March 23, 2006

An Interview Wth Fred

The Real Ugly American (hey, he said it, not me) scores an interview with Fred Barnes of the "Beltway Boys," author of Rebel in Chief.

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Beyond the Green Zone

Thoughts on American combat journalists, the lazy and the dead, from Mind in the Qatar.

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Hillary Clinton's Lost Translation of the Bible

You knew she couldn't keep her inner liberal quiet forever, but you would at least hope she wouldn't resort to rewriting the Bible for political gain:


Invoking Biblical themes, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton joined immigration advocates Wednesday to vow and block legislation seeking to criminalize undocumented immigrants.

Clinton, a potential 2008 presidential candidate and relative latecomer to the immigration debate, made her remarks as the Senate prepares to take up the matter next week.

Clinton renewed her pledge to oppose a bill passed in December by the House that would make unlawful presence in the United States _ currently a civil offense _ a felony. The Senate is set to consider a version of that legislation, as well as several other bills seeking to address the seemingly intractable issue of immigration reform.

Surrounded by a multicultural coalition of New York immigration advocates, Clinton blasted the House bill as "mean-spirited" and said it flew in the face of Republicans' stated support for faith and values.

"It is certainly not in keeping with my understanding of the Scriptures," Clinton said, "because this bill would literally criminalize the Good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself." [my bold - ed.]

Senator, I doubt you even know what the Good Book looks like, but please have your campaign researchers at least make a pass at reading the New Testament before you try to rewrite Luke 10:25-37.

The Good Samaritan, like the priest and the Levite, was an Israeli, and Samaritans exist to this day inside Holon, Israel, and Nablus in the West Bank. The proposed law would not criminalize the Good Samaritan, because he, too is a native citizen of Israel. Jesus Christ, like the Good Samaritan, is also a native son, and not an illegal immigrant.

Your comments, Senator Clinton, were not just calculated to be inflammatory, they were laughably ignorant. Perhaps the next time you are seen near a Bible for a photo-op, you should consider opening it.


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Red, or Black?

The Church of the Perpetually Offended is up in arms again, this time over the "fact" that Ben Domenech of the Washington Post's new blog Red America made the "racist" comment that Coretta Scott King was a communist while blogging under the screen name Augustine at RedState. While I do not know if Domenech is Augustine, let's say that he is for argument's sake.


Predictably, the leftists making this charge said far more offensive things then Domenech did when leveling their charge against him, but their hysteria basically boils down to one simple question:

Whether or not Domenech was right about King's politics, when did communism become a race?

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March 22, 2006

Battle Math

The war in Iraq is sometimes a numbers game.

Yesterday:


About 100 masked gunmen stormed a prison near the Iranian border Tuesday, cutting phone wires, freeing all the inmates and leaving behind a scene of devastation--20 dead policemen, burned-out cars and a smoldering jailhouse.

At least 10 attackers were killed in the dawn assault on the Muqdadiyah lockup on the eastern fringe of the Sunni Triangle, police said.

33 inmates were released in the attack, roughly half or (according to some reports, more) were insurgents, and the other half were common criminals. Ten insurgents were thought to have died, along with 20 police officers.

Battle result: 20 Iraqi policemen killed, 16 (est.) insurgents escaped from the prison, and ten insurgents were killed. A rough net “gain” of 26 bodies for the insurgency and a palpable P.R. boost that lasted all of 24 hours.

Today:


Insurgents attacked a police station Wednesday for a second day in a row, but U.S. and Iraqi forces captured 50 of them after a two-hour gun battle.

About 60 gunmen attacked the police station in Madain, south of Baghdad, with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic rifles, said police Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammadawi. U.S. troops and a special Iraqi police unit responded, catching the insurgents in crossfire, he said.

Four police were killed, including the commander of the special unit, and five were wounded, al-Mohammadawi said. None of the attackers died, and among the captives was a Syrian.

Battle result: 4 Iraqi policemen killed, 0 insurgents escaped from the prison, and 50 insurgents were captured. The result is net “gain” for the day of 46 captured insurgents.

If recent history is any indicator, those captured will provide significant information. Typically, these large-scale captures end up revealing operational details, exposing ammunition caches, and releasing other vital intelligence information that may end up shutting down the insurgency in this area.

The media will more than likely present these two insurgent assaults as being equal, but opposite in effect. This of course is far from true.

