent out of shape by his candor, but we agree with him 100%, and deep down we think most of you do too. For the past several months, RedState has been critical of the GOP with a gentle prodding and we have been muted when we wanted to avoid shooting the party's electoral chances in the foot. We've been fighting the good fight knowing that the Democrat alternative was worse, even with the miserable state of the Republican party. Yes, it is liberating now. We don't have to worry that something we'll say will negatively impact turnout of the base in the midterms. That's just life. As We've said on the front page before, "Suck it up." We're conservatives first, but in the general election, we're on the Republican team.

(Biscarrosse, France) Sacre bleu! France is modernizing its nuclear arsenal with a new missile intended for submarine launch. Deployment is expected around 2010.

From Reuters:

France test-launched a new generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles for the first time on Thursday, eyewitnesses at the launch site said.

The M51 missile has a range of 6,000 km, 50 percent further than that of the missile currently in service.

Developed by European aerospace giant EADS, the M51 will also be able to carry a heavier load than the M45 it will replace, and be armed with up to six warheads.

In other news, rioting in city suburbs continues like clockwork, resulting in hundreds of burning cars, trucks and busses every night. As an example, police viewed the torching of 277 vehicles in one recent night as "relatively calm."

Being blamed are gangs of youths, identified only as children of immigrants, who have escalated the violence to include deliberately targeting police and other officials for attacks. French authorities are perplexed about how to respond to the violence since they haven't decided whether the rioting is caused by an underclass of domestic criminals or a "fifth column" of seditious foreigners.

I'd suggest they create a new category for the rioters. Without considering their motives, call them "Le thugs" and put them in jail.

Looks like the French are fighting the war on terrorism in that distinctly French way. No, not by running away. Against Israel.

They claim the shots were almost fired because of repeated Israeli violations of the cease fire agreement. No word yet on when France will begin to implement the most important portion of that agreement: disarming Hezbollah.

My guess? Never.

YNet:

French United Nations troops were "two seconds" away recently from firing at Israeli aircraft diving towards their position in southern Lebanon , Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said in parliament.

"Two seconds later there would have been a shot against the aircraft which were directly menacing our forces," Alliot-Marie said.

I dunno. They seem like they feel right at home surrounded by Jew-hating terrorists.

It's funny. Not ha-ha funny. More like that maniacal laugning on the edge of sanity kind of funny.

Iran celebrates.

Syria celebrates.

Palis celebrate.

Hugo Chavez celebrates.

Gateway Pundit has more including Israeli reaction. One guess as to what that is. Hat tip Larwyn.

November 08, 2006

Simple and to the point.

Here's what the people who protect us were doing while we exercised the rights they guarantee:

FOUR TERRORISTS KILLED, 48 DETAINED IN RAMADI RAID:

RAMADI, IRAQ – Coalition Forces killed four terrorists and detained 48 suspected terrorists during a raid of a known al-Qaeda meeting place in Ramadi Tuesday afternoon.

During the raid, Coalition ground forces encountered two hostile men fleeing from the scene in a vehicle. Despite repeated requests to surrender, the two men continued to threaten Coalition Forces. Coalition Forces killed the two terrorists. Upon searching the terrorists’ vehicle, Coalition Forces discovered rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns, grenades and suicide vests.

Coalition Forces were later engaged outside nearby buildings and ground forces killed two more terrorists. During the raid a male civilian received a minor wound to the neck and Coalition Forces provided medical care on the scene.

TEN FOREIGN FIGHTER FACILITATORS KILLED; IRAQI POLICEMAN RESCUED

BAGHDAD, IRAQ – Coalition Forces killed ten al-Qaeda terrorists associated with foreign fighter organizations today near Muqdadiyah and rescued a kidnapped Iraqi Policeman.

Acting upon numerous credible intelligence sources, Coalition Forces launched an operation to detain individuals running a known terrorist cell. At the objective, Coalition Forces made contact with and killed 10 terrorists carrying AK-47s, a rocket propelled grenade launcher, and a machine gun.

Once inside the building, Coalition Forces found a hostage blindfolded and shackled to the floor. The hostage revealed he was an Iraqi Policeman that was taken hostage six days before with two other Iraqi Policemen and was being held ransom to raise money for the terrorist cell. He said the two other policemen had been ransomed earlier by the terrorists.

BAGHDAD – Iraqi Army and Multi-National Division – Baghdad Soldiers detained 17 terrorists at approximately 9 p.m. Monday in central Baghdad.

The Soldiers from the 5th Brigade, 6th Iraqi Army Division, and MND-B’s 4th Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment, 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, conducted a combined cordon and search in the Karkh neighborhood of central Baghdad to capture members of a suspected death squad.

The Soldiers apprehended 17 suspects, all of whom were identified by witnesses as members of a death squad operating in central Baghdad.

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Coalition Forces killed two terrorists and detained two suspected terrorists Tuesday morning during a raid near Bayji that targeted individuals associated with a suspected senior leader of an al-Qaeda in Iraq network.

After arriving at the targeted building, ground forces witnessed four armed individuals fleeing the scene. Coalition Forces pursued and detained two of the suspects as the other two armed individuals began firing at the ground forces.

Ground forces returned fire, killing the two terrorists.

BAGHDAD – Iraqi army and Multi-National Division – Baghdad Soldiers detained 24 suspected terrorists in Baghdad Saturday and Sunday.

Soldiers from the 5th Brigade, 6th Iraqi Army Division, and MND-B’s 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, detained 23 suspected terrorists Sunday for their suspected involvement with death squads and setting up illegal checkpoints.

All suspects were detained for further questioning.

Wondering what else you might have missed by relying on the MSM for news from Iraq? CENTCOM Roundup is a semi-regular feature at The Dread Pundit Bluto.

Not really, I told you so.

"Reid set to be Senate majority leader"

This fellow claims there is.

Dean Esmay and his boys won't like that one bit. No sirreee...

From Dean Barnett:

[W]e didn’t lose because our countrymen suddenly misplaced the virtues that make America great. It is a distinctly liberal trait to blame “the people” when they don’t vote as one would dictate. I’ll brook none of that from our side. The fact is, we thought our country would be better off with a Republican congress. We made a case to the American people. They didn’t buy it because they thought it was a weak case.

And you know what? They were right. In the closing weeks of the campaign season, I felt like I was a lawyer who had a bad client while writing this blog. That client was the Republican Party which had broken its Contract with America from 1994 and had become unmoored from its conservative principles. As its advocate, I couldn’t make a more compelling case for Republicans staying in power than the fact that the Democrats would be worse. I believed in that case, but when that’s all the party gave its advocates to work with, you can honestly conclude that Republicans got this drubbing the old fashioned way – we earned it...

At the risk of committing apostasy, last night’s defeat is good not only for our party but more importantly for our ideas and ideals. Those ideas and ideals have for too long taken a backseat to other less noble concerns. New leadership must emerge, leadership that understands our principles, can articulate them, and will not abandon them. A long overdue reckoning must now begin.

David Keene, American Conservative Union: "We have stood by as Republicans have flaunted, twisted and ignored rules to achieve their own partisan, rather than principled, ends; leaders who have used earmarks to seduce reluctant members to vote for legislation they knew was wrong and kept votes open for hours while they and their White House allies bludgeoned their colleagues into line in support of such legislation."

Rush Limbaugh: "I feel liberated. I no longer am going to have to carry water for people who I don't think deserve having their water carried."

UPDATE 2 : Philip Klein, The American Spectator:

While the exposure of the Democratic Party during the next two years will help Republicans, the GOP should not head into the next election thinking that running against Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton will ensure victory. Instead, the Republicans need to differentiate themselves by returning to their small government roots and once again becoming the party of ideas.

In 1994, Republicans swept into power by signing a contract with America. That contract has been breached, and unless they want to lose the big prize in 2008, it's time for that pact to be renewed.

No further comment. Just a particularly appropriate quote at this particular time.

Abu Bakar Bashir is urging Muslims to jihad in Iraq and the Philippines. Why not in his home country of Indonesia? Apparently Bashir didn't like his last two year stint in prison for mass murder enough to risk charges of sedition. Bashir served 3.8 days in prison for every one of the 202 people who were murdered because of his incitement.

By Nathan Lim

An Election Post-Mortem

So, why did the GOP lose ? Did it even come as a surprise, seeing even most Republican senators, congressmen and pundits expected this ?

It isn't hard to explain. The GOP lost the House and will probably lose the Senate ( still up in the air as of this writing ) because of :

1) The uncertainty in Iraq. The terrorists and insurgents played the public like a violin by willing to kill randomly in the run-up to the elections in order to demoralize the American voter and they succeeded.

2) Corruption ( see Jack Abramoff, Tom Foley, etc. )

3) Talking about big issues like Social Security, Immigration and Runaway spending and either doing absolutely nothing on them while in power, or making the matter worse ( spending has gone up the past 5 years, larger than the Clinton administration with no end in sight )

Is this a total disaster ? A little history can give us some perspective....

For comparison purposes, in 1986 the GOP lost eight Senate seats, and Reagan faced a 55-45 Democratic majority in the upper chamber.

The Republicans only lost five seats in the House in the 1986 mid-term elecyions, the count being 258 Democrats to 177 Republicans. Sure it hurts, but compared to an 81 seat majority, a 20 seat majority does not look that bad.

If you claim to be a conservative, you need to put your money where your mouth is when you are in power and vote like one. Unfortunately on the big issues, this just did not happen.

Of these issues, Iraq was the biggest factor by far. This particular issue has overshadowed even the good economy that we have been experiencing the past 3 years. This isn't new. We can learn from history. President Truman lost big in mid-term because of the Korean War in 1952 and so did LBJ in 1968 because of Vietnam. What happened this year under Bush's administration isn't any different.

We can kiss the Northeastern states goodbye for a very long time. New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut will be democrat long after President Bush is gone. The nation is split along the north-south lines and I don't see any major change for the next five years.

