August 25, 2005
"Assassination may be Clinton's best option," the future "This Week" host urged. "If we can kill Saddam, we should."... ..."If Clinton decides we can and should assassinate Saddam, he could call in national-security adviser Sandy Berger and sign a secret National Security Decision Directive authorizing it."
Well now that kind of puts the Robertson thing in perspective.
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09:29 PM
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And besides, says the Le Monde reviewer, how come the authors of the book didn't challenge al Qaeda's assertion that jihad is somehow a call for violence when every one know that jihad is an internal struggle thing, right?
You gotta love the French.......
Hat tip: No Passaran
Posted by: Rusty at
05:31 PM
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Coalition forces captured a known Al Qaeda-in-Iraq member, two suspected terrorists and destroyed a terrorist sanctuary, weapons and equipment near Al Asad Aug. 23.And to my friend at Centcom--this is the kind of story we like to read.Acting on tips from local Iraqis, Coalition forces raided the hide-out and confirmed that the location was being used by the terrorist to facilitate weapons and vehicle borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) operations.
After he was captured, the Al Qaeda-in-Iraq member provided information about related terrorist activity in the area. Based upon this information, Coalition forces captured two suspected terrorists. Coalition forces also captured and destroyed a VBIED and two weapons caches consisting of mortars, rockets and rocket propelled grenades.
UPDATE: Dread Pundit Bluto has more.
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04:53 PM
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Ingushetia neighbors Chechnya and is racked by the same ROP inspired violence. Xinhua:
Two powerful explosions rocked a southern Russian republic Thursday afternoon, injuring the prime minister of the republic and killing one of his guards.Ibragim Malsagov, the prime minister of Russia's North Caucasus republic of Ingushetia, was wounded in the leg in an assassination attempt in Nazran, the main city of the republic, at 2:25 p.m. Moscow time (1025 GMT), a regional interior ministry official was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.
Malsagov was rushed to hospital and doctors confirmed that his life was not in danger.
However, one of his guards was killed and at least two others were injured in the blasts.
Officials said attackers detonated two bombs as Malsagov's motorcade passed through central Nazran, with the first blast meant to divert attention.
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04:43 PM
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Italy's Red Cross treated four Iraqi insurgents and hid them from U.S. forces in exchange for the freedom of two Italian aid workers kidnapped last year in Baghdad, an official said in an interview published Thursday.Via Captain Ed who notes rightly that Berlusconi owes the United States an apology and the Italian Red Cross should immediately get decertified in Iraq. Indeed.Maurizio Scelli, the outgoing chief of the Italian Red Cross, told La Stampa newspaper that he kept the deal secret from U.S. officials, complying with "a nonnegotiable condition" imposed by Iraqi mediators who helped him secure the release of Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, who were abducted on Sept. 7 and freed Sept. 28.
"The mediators asked us to save the lives of four alleged terrorists wanted by the Americans who were wounded in combat," Scelli was quoted as saying. "We hid them and brought them to Red Cross doctors, who operated on them."
They took the wounded insurgents to a Baghdad hospital in a jeep and in an ambulance, smuggling them through two U.S. checkpoints by hiding them under blankets and boxes of medicine, Scelli reportedly said.
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04:31 PM
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"Freedom Fighters from other countries are going in."Don't believe me? Watch the video here.
Because nothing says I'm just grieving for my son's death more than calling the men who killed him freedom fighters.
Hat tip: Patterico
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03:21 PM
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03:01 PM
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Although the situation in Mosul is better, our troops still fight here every day. This may not be the war some folks had in mind a few years ago. But once the shooting starts, a plan is just a guess in a party dress.UPDATE from Rusty. You MUST read this:
Prosser had beaten the terrorist in the head three times with his fist and was gripping his throat, choking him. But Prosser's gloves were slippery with blood so he couldn't hold on well. At the same time, the terrorist was trying to bite Prosser's wrist, but instead he bit onto the face of Prosser's watch. (Prosser wears his watch with the face turned inward.) The terrorist had a mouthful of watch but he somehow also managed to punch Prosser in the face. When I shot the propane canister, Prosser had nearly strangled the guy, but my shots made Prosser think bad guys were coming, so he released the terrorist's throat and snatched out the pistol from his holster, just as SSG Konkol, Lewis, Devereaux and Muse swarmed the shop. But the shots and the propane fiasco also had brought the terrorist back to life, so Prosser quickly reholstered his pistol and subdued him by smashing his face into the concrete.And here is an image of the terrorist that Yon snapped.