Given that the Northeast is a lost cause, what should the GOP concentrate on ? I think they should concentrate on trying to win back support from the states that have always been ( till yesterday), solidly Republican. That would be states like Colorado and Arizona. Just a few years ago, Colorado, home of Focus on the Family and a large evangelical presence, voted Republican reliably. The Democrats have encrouched on their territory by winning 2 Senate seats, 2 Congressional seats, the governorship and their own state legislature. This should come up as a wake-up call to Republicans strategists.

In Arizona, home of presidential hopeful John McCain, John Kyl could not even muster a convincing victory, which tells us that Arizona isn't going to be reliably Republican either. I personally consider Kul to be one of the best, most consistent, ablest legislator in Washington. His slim victory does not bode well for the party. The fact that Democrat Janet Neapolitano won the governorship easily just adds insult to injury.

Karl Rove ( assuming he is still the GOP strategist ) should take note --- Arizona and Colorado are now considered swing states and should be seriously considered during the 2008 elections.

Senator George Allen can probably be written off as presidential material now. Once one of the favored front runners, his current performance ( we don't even know if he's going to win ), should move him out of contention.

Already the wails of the immigration restrictionists are rising, insisting Republicans lost because they weren't tough on keeping illegal border-crossers out. Not true. The test was in Arizona, where two of the noisiest border hawks, Representatives J.D. Hayworth and Randy Graf, lost House seats. Graf lost in a seat along the Mexican border, where illegal immigrants flock.

What Americans want is a full-blown solution to the immigration crisis. And that will come only when Republicans come together on a "comprehensive" measure that not only secures the border but also provides a way for illegals in the United States to work their way to citizenship and establishes a temporary worker program. If Republicans don't grab this issue, Democrats will.

So, what lessons can be learned from this defeat ?

I can think of the following :

1) If you are in the majority, you better act like you are in the majority and do what you were elected to do. Americans care little for the lame explanations of how you should compromise and how appropriations work in Washington. All they want is to see results.

The GOP had the majority for over 10 years. They did very well in the 1990's, were given additional power in 2002 and 2004, but slowly frittered the trust away.

I personally put a lot of blame on John McCain, who in many ways, acted like a Democrat on such issues as immigration. He, together with 14 other senators ( chiefly Ted Kennedy) sponsored a less than acceptable immigration bill. What Americans want is a full-blown solution to the immigration crisis. And that will come only when Congress ( be it GOP or Dem controlled) come together on a "comprehensive" measure that not only secures the border but also provides a way for illegals in the United States to work their way to citizenship and establishes a temporary worker program. I doubt whether McCain will ever gain the trust of the GOP in the primaries again.

Regarding Iraq, here is my greatest fear --- If you liked the foreign-policy impotence of the 1970s, get ready for more. There will be strong sentiment among some Democrats to cut funding for the Iraq war completely the way they did to South Vietnam in the 70's. It won't happen right away, since Bush will surely wield his veto pen for the first time if the bill they present is too extreme. And it would not go well with most Americans, especially conservatives who were not motivated by any anti-war fervor. However, I see Congress stopping the growth of funding by explaining it in terms of policy reorientation.

I also fear a rash of investigations ( Iran-Contra, and Fitzerald style ) as pay back for the to the Michael Moore wing of the Democratic party. The prime target would be President Bush, who might even be target for impeachment proceedings.

History gives us a lot to consider. Under President Ulysses Grant, Democrats went after the secretary of War, William W. Belknap, who was impeached on bribery charges in 1876.

It isn't even remotely impossible to speculate that Democrats will seek to trump up some charges about deceiving the American people in the lead-up to war, a belief that has already been investigated several times and found to be unfounded. But reality will take a back seat to political expediency; hearings and investigations will commence primarily because the Democrats will have the subpoena power.

There will be hearings and more hearings in the Church/Pike hearings of the 1970s that discredited the intelligence community and rendered the United States helpless in the face of the threats we faced back then from international communism and rising radicalism in for example Iran. I forsee the intelligence department to be weakened further because of this.

My greatest fear is that this election results will be seen by the jihadists everywhere as a great victory. They have always encouraged their partners in Jihad to carry on because they have always believed that American is a paper tiger with no will to win and all they have to do is ride out the presidency of George W. Bush or provide enough ammunition for the media to scare the public into believing that they are losing the war.

In the past year, U.S. resolve has been tested, and sadly we have not always risen to the occasion. We could be facing a replay of the end game in Vietnam, when insurgent leftists in the Democratic party brought about the defunding of military assistance for South Vietnam, and the North Vietnamese invaded and defeated our trusting ally. This has already been predicted by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nazrallah, and noted as a model for success by al Qaeda #2 Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Will the Democratic party buck this view by showing a degree of bipartisanship in supporting Bush in the war on terror ? I am not holding my breath on this one.

Let's talk about taxes. California’s Nancy Pelosi will now be speaker of the house and New York’s Charles Rangel will be the chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. Pelosi and Rangel rarely have met a tax they didn’t love. Theyhave always been candid about what they are going to do once they are in power.

Republicans “have only rewarded wealth, not work,” Pelosi once said in her speeches. “We must share the benefits of our wealth” beyond the privileged. And who are the so-called privileged? We can assume hard-working surgeons, business owners, and many other entrepreneurs who toil to earn their wealth and provide jobs for many others.

It should be noted that January 2002, President Bush’s $1.72 trillion in tax cuts have helped propel America through 57 consecutive months of economic growth. Since Bush’s May 2003 tax-rate reductions, total non-farm employment has expanded by 6.8 million new jobs, according to estimates from Americans for Tax Reform. Unemployment has plummeted from 6.1 percent that month to 4.4 percent in October 2006. Average real GDP has accelerated 3.7 percent since the 2003 tax cuts. Simultaneously, total household net worth has soared $14.4 trillion.

Treading more lightly on productive taxpayers also has created a veritable Old Faithful of tax revenue. Consequently, the budget deficit has collapsed from a projected $521 billion in fiscal year 2004 to $248 billion in fiscal 2006.

Pelosi and Rangel and most Democrats have consistently voted against these tax cuts that have so spurred the American economy.

This year, Pelosi voted against extending Bush’s tax cuts (which would cost 115 million taxpayers $1,716 each, on average), killing the death tax, and repealing the telephone excise tax (launched to finance the 1898 Spanish-American War). She also rejected Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts.

Rangel has said that he “cannot think of one” Bush tax cut worth extending past its 2010 expiration date. Congress Daily asked Rangel if he would consider across-the-board tax increases: “No question about it,” Rangel replied. “Everything has to be on the table.”

If Democrats take total control, Harry Reid of Nevada and Max Baucus of Montana would become, respectively, majority leader and Finance Committee chairman. They both voted to maintain the death tax, scrap dividend tax cuts, and extend the 38.6 percent tax bracket.

Let's be fair about it, the Republicans have largely abandoned fiscal discipline to spend riotously on national programs and parochial boondoggles. While this has embittered fiscal conservatives who sat out the elections, I don't see how having Democrats in control of the purse strings is going to improve the situation. Hold on to your wallet, because it will look thinner come April 15, unless Bush wields his veto pen.

Please note This is not meant as a comment on the wisdom of the war in Iraq or how it has been managed. It is simply a political comment. The GOP was on the verge of becoming a dominant national party after 9/11. Now it is a party on the ropes. It has to rebuild.

Sure, GOP earmarks, and Congressional spending hurt the party. Ambiguous messages on immigration and the Foley and Abramoff scandals hurt too. But without Iraq, the news would have been far better yesterday for the GOP.

President Bush, unlike Clinton, was a risk taker. At this point in time, he appears to have lost his bet. He has limited options now.

But history is still being written, and we will not know how historians will rank him until a decade or two after he is gone. Remember, Winston Churchill, considered by the British as the greatest politican in the 20th century, lost the elections just after England won the second world war. He stepped down only to become Prime Minister again in 1951 until 1955.

# # #

Companion post at OpinionBug.com

The Soviets had nukes. Lots of them. We survived. We won. And we did so with Democrats controlling both houses of Congress.

The Islamist terrorists probably don't have nukes. The odd dirty bomb and possibly a malfunctioning suitcase bomb or old warhead, but that's a worst case scenario. In the grand scheme of things they are much less dangerous.

We won the Cold War with little help from the Democrats. We can win this one too.

Update: Misha, who is a proud American by choice, chimes in:

We won in spite of the Democrats doing everything they possibly could to aid and comfort the Soviets (see: Kennedy, Ted “*Hic!*”, among others) and I’m still around, as are all of my kinfolk....

Call me an unabashed optimist, call me anything you like, but having stared at and witnessed the defeat of the Soviets who were some real badasses with means the likes of which Ahmed the Cave-Dwelling Mooselimb Jihadi can’t even dream of, I don’t see us losing to a bunch of ululating, 7th century savages, no matter HOW much the Dhimmis are going to help them.

Quite a good debate going on in the comments section. The kind of debate where long-time lurkers and occasional commenters come out of the woodwork to make very important points. The kind of comments that give me hope that we can keep comments open because they are not controlled by the very people I started this blog to refute.

To the pessimists let me make a point. When thinking about security you need to distinguish between the probability of a worst case scenario occuring and the impact of that worst case scenario.

The worst case scenario from the latter years of the Cold War was full scale nuclear war. This would have meant the end of the human occupied world as we know it. But the probability of it occuring was low because the Soviets were rational.

The worst case scenario from the Islamists is that they set off a low-level nuclear bomb in multiple U.S. cities. That would be horrible and we should do everything in our power to stop it, but the U.S. would go on as a nation state. The probability of this occuring should the Islamists get a bomb is high, but the impact (compared to the impact of a Soviet strike) would be low.

And to those who think U.S. policies had no effect on the end of the Soviet Union a couple of basic points. In a command-and-control economy, such as in the ol' USSR, there is a choice between guns and butter. When price is not the mechanism for which demands are fulfilled, the government has to decide what people want. In this case, the Soviets thought its people wanted tanks, but people just wanted bread to eat.

In a free society where goods are distributed via the price mechanism, there is no choice between guns and butter. We order more guns, and then those who make the guns buy butter.

So, when we make the claim we spent the Soviet Union into oblivion, we really mean it. We produced missiles, which helped our strengthen our economy in the near term. The Soviets produced missiles, which hurt their economy in the near term because it meant people didn't get the goods and services they demanded.

Second, Greg makes the rare good point in the comments about the Polish people being on the vangaurd and the role of the Pope. But what he fails to mention is that Solidarity was financially supported by the U.S. and that the Pope literally conspired with Reagan and especially Lady Thatcher to start a revolution in his home country.

The lefties are putting together their talking points. The lefties want everyone to believe that this election represented a wholesale repudiation of conservatism as a philosophy. In order to believe this, one would have to ignore reams and reams of public opinion polling data pointing in the opposite direction. Nevertheless, expect to see this meme repeated on the talking head shows in the days and weeks to come:

The question about conservatism has always been could it mature enough as a governing philosophy to replace 20th century progressivism, and provide America with a true alternative governing approach? The Bush era has answered that question, and the answer is no. Given the extraordinary failure of conservative government to do the very basics - keeping us safe, fostering broad-based prosperity, protecting our liberties, balancing the books and not breaking the law - history will label this 20th century conservatism a success as a critique of 20th century progressivism, but a failure as a governing philosophy. It never matured into something more than an ivory-tower led and Limbaugh-fed correction to a progressivism that had lost its way.

Despite the many billions spent in building this modern conservative movement, history will label it a grand and remarkable failure. And we will look back at 2006 as the year this most recent period of American history - the conservative ascendency - ended.

Rep. Mike Pence, Chairman of the Republican Study Committee, issued a statement today on "what went wrong":

"Election day 2006 will be remembered as a turning point in American political history. Twenty-five years after the Reagan Administration came to Washington with a conservative agenda of limited government, the American people chose a different course.

"It is the duty of the losing party in a free election to humbly accept defeat and to acknowledge that the people are sovereign in the People's House.

"As we examine the results of this election, it is imperative that we listen to the American people and learn the right lessons.

"Some will argue that we lost our majority because of scandals at home and challenges abroad. I say, we did not just lose our majority, we lost our way.

"While the scandals of the 109th Congress harmed our cause, the greatest scandal in Washington, D.C. is runaway federal spending.

"After 1994, we were a majority committed to balanced federal budgets, entitlement reform and advancing the principles of limited government. In recent years, our majority voted to expand the federal government's role in education, entitlements and pursued spending policies that created record deficits and national debt.

"This was not in the Contract with America and Republican voters said, 'enough is enough.'

"Our opponents will say that the American people rejected our Republican vision. I say the American people didn't quit on the Contract with America, we did. And in so doing, we severed the bonds of trust between our party and millions of our most ardent supporters.

"As the 110th Congress convenes next year, Republicans must cordially accept defeat and dedicate ourselves to advancing our cause as the loyal opposition knowing that the only way to retake our natural, governing majority, is to renew our commitment to limited government, national defense, traditional values and reform."

Since the terrorist's favorite party has won the House, signalling a likely shift of US policy, Will the terrorists, who know the lefites understand their woes, turn around and make peace with the US?

Afraid not.

AP Via Yahoo News: GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Hamas' military wing called Wednesday on Muslims around the world to attack American targets following reports that an Israeli tank strike killed 18 people in the Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun.

The Hamas-led Palestinian government distanced itself from the call, saying its fight was with Israel.

Hamas militants have historically directed their suicide bombings and rocket attacks only against Israeli targets.

"America is offering political, financial and logistic cover for the Zionist occupation crimes, and it is responsible for the Beit Hanoun massacre. Therefore, the people and the nation all over the globe are required to teach the American enemy tough lessons," Hamas' military wing said in a statement sent to The Associated Press.

Also see Douglas Farah at the Counter Terrorism Blog.

Here's at least one more silver lining:

Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., told fellow Republican lawmakers on Wednesday he does not intend to run for minority leader when Democrats take control of the House in January, officials said.

Hastert conveyed word in a conference call one day after Republicans lost control of the House in midterm elections.

The officials who described Hastert's plans did so on condition of anonymity, saying they did not want to pre-empt a formal announcement.

His decision to step down cleared the way for a likely succession battle. Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, the majority leader, is expected to run, and Reps. Mike Pence of Indiana and Joe Barton of Texas have also signaled they may make a bid for leadership positions.

H/t : Michelle.

Bannning just doesn't work. Should I just close the comments forever?

You should have every expectation that the MSM and the Dems will try to spin this election as a rejection of "right-wing conservatism" and an embrace of "left-wing liberalism." I'm here to tell ya, folks: whatever this election meant, it DIDN'T mean that--at least, not in the way the MSM and the Dems will mean it when they say it. It didn't, for example, mean a rejection of a limited government or fiscal responsibility. It didn't represent a public embrace of socialism, and it certainly wasn't a referendum on whether we should continue to help the Iraqi people.

I went to a GOP "victory" party last night, and just everyone I talked to fell into one of two groups. The first group (the faithful) was depressed that the pre-election polls were actually on-target. The second group (the disgruntled) had long since resigned themselves to substantial Republican losses and had mixed feelings about those losses. In general, it was either "I can't believe this is really happening" or "Maybe they need to learn a lesson." Even at a collection of the faithful, it wasn't tough at all to find Republicans who'd been disgusted with their own party for years--and weren't at all too shy to talk about it.

You may BE one of the disgruntled Republicans, or you may HATE them, or you may be in the middle. For those of you who hate them, you can hate them all you want. You can think they're assholes, or that they're insane, or that they're high-maintenance bitches. None of that really matters. What matters is that they represent a huge chunk of the Republican base. If the GOP doesn't figure out how to bring these folks back into the GOP fold and give them some candidates to believe in, 2008 will look very ugly.

If you don't know what the lesson to be learned from November 7, 2006 is, it is this: a party can't disregard the interests and concerns of an entire chunk of its own base without paying a heavy price.

Via FOXNEWS: Eric Ruff, the Pentagon press secretary, said he participated in meetings with Rumsfeld on Wednesday morning and heard no talk of changing war strategies or of Rumsfeld leaving his post. He said he did not know whether Rumsfeld has talked to President Bush about his future in light of the election results.

The focus of U.S. strategy for stabilizing Iraq remains the same, Ruff said: handing over more control to the Iraqi government and encouraging the leaders there to make political progress on reconciliation and resource sharing.

The President has Nominated Robert Gates as the new Secretary of Defense.

Denver Post: Gates is the president of Texas A&M University and a close friend of the Bush family. He served as CIA director for Bush's father from 1991 until 1993.

Gates first joined the CIA in 1966 and served in the intelligence community for more than a quarter century, under six presidents.

His nomination must be confirmed by the Senate.

UPDATE: Bad news about Libertarians: they may have cost the Republicans the elections.

Good news about the two-party system: when one of the major parties feels threatened by a third party, they may begin the process of co-optation. This means they take the most popular ideas of the insurgent third party and make it their own.

Could the Republicans take the best ideas from the Libertarians and make them their own? I hope so. I'd start with the legalization of whorehouses, but that's just me.
----------------

Libertarian candidate comes in second in Indiana Senate race. It's a start.

Maybe I'll move to Indiana.

I've long advocated a two party system. I just wish those two parties were the Republicans and Libertarians. Only then could I finally find myself in the center.

Hey, even I want to believe I'm a moderate.

R-Lugar 1,149,186 87%
L-Osborn 168,921 13%

Via LGF: Via Wausa Daily Herald

: ROTHSCHILD — Guests at one local hotel who switch on the TV in search of the latest news no longer have CNN as an option.

The Stoney Creek Inn, 1100 Imperial Ave., in Rothschild has dropped the 24-hour news channels CNN and CNN Headline News from its basic cable offerings.

Tony Magro, 76, of Barrington, Ill., stayed at the inn Monday night and said he was told by a receptionist that the hotel chain’s corporate office had issued a letter calling for the removal of the channels because CNN aids terrorists.

“I’m not an activist, and I really don’t have any interest, but that struck me as over the top,” Magro said. “I’m rather zealous about my rights as an American citizen, particularly when I’m paying for the service.”

A group of Islamic terrorists are now on trial for the gruesome and barbaric beheadings of young Christian schoolgirls.

There are four on trial, three for carrying out the beheadings and one for leading and inspiring the murderers.

We need to watch this closely as there is a history of Indonesian courts giving light sentences to some Muslim terrorists while executing Christians for similar crimes. We demand that if these men are found to be guilty, they must be put to death for their crimes.

Reuters: JAKARTA (Reuters) - An Indonesian Muslim man was accused in court on Wednesday of being the mastermind behind the beheading of three Christian girls last year in Central Sulawesi, a charge that could lead to death by firing squad if proven.

The attack took place in the Poso region of Central Sulawesi province, an area where deadly Muslim-Christian clashes broke out from 1998 to 2001, and where simmering violence continues. The trial was moved to Jakarta on security fears.
The beheadings triggered an outcry across Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, and beyond. The Vatican described the attack as "barbaric"…

…State prosecutor Payaman Hutapea told the Central Jakarta court that Hasanuddin, who had undergone training in an Islamic militant camp in the southern Philippines, had inspired a group of Muslim men to target young Christian girls.

The defendant motivated the men by saying: "Christians have slaughtered women and children, therefore we are also allowed to do the same thing. This plan is also to avenge our brothers who have been slayed," the prosecutor said.

To see the terrible result of these barbaric acts see Stan’s brother Big White Infidel’s video below at about 2 minutes 14 seconds. Warning graphic images.

Even Iraqis know that we have a history of abandoning allies under pressure from Democrats:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The United States ambassador sought on Wednesday to reassure Iraqis that U.S. policy would not dramatically alter after Democrats seized control of the U.S. House of Representatives in midterm elections.

In a videotape distributed by the embassy Wednesday morning, the Afghan-born envoy said President Bush "sees success (in Iraq) as imperative for American's national interests."

But some Iraqis voiced hope that the Democrats would be able to change U.S. foreign policy.

The folks in the mainstream media, who succeeded in convincing enough voters that killing terrorists in Iraq is not as good as leaving them free to attack us here, are looking forward to good times. After all, 9/11 was a ratings bonanza for the Press. The next one will be, too.