These are the kinds of images we need to see more of out of Iraq.
Posted by: Demosophist at
02:04 PM
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Washington (CNSNews.com) - The Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., the current home of hundreds of wounded veterans from the war in Iraq, has been the target of weekly anti-war demonstrations since March. The protesters hold signs that read "Maimed for Lies" and "Enlist here and die for Halliburton."Of course, these shameful exhibitions are ignored by the mainstream media, which is reluctant to show the true face of the Left: dishonest, traitorous, and anxious to spit on our servicepeople. The Dread Pundit Bluto sees little difference between these contemptible jackasses and the notorious Michael Crook.The anti-war demonstrators, who obtain their protest permits from the Washington, D.C., police department, position themselves directly in front of the main entrance to the Army Medical Center, which is located in northwest D.C., about five miles from the White House.
Among the props used by the protesters are mock caskets, lined up on the sidewalk to represent the death toll in Iraq.
Code Pink Women for Peace, one of the groups backing anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan's vigil outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford Texas, organizes the protests at Walter Reed as well.
Thanks to friend and TDPB reader Jan Z, aka, "The Dutchman".
Also posted at The Dread Pundit Bluto.
UPDATE: Chris Short also posted on this yesterday here at The Jawa Report. Yes, we're that far ahead of the curve. Chris also provides us a link to the video here.
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01:29 PM
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Now it's my turn.
Posted by: Demosophist at
12:35 PM
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Lance's record establishes a bar that is going to stand for a long long long time.
I am with you, the later years were full of valid sophisticated drug testing methodology and they found nothing. By the time Lance had won 6 times, you know they had him tested everytime he walked by.
Unless someone can prove he tested positive in the last win, it's just a bucnh of smoke.
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10:23 AM
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10:13 AM
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Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal [Pakistani Jamat-e-Islami] President Qazi Hussain Ahmed has said he did not believe that Osama Bin Laden was capable of carrying out the sophisticated September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. “The Zionists must be behind the attacks as they were the only beneficiaries of the September 11 incident,” he said in an interview with BBC’s Hardtalk programme.
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09:23 AM
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Lack of knowledge can also lead to fatal mistakes when dealing with your enemy. Two New York Times writers are asking the United States to make just such a fatal mistake. Scott Gerwher and Nina Hachigian have said that in Iraqi prisons, maybe we should "try a little tenderness." By this, they are referring to the practice, during the Viet Nam war, of "turning" prisoners by offering them better and more rations, freedoms and other rewards for information and good behavior. At that time, the system was successful in converting some prisoners and obtaining information from others. As I haven't had time to look it up, I don't know exactly how successful it was, though.
But to propose the same treatment for terrorist POWs is not only wrong, but horribly dangerous. We are simply dealing with a completely different class of people here. While some communist fighters (I use some loosely because I'm not currently aware of the exact figures) were hardcore ideologues, others were just soldiers. And still others were conscripts who had no wish to be there fighting at all. Muslim terrorists, however, are by definition, complete zealots. All of them are so committed to their cause that they are ready to blow themselves up or participate in other types of suicidal attacks in order to kill or injure a few Americans. They aren't just fighting against us because their "generals" ordered them to. They are, each and every one, radically committed to our complete annihilation. That's not to say that the entire Muslim world feels this way. Obviously they don't or we wouldn't be in Iraq to begin with.
This isn't an army that we're dealing with. At least not in any conventional sense of the word. It's a loose confederation of extremists who share the same goal. When they are captured, they continue to be as hostile as possible. Attempting to turn them will not only not work, but will put our troops in unnecessarily dangerous situations as these prisoners attempt to use their newfound kindness against our troops.