Update: Via Larwyn, a commenter at JustOneMinute has produced a list of al Qaeda allies:

I don't think this election result had anything to do with Iraq, corruption, Bush, war on terror, etc. I think it had everything to do with an unelected, unaccountable, one-party media that still has too much control over what people see and think. The steady, constant, drumbeat of BDS for 6 years took its toll in spite of the best efforts of the likes of Tom Maguire, Charles Johnson, Michelle Malkin, Glenn Reynolds, AJ Strata, Mac, Ace, Robert Spencer, Sara, many others too numerous to mention, but almost unforgivable to not mention because they have done yeoman's work exposing the contemptible lies and bias of the "MSM". Maybe next time if it isn't too late.

And what do we have for MSM? Fox News?? Please. Shep Smith? O'Reilly? "Fair and Balanced" because they have Alan Colmes??? If I wanted to see crap like Alan Colmes spews, I could watch any of the following:
**and I hope TM and Larry forgive me for stealing this from BlameBush, but it gets the point across so well**
ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, TBS, NPR, CNN, BBC, HBO, HSN, MTV, VH1, Showtime, The Abortion Channel, Gore TV, Reuters, The Associated Press, Time Magazine, Newsweek, The New Republic, the Nation, The New Yorker, TV Guide, People Magazine, Teen People, Us Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, Oprah Magazine, Ladies Home Journal, Woman's Day, The Advocate, Esquire, Vogue, Cosmopolitian, Humpty Dumpty, Architectural Digest, Cat Fancy, Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, Swank, Sugar Tits Quarterly, the Harvard Perspective, High Times, The New
York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Seattle Times, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Seattle Weekly, The Boston Globe, The Village Voice, The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Francisco Examiner, USA Today, The Washington Post, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Arizona Daily Star, The Anniston Star , The Decatur Daily, Montgomery Advertiser, The Tuscaloosa News, Anchorage Daily News Arkansas Time, Tuscon Daily Star, The Alameda Times-Star, Contra Costa Times, The Los Angeles Daily News, The Fresno Bee, Marin Independent Journal, Merced Sun-Star, The Modesto Bee, The Monterey County Herald, The Oakland Tribune, La Opinion, The Santa Rose Press Democrat, The Sacramento Bee, San Jose Mercury News, San Mateo County Times, Santa Cruz Sentinel, The Valejo Times-Herald, The Eureka Times Standard, The Ventura County Star, Aspen Daily News, The Boulder Daily Camera, Durango Herald, Fort Collins Coloradoan, Greeley Daily Tribune, The Stamford Advocate, The Wilmington News Journal, Bradenton Herald, Daytona Beach News-Journal, Florida Today, The Gainesville Sun, The Miami Herald, Orlando Sentinel, The Palm Beach Post, St Petersburg Times, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Treasure Coast News/Press-Tribune, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Macon Telegraph, The Honolulu Advertiser, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Bonner County Daily Bee, The Idaho Statesman, Chicago Defender, Chicago Sun-Times, Edwardsville Intelligencer,Rockford Register, Lafayatte Journal and Courier, The Des Moines Register, Iowa City Press-Citizen, Quad City Times, The Storm Lake Tribune, The Hutchinson News, Lexington Herald-Leader, The Louisville Courier-Journal, Teen Lexington Herald-Leader, Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer, The Shreveport Times, Bangor Daily News. the Kennebec Journal, Portland Press Herald, The Baltimore Sun, The Berkshire Eagle, The Framingham MetroWest Daily News, Milford Daily News. The Springfield Republican, The New Bedford Standard-Times, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, The Argus-Press, The
Bay City Times, The Battle Creek Enquirer, the Detroit Free Press, The Flint Journal, the Lansing State Journal, Livingston County Daily Press & Argus, The Muskegon Chronicle, Parasites Weekly, Petoskey News-Review, The Saginaw News, the Port Huron Times Herald, Traverse City Record-Eagle, Duluth News Tribune, The Mankato Free Press, St. Cloud Times, the Columbia Daily Tribune, The Kansas City Star, St. Louis American, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Springfield News-Leader, Billings Gazette, Las Vegas Mercury, the Las Vegas Sun, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the Nevada Appeal, the Reno Gazette-Journal, the Concord Monitor, The Keene Sentinel, the Portsmouth Herald, The Nashua Telegraph, the Lebanon-Hanover Valley News, The Bergen Record, the Burlington County Times, the Bridgewater Courier News, the Camden Courier-Post, The Vineland Daily Journal, the Parsippany Daily Record, The Jersey Journal, The Gloucester County Times, The Hackensack Record, the Newark Star-Ledger The Trenton Times, the Albuquerque Tribune, The Santa Fe New Mexican, The Buffalo News: "News for Discerning Buffalo", the Oneonta Daily Star, The Ithaca Journal The White Plains Journal-News, The Corning Leader, Newsday, The Glen Falls Post-Star, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the Elmira Star-Gazette, the Staten Island Advance, the Albany Times-Union, Willie the Wino's Grand Central Station Restroom Scribblings, the Asheville Citizen Times, The Charlotte Observer, the Elizabeth City Daily Advance, The Greenville Daily Reflector, The Raleigh News & Observer, the Greensboro News & Record, The Southern Pines Pilot, the Wilimgton Star-News, The Bismarck Tribune, the Grand Forks Herald, the Akron Beacon Journal, The Toledo Blade, the Dayton Daily News, the Zanesville Times Recorder, The Daily Astorian, the East Oregonian, the Medford Mail Tribune, the Portland Oregonian, The Eugene Register-Guard, the Salem Statesman Journal, The Coos Bay World, The Beaver County Times, The Bucks County Courier Times, the Wilkes-Barre
Citizen's Voice, The Doylestown Intelligencer, the Uniontown Herald-Standard, The Allentown Morning Call, the Washington Observer-Reporter, The Philadelphia Daily News, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, the Anderson Independent-Mail, The Myrtle Beach Sun News, The Memphis Commercial-Appeal, The Jackson Sun, Nashville Scene, The Tennessean, The Berkeley Daily Planet, Berkeley Voice, The Berkeleyan, ¡Berkemundo!, The Baytown Sun (11,374), the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, the Lone Star Iconoclast, the Longview News-Journal, The Lufkin Daily News, the Waco Tribune-Herald, the Bennington Banner, the Brattleboro Reformer, The Burlington Free Press, the Rutland Herald, The Barre-Montpelier Times Argus, the Newport Daily Press, The Roanoke Times, The Virginian-Pilot, The Everett, The Olympian, The Tacoma News Tribune, The Bremerton Sun, the Tri-City Herald, the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin, the Boston Phoenix, the Charleston Gazette, the Huntington Herald-Dispatch, Howard Stern, the Madison Capital Times, The Green Bay News-Chronicle, the Racine Journal Times, the Kenosha News, the La Crosse Tribune, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The Sheboygan Press, The Wausau Daily Herald, The Guardian, The Independent, the Paris Daily Snivel, Der Spiegel, Democracy Now. The Huffington Post, The Progressive Review, Alternet, Dissident Voice, AntiWar.com, Common Dreams, Truthout.org, MoveOn.org, TomPaine.com, Counterpunch, The People's Kool-Aid, BlameBush!, Mother Jones, High Times, The Progressive, New Internationalist, Multinational Monitor, Covert Action Quarterly, The American Prospect, Dollars and Sense, The Progressive Populist, The Weekly Standard, New Left Review, Pacifica Radio, Progressive Mind, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, YouTube, Marvel Comics, The Weekly World News, Indymedia, DailyKos, Wonkette, DemocraticUnderground, The Prairie Home Companion, Coast to Coast with George Noory, Pravda, Granma, and Al Jazeera.

I don't know whether to admire former hostage in Iraq Norman Kember for his principled stand or to think the worst about him for believing in those same principles which I think are misguided at best and evil at worst. The thought that one shouldn't testify against terrorists because they might receive the death penalty is so foreign to me that I'm speechless.

BBC News:

Former British hostage Norman Kember has said he is unlikely to testify at any trial over his kidnapping in Iraq....

Mr Kember told Channel 4 News he had been informed there had been arrests but said he faced a "moral dilemma" as he was against the death penalty.

The 74-year-old, who was opposed to the US-led action in Iraq, said he "can understand" what motivated the gang.

Meet the new Majority Leader of the Senate. Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada. One of the most liberal members of Congress.

You didn't know that was what you were voting for, but that is what you are getting.

I hope you love the government, because you just voted for more of it.

Morning Update: The last thing I saw on Fox before I went to bed was that even with the recounts, it was likely that the Republicans would still lose VA and MT. Hence the post.

November 07, 2006

Meet the new Speaker of the House of Representatives. Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of San Francisco. One of the most liberal members of Congress.

You didn't know that was what you were voting for, but that is what you are getting.

I hope you love the government, because you just voted for more of it.

Bad gay.

I don't know which is worse.

The only poll that counts.

Pelosi saying America voted for a 'new direction'. Already talking about a 'fair economy'. Read: higher taxes, more government spending.

The libertarian nightmare.

According to coverage on Glenn Beck's Insider, NBC News, anchored by Keith Olbermann, is projecting a 29 seat pickup, and control of the House, for Dems.

One slight problem. Their margin of error is ±10 seats.

Here's a screenshot:

Update: CNN saying Dems take House, Fox News says 1 vote away.

Update, too: Senate news not good for Dems. Keep singing Christmas songs, Greg, the House doesn't confirm Supreme Court justices.

Still another uppadadate: Glenn Beck's Insider took a dump. Well, hell, watching the teevee is extremely boring. Fox News is saying that the Senate may not be decided for some time.

Yet another update: I think I've just broken my record of Firefox tabs opened at one time.

Here's how the race tonight is shaping up:

1. Mario Lopez

2. Joey Lawrence

3. Emmitt Smith

The loss of Emmitt would be huge defeat for those of us who have to suffer the fact that our wife is TiVOing two shows at once, and therefore we cannot change the channel.

Weep with me.

Update: Glad that's over.

And so, it begins.

To quote that sage of great wisdom, Flava Flav, Don't believe the hype!

I'm heading over to a buddies house to eat wings and watch returns. He's a labor Democrat and I'm in the libertarian wing of the Republican party. What could possibly go wrong?

Just chill and enjoy this as the spectator sport it is. If the Dems end up taking either house (which I still doubt) then just think of all the fun we'll have. Anyway, just remember that exit polls showed Kerry winning by 6% in Ohio back in '04.

It's going to be a long night.

No problems voting here.

Nor a problem voting straight "R."

I almost wavered over voting for Ben Nelson. He's more conservative than our other senator, Chuck Hagel.

But, just as my pencil wavered over the oval next to his name, the words "Majority Leader Reid" flashed into my head.

Update by Howie: WTF? I heard the grumblings about voting problems on the MSM and the left before my poll opened at 7:00 CST. Now it's, "The end of Electronic Voting". My goodness! So, if you loose it's because the votes were counted wrong? Bad system. Get a new system and It's we may win because the votes were counted wrong?

Damn moonbats are never happy, must be the sour grapes from Lamont getting his ass handed to him? Or maybe they are so used to being loosers they make the excuse ahead of time, just in case.

The machines seemed to work fine for we stupid rednecks. I don't care, let the chips fall where they may. There will be other elections. Not that we'll do too badly in this one. We'll hang tough.

begin: sarcasm.

Boy these folks sure have a lot of faith in democracy.

end: sarcasm

I've tried not to think of Kos as ,as Rusty says. "A partisan hack and not a very good one at that".

Rusty is right as ususal.

Oh and I'm sure I'm a hack, I just expected a bit more. You know, at least some tiny smidgen of grace.

I have to say that Tony is right on top of things today. Great interview. I have a portion here but go over to Rush's site and read it all. You'll be glad you did.

Via Rush: RUSH: Yeah. An opinion on whether or not John Kerry is contributing to this shift at all?

SNOW: Look, I think what he did is he reiterated those comments, and maybe the refusal to respond to them. Now, keep in mind, I may not be an objective observer because I'm a 'stuffed suit White House mouthpiece'.

RUSH: Yeah. And I'm 'doughy'. We're on the same team here.

SNOW: (Laughing.) Exactly. But, look, I think a lot of people are trying to figure out when Democrats say they support the troops but they think the troops are on a fool's errand or they support the troops and they think the troops are losing, the Washington Post had a really interesting piece today. When a reporter finally did something I've been challenging him to do for weeks which is, "Hey, why don't you talk to the troops," and the troops said that what Democrats would be proposing would be absolute disaster. You know, again, so I think what John Kerry's comments did was reiterate the fact that Democrats tend to have a view of the military that is not always fully respectful and even when they say they're supporting them, they're undercutting them....

...RUSH: The headline alone is all I need to tell you about. "As Race Gets Tighter, Iraq Still the Focus." Well, now, what does that tell you? If the race is getting tighter... I thought Iraq was supposed to cause Democrats to show up in droves and depress the Republican turnout, but if the polls are tightening and Iraq is still the focus, what's that tell us?

SNOW: That tells us the people are finally starting... What they constantly get on television and newspapers is a failure narrative. They hear body counts, they don't hear about successes. But despite all that, Saddam verdict, you've got Nouri al-Maliki who is the prime minister of Iraq be very assertive about one thing to have control of military operations. You have Iraqi police the other day, police who have been the last to be trained up and they're still the most difficult challenge, going in and taking out something like 69 Al-Qaeda members the other day, killing 53 and capturing 16. There's important progress being made, and all of a sudden what's happening is we talk about it in a more comprehensive way, and also as people realize that if we lose this and terrorists get hold on of Iraq, they'll have access to the world's second largest oil reserves.

They'll have untold wealth, they'll be able to buy whatever weapons they want, they'll be able to go after governments in that region including on the Arabian peninsula, they'll be able to control an enormous amount of the world's oil supplies. They'll be able to pit us against the Europeans and the Asians and, meanwhile, they'll be able to export terror more effectively than ever. In other words, we do, quote, phased redeployment; what we do is we invite a whole lot more September 11ths.

Just a few days before the U.S. elections, a DailyKos diarist decided that it was an ideal time to promote the blatantly anti-Israel Iranian Holocaust cartoon contest. Fellow Kossacks liked his post so much, it became a "recommended" post at DailyKos. Once it started garnering attention, Kos attacked the post as the "Worst timed diary ever" and asked the diarist to "wait until next Wednesday to repost." The Kos diarist's final comment:

"I'll be back next week. Please win the election."

"We can all get back to openly hating the Jews next week. In the meantime, let's make sure they get to the polls and vote D!"

Here's a little video summing it all up:

H/t: LGF.

I won't be voting a straight Republican ticket, but I'll be voting for more R's than really deserve it.

They may not deserve to represent me, but I don't deserve to be represented by lunatics.

I really DO NOT care to be in this same situation again two years from now...

UPDATE: Just got back from voting. Pleasantly surprised to see how many Libertarian Party candidates were on the ballot. Where it counted, I stuck with the GOP, but I voted LP in a number of races, just to send a message.

Remains to be seen, but even the Gray Lady seems to be hedging her bets:

For a combination of reasons — increasingly bullish prognostications by independent handicappers, galloping optimism by Democratic leaders and bloggers, and polls that promise a Democratic blowout — expectations for the party have soared into the stratosphere. Democrats are widely expected to take the House, and by a significant margin, and perhaps the Senate as well, while capturing a majority of governorships and legislatures.

These expectations may well be overheated. Polls over the weekend suggested that the contest was tightening, and some prognosticators on Monday were scaling back their predictions, if ever so slightly. (Charlie Cook, the analyst who is one of Washington’s chief setters of expectations, said in an e-mail message on Monday that he was dropping the words “possibly more” from his House prediction of “20-35, possibly more.”)

So folks don’t need to wade through my three big posts below: Reps easily hold senate taking at most a two seat loss. Reps will also hold the house with Dems picking up a maximum of 9 seats. It get’s better from there if the GOP has a good turnout.

Obi Wan continued laying out the case – the fact that DeWine is within 6, and Kyl is up 12 or so suggests that this late surge for the GOP is deep and broad, affecting races nationwide, even with very different candidates.

Geraghty gets support from an odd place. In a poll conducted November 2-5, James Carville's own "Democracy Project" joins other national generic ballot polls in finding that the "blue wave" has crested and started to recede. It also shows that the perceived gap in which party can best handle national security is vast. Republicans lead by 18 points, 50 to 32.

In Response to Sheik al-Hilaly's sermon comparing women to “pieces of meat” the Infidel Bloggers Alliance has started a contest, a very cool contest. So ladies show a bit of leg and send yours in. Not because we want to see your legs ;) but because it’s the right thing to do, really.

Pastorius at The Infidel Bloggers Alliance: Therefore, we introduce The Infidel Bloggers Alliance "Uncovered Meat" Contest.

Send in photos of your wives or girlfriends in various stages of undress. Or, if you are a babe, just set up the camera and time it to stike a pose. Keep them relatively clean, but make sure that there is plenty of carne visible. We need to judge the quality of the victuals.

Also see the Infidel Babe Archive. (Sort of maybe safe for work but not really)

Not to forget the ladies see the Infidel “Hunk of the Week” too.

Election? What election?

UPDATE: There are more videos from "Mr. Pimp" here, and more written commentary on uncovered meat here. (For those of you who missed it, "Mr. Pimp" is the title CAIR's Ahmed Bedier bestowed on my favorite neoconzionistjewbitchwhore a week or so ago, which got noticed by Charles "The Big" Johnson.)

See below for a related experiment conducted by Big White Infidel.

Big White Infidel Via Juba Sucks.

BTW, just for a little experiment today, I put some meat outside covered in brown wrapper and the neighbor cats sniffed the covered meat and then tore through the brown wrapper to eat the meat. Did you get that Sheik Hilaly? Let me explain that clearly for you. Even though the "meat" was "covered" with a wrapper, the "cats" tore through the wrapper to get at the "meat". You see Sheik, even if the "meat" is covered, the "cat" will still go for the "meat". The problem is with the "cat", not the "meat".

Just kidding I voted early this morning.

(London) Frankly, this makes pounds worth of sense to me. All potential threats to national security should be removed.

From ITV.com:

A Muslim police officer is taking legal action against the Metropolitan Police after he was removed from a team protecting Tony Blair.

Amjad Farooq, who was a member of the Diplomatic Protection Group SO16, claims he was forced out because of his religion.

The 39-year-old claims he was told his presence might upset the American secret service, which works closely with the Metropolitan Police unit.

Pssst.....this means I don't think the Dems will sweep, much to the consternation of the MSM.

UPDATE: Is Allah just one of those 'don't get my hopes up' kinda guys or what? Election Projection had it wrong in 2004, I don't see any merit to their current numbers either.

Dan Rather is still defending the forged documents he used to make his case against the President's military service. And not just in that fake but accurate sort of way.

Today is Election Day. We here at the Jawa Report have committed ourselves to outdoing all the other blogs in our coverage of today's results.

We are so committed, we created a whole new site to encompass our diverse perspectives on this momentous event.

So, without further ado, please click to view our unrivalled Election 2006 liveblogging coverage.

And now I laugh, and pull so hard, to see you swinging from the Gallows Pole

The former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein will be hanged by the end of January, a senior member of Nouri al-Maliki’s Dawa party predicted today as an around-the-clock curfew kept the lid on sectarian violence after the deposed dictator was sentenced to death.

Image stein hoist: Wild Thing

November 06, 2006

Hellooooooooo deer season!

A fatwa:

In the name of Allah the most merciless and uncompassionate.

I call upon my brothers, ye who wear the holy garments of Mossy Oak© and carriers of the mighty compound bow, muzzleloader, shotgun, and centerfire rifle.

Jihad upon the infidel whitetail! Jihad upon the dirty Mule deer! A jihad upon all legal game animals!

"Slay them where ye may find them." (with accordance to local hunting regulations, of course). "Field dress them, butcher them, and serve them at the dinner table." - Sura 9:29 of the Hunter's Holly Quoran.