As the writers continue to explain about this tactic and the history behind it, they provide, unknowingly, one of the prime reasons that it would fail in Iraq.
So what does this have to do with Iraq? While Chieu Hoi was geared to counter a Communist threat, it was based on universal principles of counterinsurgency that could easily be applied to the current struggle. In fact, Chieu Hoi was something of an import in its own right: it was the brainchild of three men with long experience battling rebels.
We are not fighting a counterinsurgency. The men we are fighting are not rebels. Not in the traditional sense of the word. To label this as an insurgency would indicate that the terrorists we are fighting have some sort of legitimate claim on the Iraqi government or at least some claim to even be in Iraq. But that is not the case. The majority of the terrorists we are fighting are coming from other countries. Their reasons for fighting have nothing to do with insurgency or rebellion.
They designed Chieu Hoi to focus on changing the underlying attitudes of the subjects, not simply on trying to control their behavior. Empirical research in social psychology reveals that efforts to directly control behavior through coercion or bribery usually leave underlying attitudes intact, or even harden them. Thus putting a gun to a man's head and instructing him to support a particular political ideology will work only as long as the gun is present and he is being watched. The preferred method for long-term change is instilling sincere belief in the new political ideology, making the gun and monitoring unnecessary.
Once again, there are numerous problems with the statements above. First and foremost, we are not fighting a political ideology. We are fighting a religious ideology. Regardless what you would like to think, fighting with the terrorists is strictly a religious war. They believe that their religion demands our complete destruction and they are not going to stop at anything short of that.
Which brings us back around to my original point. You can't "deprogram" these people. Religious fanaticism is one of the strongest psychological forces known. Why else would hundreds of people drink poisoned kool-aid?
In addition, running our prisons under the Chieu Hoi model could help reverse the terrible propaganda defeat suffered with the revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib. Nongovernmental groups like the International Red Cross and Amnesty International would praise America, bringing more international support.
I don't buy that for a second. International "aid" groups are not going to praise us no matter what we do. And the whole point in being in Iraq isn't get get a pat on the head from Amnesty International. If that's our motivation, then we need some serious self-evaluation.
The whole idea of "deprogramming" the Iraqi prisoners is, to me, laughable enough that I don't know why a major paper is even taking it seriously enough to run it. But considering the Times hasn't even bothered to run a correction for Krugman's lies of the past two weeks, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I'm just thankful that they aren't the ones making policy decisions.
Posted by: Drew at
08:49 AM
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Osama bin Laden has been wounded in Afghanistan, according to two different reports carried by various Islamic websites. Referring to the al-Qaeda leader as Abu Abdullah, the second message, which appeared on Wednesday, said: "Mullah Ahmadi, military leader of the Badr brigades, which form part of the al-Qaeda organisation in Afghanistan, has confirmed that Sheikh Abu Abdullah has been injured in his left leg."Is it just me, or does it seem odd that Osama bin Laden is actually participating in attacks on NATO forces? If the report has any basis in reality, isn't it much more likely that bin Laden was hit in his camp than that he was injured while leading an assault on Spanish troops?It follows a previous message on several Islamic websites saying the fugitive terrorist leader was injured while taking part in an attack on a Spanish military base in Afghanistan.
The second message relaying the news is titled "Confirmation of the injury of Sheikh Abu Abdullah in the Al-Khulud expedition" and adds other details, specifying that the injury was to the left leg and claiming it was sustained "when the Sheikh went out onto the battlefield to lead the expedition during which the Spanish base was attacked and which was named the Al-Khulud expedition."
"The source has promised to broadcast soon a video of the expedition, which lasted four hours," the message continues, before concluding: "Therefore we ask Allah to heal the Sheikh and make him well again. Don't be miserly in praying for him."
UPDATE: Mac Powell also notices the story and is equally skeptical of claim bin Laden leading attack. And as Mike Pechar says, these things have turned out to be wrong in the past.
UPDATE II: Speculation: 10Snooker, in the comments, makes the keep observation that this could be the set up for an announcement that bin Laden is dead. It's just a lot sexier to say he died of battle wounds than from kydney failure, I guess.