"Give a man a steak, he'll eat for a day. Teach him to hunt, he'll eat for a lifetime. And, as an added bonus, piss off the animal rights psychos." - Vinnie 1:13 - The Hunter's Holy Bible, Outdoor Life Network Edition.

Boy, howdy. Justice Stevens may be outta there?:

For the past several weeks, there has been a rumor circulating among high-level officials in Washington, D.C., that a member of the U.S. Supreme Court has received grave medical news and will announce his or her retirement by year’s end. While such rumors are not unusual in the nation’s capital, this one comes from credible sources. Additionally, a less credible but still noteworthy post last week at the liberal Democratic Underground blog says, “Send your good vibes to Justice Stevens. I just got off the phone with a friend of his family and right now he is very ill and at 86 years old that is not good.”

Normally, this news might be too ghoulish to repeat publicly. Nevertheless, with the election just days away, it is news that should be considered. It points out what could be a once-in-a-lifetime chance for the 20-year movement to recast the court with a constitutionalist majority. It would be a cruel twist indeed for conservatives to “teach Republicans a lesson” next Tuesday, only to be taught a lesson themselves within months when new Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D.-Vt.) leads a Democratic majority against the most important Supreme Court nominee in decades. Conservatives whose mantra is “no more Souters” should bear in mind Robert Bork’s fate after the Senate changed from Republican to Democratic hands in 1986.

The Kurdish Prime Minister blasts CNN International, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. CNS News:

"CNN International and [Arabic television network] al-Jazeera are equally bad in their coverage of the situation in Iraq," Kurdistan Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani was quoted as telling a visiting group of Americans on Monday.

"When I was in the United States recently and read the negative news in the Washington Post, New York Times and in the network TV broadcasts, I even wondered if things had gotten so bad since I had left that I shouldn't return," he said.

When are we going to give the Kurds the state they so deserve?

I'm voting for whoever Karl Rove tells me to vote for.

Because I am just another mind-numbed zombie under the control of the Chimpy McBushHitleRovian Mind Slave Machine.

Must...cut...down...old...growth...forest...to...eat...spotted owl...braaains

Former President of the American Political Science Association, James Q. Wilson, has scientifically proven that the mainstream media is run by a bunch of spineless traitors.

Science!

Charles Johnson reprints part of Wilson's piece which envisions what today's traitors in the media would have printed had they been running the show in WWII.

But I want to focus on the politcal science aspect of Wilson's WSJ piece.
Wilson repeats a famous study done by James D. Wright measuring the impact of Vietnam War coverage on the attitudes of Americans. In it, Wright found that the highly misleading press coverage negatively affected the way people perceived the War effort.

How about the present war?

Between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30, 2005, nearly 1,400 stories appeared on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening news. More than half focused on the costs and problems of the war, four times as many as those that discussed the successes. About 40% of the stories reported terrorist attacks; scarcely any reported the triumphs of American soldiers and Marines. The few positive stories about progress in Iraq were just a small fraction of all the broadcasts.

When the Center for Media and Public Affairs made a nonpartisan evaluation of network news broadcasts, it found that during the active war against Saddam Hussein, 51% of the reports about the conflict were negative. Six months after the land battle ended, 77% were negative; in the 2004 general election, 89% were negative; by the spring of 2006, 94% were negative. This decline in media support was much faster than during Korea or Vietnam.

I repeated for the Iraq War the analysis that Professor Wright had done of the impact of the media on public opinion during the Vietnam War. Using 2004 poll data, I found a similar effect: Americans who rarely watched television news about the 2004 political campaign were much more supportive of the war in Iraq than were those who watched a great deal of TV news. And the falloff in support was greatest for those with a college education.

The emergence of journalism as a craft independent of corporate owners reinforced these trends. As one journalist wrote, reporters "had come to reject the idea that they were in any sense part of the American 'team.'....

The mainstream media's adversarial stance, both here and abroad, means that whenever a foreign enemy challenges us, he will know that his objective will be to win the battle not on some faraway bit of land but among the people who determine what we read and watch. We won the Second World War in Europe and Japan, but we lost in Vietnam and are in danger of losing in Iraq and Lebanon in the newspapers, magazines and television programs we enjoy.

Welcome to the America of 2006. God help us.

Our first generic youth will be doing his time in Britain. He got his kicks imagining just how many Brits he could kill in one attack.

Scotsman: LONDON (Reuters) - A suspected al Qaeda operative watched impassively in court on Monday as prosecutors played shaky hand-held video of the New York Stock Exchange and other U.S. financial targets he has admitted planning to bomb.

Briton Dhiren Barot, 34, pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy to murder in connection with planned attacks in the United States and Britain -- the latter including the use of a "dirty bomb" laced with radiological material.
Also found were encrypted files containing the plans for the U.S. attacks, which police cracked with the help of a code word discovered during investigations in Pakistan…

"Barot suggested as possible targets the Heathrow Express or an explosion on a tube train whilst in a tunnel under the Thames.

"As to the last, he wrote 'imagine the chaos that would be caused if a powerful explosion were to rip through here and actually rupture the river itself. This would cause pandemonium, what with the explosions, flooding, drowning etc that would result."

Update: Dhiren Barot has been sentenced to life in prison, Hooray!

More on his transformation into a terrorist here.

Times of London: ut in his early twenties he abandoned his Hindu faith and plans for a career in hotel management and answered the call to jihad against the West, converting to Islam.

After attending a lecture by the now-jailed cleric Abu Hamza, where he was told of the Mujahidin and the concept of jihad, Barot began to frequently discuss how to help "oppressed" Islamic people abroad....

...When he returned to the UK it is thought he established links with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, thought to be the "principal architect" of 9/11.

Via Chron: MILAN, Italy — An Egyptian wanted in connection with the 2004 Madrid train bombings was convicted on Monday on international terrorism charges in Italy and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

The court in Milan convicted 35-year-old Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed and Yahi Ragheh _ a 23-year-old prosecutors said was preparing to be a suicide bomber _ of subversive association aimed at international terrorism, a charge introduced after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. The younger man was given a five-year term.

Both men were led from the courtroom in handcuffs. Ahmed, who just a few minutes earlier had been joking with guards, refused to comment to reporters.

George Soros' bendover buddy and billionaire chairman of Progressive Insurance, Peter Lewis, suffered a heart attack this weekend in New York. He is reportedly in stable condition and good spirits.

If Lewis, 72, is due for the everlasting gulag, funding for some leftist initiatives may be affected. In the past, he contributed millions to the ACLU, MoveOn.org, Air America, the Democrat Party and other leftist groups. Lewis has also spearheaded funding of initiatives to legalize marijuana and has been rumored to be a long-time user of the drug.

Ever wonder why the DNC never seems to be anxious to count military absentee ballots?

From the Washington Post:

FORWARD OPERATING BASE SYKES, Iraq - For the U.S. troops fighting in Iraq, the war is alternately violent and hopeful, sometimes very hot and sometimes very cold. It is dusty and muddy, calm and chaotic, deafeningly loud and eerily quiet.

The one thing the war is not, however, is finished, dozens of soldiers across the country said in interviews. And leaving Iraq now would have devastating consequences, they said.

With a potentially historic U.S. midterm election on Tuesday and the war in Iraq a major issue at the polls, many soldiers said the United States should not abandon its effort here. Such a move, enlisted soldiers and officers said, would set Iraq on a path to civil war, give new life to the insurgency and create the possibility of a failed state after nearly four years of fighting to implant democracy.

The soldiers declined to discuss the political jousting back home, but they expressed support for the Bush administration's approach to the war, which they described as sticking with a tumultuous situation to give Iraq a chance to stand on its own.

A quick update on the ongoing plight of the American soldier being held hostage in Iraq. Spc. Ahmed K. Altaie was born in Iraq but chose to become an American.

One of his uncles, who is a high-ranking member of Ahmad Chalabi's party, claims to have identified the man responsible for the kidnapping as Majid al-Qais Omran, a.k.a Abu Rami. He also makes the claim that it was a rogue cell of the Mahdi Army who nabbed Altaie.

A friend of Ahmed Altaie's sends along this e-mail.

Your excerpt regarding your theories on the search for Altaie were very encouraging and I want to believe the last theory that they [the Mahdi Army] did not know what they were getting into or are just going to return him without punishment.

God I hope your right,he is my very dear friend I am here in his hometown of Michigan. We have known eachother for 16 years. Thank you for your story it makes me feel a little encouraged.

He is a wonderful man who has a good heart and was trying to make something of himself by being respected and helping both Iraq and the USA.

I pary to god this nightmare is over for all of us here and his family, who are sick inside, what a tortureous act to put people in fear like this.

Thanks for listening.

Keep in mind, there are at least 3 other Americans still being held hostage in Iraq. All three are civilians. They are:

Dean Sadek
Aban Elias
Jeffrey Ake

Do not let them be forgotten.

Remember this guy on the right? The guy who held up placards at a protest in front of the Danish embassy calling for cartoon blasphemers to be beheaded?

His name is Mizanur Rahman and he's almost ashamed of advocating the sharia penalty of death for blasphemers.

The British press is reporting that he apologized to a British court today for advocating mass murder of apostates and blasphemers. But read what he really said.

He told the court: "I didn't think about what I was saying or the consequences..."

"I feel almost ashamed. I feel the words didn't make sense. I didn't think anyone would take me seriously."

And given the long tradition of killing blasphemers which goes back to Muhammed's time, how does advocating exactly what traditional sharia has long advocated 'not make sense'?

Just to make this clear, Mizanur Rahman is a follower of Omar Bakri Mohammed. One of Bakri Mohammed's websites publicly called for the execution of blasphemers. Rahman is a computer programmer. It is possible that Rahman himself is responsible for those internet calls for jihad.

More from the BBC today:

The Old Bailey heard police filmed him calling for planes to be shot down and the deaths of UK and US troops in Iraq.

Another story from one of the authors at Western Resistance tells us exactly what it was that Rahman said, which the BBC does not make very clear:

Mr Perry described placards which had been carried by Rahman, which bore the slogans: "Behead those who insult Islam" and "Annihilate those who insult Islam". Perry said: "Annihilate and behead are ordinary English words with the ordinary English meaning of kill. The prosecution say the meaning of those words is clear and unambiguous. Ordinary English words with the ordinary English meaning to kill."

"What he said was this - 'Oh Allah, we want to see another 9/11 in Iraq, another 9/11 in Denmark, another 9/11 in Spain, in France, all over Europe. Oh Allah, destroy all of them, Amen'."

The prosecutor claimed the 23-year old web designer had said: "Bomb, bomb France. Bomb, bomb France. Nuke, nuke France. Nuke, nuke France." Rahman had also urged "indiscriminate killing" of British troops in Iraq, the prosecutor said.

Rahman's speech, made on a megaphone, had included the statements: "We don't want to see them in Baghdad or in Iraq any more. We want to see them coming home in body bags. We want to see their blood running in the streets of Baghdad and Fallujah."

"We want to see the Mujahideen shoot down their planes like the way they shoot down birds. We want to see their tanks burnt, just like we burn their flags."

"We want to see their freedoms destroyed. We want to see all of them removed from Muslim land. Oh, Allah don't leave any of them alive in Iraq, don't leave any of them alive in Afghanistan, don't leave any of them standing in France."

Mr Rahman, who is married with a young child, told the court he had copied what some of the others had been saying when he was handed a megaphone.

He said placards he had carried calling for the beheading of people who insulted Islam had been handed to him.

"I didn't intend for anyone to be harmed or attacked, let alone to be killed," he said.

"The majority of this was a prayer. When I was given the mic, I didn't know what to say. I said what other people had said during the demo and what was on the placards.

"I was repeating what I heard in other speeches."

The court heard Mr Rahman had also called for "another 9/11 all over Europe". ....

It still doesn't explain his connection to the al Ghurabaa followers who organized the rally. And what about longing for another 9/11?

This story by Adrian Morgan is really the definitive word for those of you who haven't been following the controversy. Here's a taste:

On February 3 this year, a group of Muslims gathered outside the Danish Embassy in Sloane Square, Chelsea. They were there to protest against the illustrations of Mohammed which had first appeared in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper on September 30 last year.

Individuals, many with faces covered, screamed abuse and called for violence against those who insulted Islam. They bore placards emblazoned with the slogans: "Behead those who insult Islam", "Europe. Take some lessons from 9/11", "Europe you will pay. Demolition is on its way", "Europe you will pay. Your extermination is on its way," "Slay those who insult Islam," "Butcher those who insult Islam." ....

In July, Choudary was fined £500 ($921) for organizing an unauthorized demonstration, with £300 ($553) costs....

On June 22, it was formally announced that four individuals who had been arrested on March 15 were to face separate trials for threats they had made at the Danish Embassy.

Three individuals were summonsed to return to court, and given bail. One of the four, Abdul Muhid, who had tried to flee the country on May 4 with Anjem Choudary, both breaking their terms of bail, was denied bail.

On August 17 2005, Muhid, had been released from court after charges against him of inciting racial hatred were dropped. Then he had been reported by a concerned citizen for announcing at a stall in Walthamstow market that British troops in Iraq should be killed, and that homosexuals should be thrown from clifftops. ...

In June this year, Muhid denied two counts of soliciting the murder of those who insulted Islam which had been made at the Danish Embassy. Of the four who were given charges, he alone was refused bail, and was made to remain in Winchester prison where he is currently being held.

Umran Javed, 26, of Washwood Heath Road, Birmingham, denied soliciting murder and using threatening words or behaviour to stir up race hate. Abdul Rahman Saleem, 31, of Poplar, (aka Abu Yahya) denied one count of using words likely to stir up racial hatred. The other individual who was charged was 22-year old Mizanur Rahman. He had denied one count of soliciting the murder of those who insulted Islam, as well as US and UK servicemen and Danish, French and Spanish civilians, and denied a charge of using words likely to stir up racial hatred. ...

n Thursday, November 2, the trial of Mizanur Rahman commenced at the Old Bailey. 25 members of now-banned Al Ghurabaa and its partner the Saviour/Saved Sect, including Anjem Choudary, demonstrated outside the court. Abu Izzadeen, who had heckled the UK home secretary John Reid on Wednesday September 20, was also at the protest.

Four Muslims were arrested in violence which took place outside the Old Bailey. One protester had attacked a cameraman, and when police tried to arrest him, three others intervened. One policeman had been punched in the face and another had his helmet knocked off.

Howie Sez:

Ok, so will we ever see [reform] if they keep control? My worry, as an ordinary schmuck, is that if you don't punish them they will say, "See we got away with it". Next we will be dissapointed again.

On the other hand I feel the Republicans must hold one house. Having the Presidency helps a bit. It's a shame we don't have a very good third choice to whack them over the head with.

Yes, we've bitten our tongues for a while, but we're no friends of the Hastert Republicans. We're temporary allies in a difficult time. Think Churchill and the Soviet Army.

If the GOP holds the House, we need to have a knock-down, drag out fight over the House leadership elections. Any House member who supports the current leadership needs to pay dearly for it.

But that's a fight for then. We have to win this fight to even get to that one.

Interesting to see some Muslims opposing the building of what is being called a mega-mosque. Apparently, the group building it has a propensity for sending converts to Pakistan for intensive training.

Going to a Pakistani Madrassa? What could possibly go wrong?

The Little Bulldogs have the story.

Gay advocates are decrying scientific research into whether or not homosexual behavior is really the result of a developmental disorder.

Funny thing is that in the natural sciences there has long been a theory that the gay was caused by something in the endochrin system during fetal development. Environmentalists have long claimed that certain pollutants mimic estrogen and that increased levels of these estrogen mimickers has led---among other things--- to an increase in homosexual behavior in animals.

I kid you not. See for instance Our Stolen Future, which is forwarded by none other than Al Gore. Of course, in that book they make a strong case for homosexuality in animals being caused by human pollution and then, as if on cue, exempt the human race from their findings.

Homosexuality in seagulls is one thing, but it is entirely different if you are on the LPGA. Or a female tennis player. Or in Angelina Jolie. [UPDATE: Did I say "in" Anglina Jolie? Freudian something or other, I'm sure.] Mmmmm, lesbian Angelina Jolie. Nice.

So you see, on the one hand Al Gore wants to blame humans for causing homosexual behavior in animals. That it is a bad thing for lesbian seagulls to want to fly away together. But he also holds the inconsistent belief that the same behavior in humans is natural and normal.

It's quite the paradox then.

How do environmentalists and animal rights activists solve this dilemma? Simple, rally the troops to decry any science which might discover the cause of homesexuality. Any scientific research on the subject is labelled homophobic.

Homosexuality is really problematic in Darwinian terms. Evolutionary principles are stacked against homosexuality being a genetic predisposition. It doesn't exclude the possibility altogether, but it seems less likely than other explanations.

But if a cause can be determined for homosexuality then that implies that an intervention to take away the cause would mean that homosexuality would not develop.

One might even label the intervention a cure. And just to make myself clear, the first person to cure hot chicks of lesbian tendencies will get swift kick square in the nuts.

And so gay activists are not trying to support alternative scientific research to disprove the endochrin theory, they, in fact, are supporting no scientific research. In this case, they oppose any advancement of knowedge because scientific discovery stands in the way of their agenda.

This entire discussion was prompted by reader Dave checking out a PETA website. I don't know if he found his way there searching for lesbian sheep porn or not.

Openly gay tennis icon Martina Navratilova is condemning hormone-altering experiments on “gay sheep” at Oregon State University (OSU) and Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) that seek to manipulate sheep’s sexual preferences and make them heterosexual. The tests are funded by taxpayers through the year 2008.

In letters faxed to the presidents of both universities, Navratilova writes, “How can it be that, in the year 2006, a major university would host such homophobic and cruel experiments? ...I respectfully ask that you pull the plug on this appalling and misguided research. Surely you can find a way to redirect the millions of public tax dollars that are being wasted on these experiments to a more fruitful venture—perhaps by funding a gay and lesbian community center to foster dialogue and acceptance for people of all sexual preferences?”

OHSU experimenter Charles Roselli is drugging pregnant sheep to prevent the actions of hormones in their fetuses’ brains and cutting open the brains of rams he calls “male-oriented” (homosexual) in an attempt to find the hormonal mechanisms behind homosexual tendencies so that they can subsequently be changed. Roselli’s cohort, Frederick Stormshak of OSU, has surgically installed an estrogen device in rams’ bodies in an effort to alter “gay sheep’s” sexual preferences and make them heterosexual. According to the grant applications, the experimenters plan to extrapolate the test results to humans—with the insidious implication that homosexuality in people can be “cured.”

Navratilova—who has won nine Wimbledon Women’s Singles championships and, with a record 167 titles in singles and 174 in doubles, holds more overall tennis titles than any other player in history—adds, “For the sake of the animals who will die unnecessarily in these experiments and for the many gays and lesbians who stand to be deeply offended by the social implications of these tests, I ask that you please end these studies at once.”

It's no secret that I've had my serious differences with the current round of Republican leadership. I am, after all, the author of "The GOP Can Bite Me," "Our President is an Idiot," and many other thoughtful and insightful rants. The Republican power brokers have gotten themselves drunk on power and influence, grown far too comfortable in their positions and forgotten principles that they once claimed to cherish. Chief among these principles are the apparently forgotten ideas of federalism and limited government. In one area of life after another, the Republican leadership is all too happy to engage in extended discussion of "how should the Federal government fix X?" without ever pausing to consider whether there's a proper Federal role for "fixing X" in the first place.

By most accounts, the current Republican leadership has never met a federal spending program they didn't like. They've been running up our nation's credit cards with abandon at a time when massive entitlement bills are set to come due very soon without any real plan to pay for them. Instead of working to improve our fiscal situation, the Republicans have exacerbated our problems with NEW entitlement programs calculated to buy votes. This is exactly the type of thing Republicans once criticized the Democrats for. These days, they'd have precious little room to talk.