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08:27 AM
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August 24, 2005
Pictures of the suspects can be seen here:
Police Need Your Help In Capturing Beating Suspects
Hat Tip: Ace of Spades HQ and Michelle Malkin
Cross Posted from Conservative Thinking
Posted by: Chris Short at
10:28 PM
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A senior UN representative last night threatened to cite the British government for violation of human rights over its planned deportations of alleged terrorist sympathisers.Pardon me while I go barf.Manfred Novak, the UN human rights commission's special investigator on torture, told the Guardian he is seeking permission through the Foreign Office to visit Britain to discuss the issue with the home secretary, Charles Clarke.
In a statement on Tuesday night, Prof Novak said that the government's intention to return radical preachers to their countries of origin, even though some of those countries have a track record of human rights abuses, "reflects a tendency in Europe to circumvent the international obligation not to deport anybody if there is a serious risk that he or she might be subjected to torture".
The Dread Pundit Bluto thinks it's time and past time for the US Justice Department to prosecute the UN under the RICO (Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act.
Posted by: Bluto at
10:24 PM
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In November of 2003 I posted a lengthy piece refuting a similar claim made on Daily Kos that had the adult-children in the Dean Campaign breathless. I'll reproduce that article below, with a few edits. The bottom line is that it's not enough to feel secure that the strategy, repeatedly promoted by the "petulant wing of the Democrat Party," wouldn't win elections, or even a nomination (a fact that I accurately predicted back in 2003). The point is that win or lose the strategy is simply bad for the country. Which is to say, in no uncertain terms, that it's pretty much boneheadedly anti-American, or even anti-democracy, for that matter, since it's probably not good for any country. With good reason Christopher Hitchens calls these folks "domestic masochists."
Posted by: Demosophist at
06:54 PM
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Josh sends along this The Age article (subscription):
EDUCATION Minister Brendan Nelson has bluntly told Islamists who do not want to accept and teach Australian values that they should "clear off".When are our elected leaders going to be brave enough to say the same?And John Howard has warned that mosques, prayer halls and Muslim schools will be watched "to the extent necessary" to ensure they do not give comfort to terrorism.
A day after the Prime Minister's summit with Muslim leaders, the Government stepped up its push to get "Australian values" — epitomised, it says, by the Anzac story of Simpson and his donkey — taught comprehensively to Muslim children.
On Tuesday Treasurer Peter Costello said people thinking of coming to Australia who did not like Australian values and preferred a society that practised sharia law should go elsewhere...
We want them to understand our history and our culture, the extent to which we believe in mateship and giving another person a hand up and a fair go. And basically, if people don't want to be Australians and they don't want to live by Australian values and understand them, well basically they can clear off."
Posted by: Rusty at
04:45 PM
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Or
You can still rock in America... Well maybe notÂ…..
Little sisterÂ’s got a record machine.
She's all excited cause she's sweet sixteen.
She going out she's gonna bop tonight.
Gonna shake it make it last all night.
Utah Sheriff's rifle is ready to roll.
Grabs some tear gas as he heads for the show.
He's gonna knockheads, knockheads, knockheads!!!!!
or
Rock & Roll Over on your stomach and place your arms out cross your legs.
Well come on now. If you got to go to places like that well the cops are going to show sooner or later. DonÂ’t stop, just expect it. If you want to rock some days you are going to get rolled. ItÂ’s just part of it. I remember when Kiss was going to be the end of civilization. Now theyÂ’re all respectable and stuff. Even that lizard Paul McCartney is respectable these days. Nightranger caused teenage pregnancy, thank god. Everyone kept a chick album or two.
Speaking of teenage pregnancy. The Timken Trojans don't use em.
Wunderkraut missed us and wants a link. Here you go.
As you can tell from the musical refrences here I'm a bit beyond my party years. However a good friend of mine had a rock & roll dive bar band. I went quite a bit. Yep there was always a fight or cops or whatever.
Updated: OMG no Clash link Horridly rude of me.
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02:19 PM
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