Don't get me wrong, here: I'm not claiming there's no difference between the Democrat and Republican leadership. I am saying that the two are nearly identical in their shared arrogance and their irresponsible enthusiasm for running up debt on our children in order to buy favors for themselves.

In other words, if arrogance and fiscal responsibility were the only issues on the table, there would be very little reason to go to the polls. No matter which party wins, you'll no doubt get a lot of both.

These are not, however, the only issues on the table. There are a whole list of others, and these issues should weigh heavily on your mind as you weigh whether to go to the polls on Tuesday and what to do if you get there. Consider, for example, our nation's immigration policy. At present, the White House and Senate are ready to provide amnesty and voting rights to millions of illegal immigrants. At present, the Republican-led House is the only body standing in the way of the plan. Given that voting rights for new immigrants will be a huge boon for Democrat voting rolls, what do you think a Democrat-controlled House is most likely to do? Consider also the effect on our foreign policy in general and the administration's ability to conclude the Iraq conflict in a reasonable way.

Now, I understand the argument that voting for something you don't like (e.g., the current GOP leadership) will get you more of something you don't like. This is often true. The converse, however, is NOT true--that is, REFUSING to vote for something you don't like is NOT necessarily likely to get you something you DO like. It may get you something DIFFERENT. In this case, it's most likely to get you something you'll like EVEN LESS than what you have now.

I understand very well the other conservatives who are fed up with the arrogance, corruption and irresponsible spending practices of the current GOP leadership. As disappointed as I am with the Republican leadership, I'll be going to the polls on Tuesday and I'll mostly be voting "R." Then again, I have it easy--most of the Republicans I'll be voting for are part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

If you choose not to vote on Tuesday, that's your right, but please make yourself fully aware of what that will very likely mean for us all if enough other voters do the same thing.

They hope you forget....

Ooops did I just post that? Oh my.

Hat Tip: Noodlehead.

Related: Slick Willie sticks his foot in his mouth too.

“Republicans will have you believe that Democrats will tax you into the poor house and that you’ll meet a terrorist around every corner and trip over an illegal immigrant on the way there.”

It would truly be a slide splitter if the illegal alien you tripped over was a suicide bomber who has been getting food stamps, education and medical care for his family. Now that's funny!

A man has been held on charges of identity theft, fraudulent documents and receiving stolen property. It seems he had recently opened an account at Commerce Bank in Upper Darby, PA. After suspicious cash withdrawls and paperwork drew the attention of a bank teller, the authorities were contacted.

After the man admitted his real identity it turns out he was using a fake name because his real name is flagged on the terrorist watch list. Had he used his real name flags would have been raised even more quickly. But this sharp teller used her training and smelled somthing fishy. She was right on target and good for her.

Also authorities are looking for more info on this man. If you recognize him, you should call the FBI.

ABC Local Station Channel 6, Dann Cuellar: The suspect raised suspicions when he went into the Commerce Bank on Garrett Road Thursday, identifying himself as Batti. He withdrew $8,700. When he went back again later in the day attempting to withdraw another $9,700, a teller noticed he didn't look like the man in the various id's he provided.

He had a New Jersey driver's license, credit cards and what appeared to be a doctored Pakistani passport. Some of the pages had been glued into the cover. He also had a fake social security card.

"You know I think in this day and age you have to be very aware and very, very suspicious of pieces that don't fit and nothing here fits," said Chitwood.

Authorities say the suspect eventually admitted he wasn't Batti. He said that his real name is Raza Hussain of Brooklyn, New York, born January 1st, 1962.

That admission raised another red flag when the name was submitted to the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center. Another man named al-Husein Hussain, born on the same day, came up on the terror watch list. Authorities are trying to determine if it is the same man.

"You don't know whether you have an identity theft, a money laundering or a check cashing scheme, or a terrorism scheme or a combination of everything, but there are just too many red flags based on my law enforcement experience," said Chitwood.

Hat Tip: Tim.

Related notes on domestic intel efforts.

Even voice becomes data. I doubt there is any need to store everything, it’s a waste of space. You simply scan the streams as they move around their normal paths. Think about how your virus scanner works, think distributed processing. Think about data fields and headers that can be matched to tags.

Imagine you have a big giant pile of mostly useless blips scattered everywhere. You don’t want to collect and store useless blips. You want the right blips to come to you. Once a “problem” is identified and verified then the normal warrants would apply for evidence used in prosecution. As I understand there is 72 hours allowed for this warrant to be issued. But for military intelligence use to prevent an attack I don’t feel warrants are required anyway.

So to Ace and Allah, Sorry but you are both wrong. There is no giant “Big Brother” database and no “taps” without warrants. Private business and citizens are on the front line in these matters not the government.

Or at least that's how I would have done it.

It pained me greatly to not do the whole song.

And yes, I know, the Zarqawi bombing has nothing to do with the Saddam sentencing. I put it in all of my videos.

November 05, 2006

The European Union is flying into a snit over the fact that an Iraqi court has found Saddam Hussein guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to death by hanging.

BRUSSELS, Nov 5 (Reuters) - The European Union urged Iraq on Sunday not to carry out the death sentence passed on Iraq's former leader Saddam Hussein after his conviction for crimes against humanity.

"The EU opposes capital punishment in all cases and under all circumstances, and it should not be carried out in this case either," Finland, current holder of the rotating EU presidency, said in a statement.

The Iraqis have jurisdiction, and will ultimately decide Saddam's fate, but they don't seem to be in the mood for mincing nancy-boy measures with Saddam. However, the Euroweenies' pleas for the misunderstood Butcher of Baghdad have touched my heart, and I'd like to toss them a bone. I think that we should stop executing convicted serial killers here in the United States. I propose instead that they be exiled...to Europe.

From the MSM's fixation on Republican gayness, it's pretty clear that MSM reporters are convinced that evangelical Republicans hate gays and gayness with a passion. It's funny--I've known a lot of evangelical Christian Republicans over the years, and I can't think of one who met that stereotype. I did know one Republican who was a blatant racist, but she was an atheist lesbian, so she didn't really fit the MSM's "Republican" stereotype either.

Given the MSM's compulsion to mention Republicans, evanglicals and sex scandals in just about every article they write, I'm wondering what headlines might we expect from AP on election eve? Keep an eye out for these:

Labor Crunch at "Crippling" Five-Year High
Church May Resort to Hiring "Suspected Homosexuals" to Meet Staffing Needs

Dallas Cowboys Routed by Washington
More Evidence that Evangelicals are "Sitting This One Out?"

"Doogie Howser, M.D." Announces Gayness
Sen. Bill Frist, M.D. Once Claimed to be "a big fan" of Show About Young Man in Adult Situation

Recent Rise in Saudi "Orgies" Noted
Orgy-Mongers Linked to Premises Once Visited by Former Bush Family Business Partners (Who Might Have Been Gay)

Karl Rove Spotted Buying George Michael Album
Evangelicals Express "Appropriate Concern"

Rumsfeld Under Fire
Reports Surface of "Rampant Butt-Piracy" at Pentagon

Evangelicals Disappointed Again
GOP Accepted Contributions from "Known Pornographer"

Dick Cheney's Daughter: "Yes, I'm STILL a lesbian."

...which lays out the story in some detail, talks about how Haggard's congregation was handling the sex scandal, etc. All of that made sense, but then the article wraps up with this:

Haggard's situation is a disappointment to Christian conservatives, whom President Bush and other Republicans are courting heavily in the run-up to Tuesday's election.

Many were already disheartened with the president and the Republican-controlled Congress over their failure to deliver big gains on social issues even before the congressional page scandal involving former Rep. Mark Foley.

Haggard, who had been president of the evangelical association since 2003, has participated in conference calls with White House staffers and lobbied Congress last year on Supreme Court nominees.

The Foley comment can perhaps be explained by the fact that it was another recent sex scandal. But what do Bush and the Republicans have to do with Haggard? Nothing, as near as I can tell, other than some telephone conversations with GOP staffers on a few occasions, and some lobbying of Congress. What relevance does any of that have to do with evangelicals being "disappointed" with the Republicans?

None that I can see. This was just a very clumsy way to squeeze in another reference to evangelical "disappointment" with Republicans.

A nice round-up of the reaction to Hussein's verdict and sentence from the International Coalition of Short Bus Riders.

I agree, Kofi, let him live! Yaaaaay! Do you like Jello?

The News Buckit has posted both full and abridged versions of the Fox News special "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West" to Google video and YouTube. The full version, posted to YouTube, is in eight parts. The first part is below.

Go to News Buckit for links to the other seven installments. And hurry, YouTube is a jihadi-friendly environment, and is likely to find a reason to pull them.

Earlier today, I wrote about the insane reaction to the Saddam verdict of purported Americans posting at that area of the fever swamps known as the "Democratic Underground". Charles Johnson at little green footballs had already noted a similar spasm of vitriolic vomit erupting from the bowels of The Huffington Post.

Alas, the outbreak is more widespread; it seems that it's easier to find moderate Muslims than it is to find Democrats who don't bark at the moon:

From the MSNBC message boards:

End hypocrisy now
Message #3
11/05/06 06:17 AM
Bush invaded a country illegally and is responsible for death of thousands. How is that any different from Saddam? Let Bush face the same kangaroo court that Saddam faced and I suspect they'd hang em both. The US sinks ever deeper into the abyss of immorality.

Oklahoma kiddo says:

November 5th, 2006 at 10:06 am *

So the U.S. is going to have a neck-tie party with Saddam as the guest of honor. There should be at least half a dozen in the WH that outta be right up there swinging with him.

NO closure until people who worked in the Reagan administration and who are now working for bu$hco (Rumsfeld, Cheney, all the bush's) own up to the FACT the reagan administration aided and abetted the killer Hussein in his war with Iran.

these people and the U.S. corporations who armed Hussein must be brought to justice for war crimes.

http://www.counterpunch.org/...

check the link, the whole sordid tale is there.

"Peace is not the absence of war; it is a virtue; a state of mind; a disposition for benevolence; confidence; and justice." Spinoza

by Superpole on Sun Nov 05, 2006 at 06:00:24 AM PST