The insurgency is much smaller than Iraqi police and military forces, and a two-day net loss of 20 men, especially 20 live men that can threaten the larger network with the information they can reveal, is a far greater loss for the insurgency.

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Red America

If a primary goal of newspaper blogging is to attract the attention of readers and start conversations, then WPNI (Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive) knocked it out of the park by launching Ben Domenech's unabashedly conservative political blog, Red America.

The first substantial post, Pachyderms in the Mist: Red America and the MSM, got a huge, on-going, and predictably whiny response from the left side of the blogosphere, who didn't think it was fair having a conservative blogger to balance out Dan Froomkin and William Arkin (a former Greenpeace activist/"National and Homeland Security" blogger, protecting us, presumably, from the threat of kamikaze Japanese whalers).

If generating "buzz" (or for that matter, hysteria) is part of the intent, WPNI has succeeded. The far left are engaging in much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Keep in mind, little liberals, it could have been worse.

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March 21, 2006

The Barry Bonds of Bass

Rusty is taking far too much enjoyment from the fact that the new world record* largemouth bass has been caught--well-foul-hooked-- in California:


World record large mouth bass caught yesterday at Dixon Lake, in San Diego County by Mac Weakley. Yes, the world's biggest bass was caught in California. Take that Confederate Yankee. The fish weighed 25 lbs. 1 oz, breaking the previous record of 22 lbs. 4 ozs set by George W. Perry at Montgomery Lake in Georgia in 1932.

Unfortunately, this giant of a fish was "foul-hooked"--which means that it was hooked in a place other than in the mouth. In other words, Weakly's lure snagged the fish on accident. The IGFA rules, though, only disqualify the fish if it was intentionally fould-hooked [sic]. Regardless of its official position in the record books, this is the biggest bass ever caught.

George Perry's record largemouth was (and may still be) the longest running and most coveted of fishing records, but even if Mac Weakley's 25 pound 1 ounce is deemed the new world record* for largemouth bass, it will carry with it an asterisk like that of Barry Bonds.

Why?

Introduced in 1874 (or 1891, depending on the source) from Midwestern stock, largemouth bass in California are a non-native species. Largemouths from Florida, long considered the thoroughbreds of the species, were introduced in 1959 in an effort to boost the potential size of California bass, which began growing fat on a steady diet of stocked trout. It remains to be seen if BALCO was invlvoed.

A record? Maybe, but every bit as engineered as Barry Bonds.

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Civilization vs. Barbarity

In a speech he is to give later this afternoon in London, Tony Blair is correct that the essential nature of the "long war" we continue to fight is an ideological one:


"This is not a clash between civilizations, it is a clash about civilization," Blair will say in a speech this afternoon, according to extracts released by his official spokesman.

"'We' is not the West. 'We' are as much Muslim as Christian or Jew or Hindu. 'We' are those who believe in religious tolerance, openness to others, to democracy, liberty and human rights administered by secular courts," he will say.

While there is no indication that Blair had Afghani Christian Abdul Rahman in mind with this speech, those words easily apply to the case of Rahman, a 40-ish Afghani that converted from Islam to Christianity 16 years ago, and faces the death penalty in Afghanistan for leaving the “religion of peace.”

I wrote about this last night with some restraint, trying to keep in mind that Afghanis live in a far more primitive, basic culture than our own, one that has not substantially changed in the thousand years since Muslims invaded the Hindu kingdoms of Gandhaar & Vaahic Pradesh. The mountain range which dominates the country was named in honor of one of Islam's greatest genocides; "Hindu Kush" is Persian for "Hindu slaughter." Millions of Hindus were put to the sword or forcibly converted to Islam in Afghanistan, and Islamic bloodlust in Afghanistan seems far from sated.

From the Chicago Tribune:


Abdul Rahman told his family he was a Christian. He told the neighbors, bringing shame upon his home. But then he told the police, and he could no longer be ignored.

Now, in a major test of Afghanistan's fledgling court system, Rahman, 42, faces the death penalty for abandoning Islam for Christianity. Prosecutors say he should die. So do his family, his jailers, even the judge. Rahman has no lawyer. Jail officials refused to let anyone see Rahman on Monday, despite permission granted by the country's justice minister.

"We will cut him into little pieces," said Hosnia Wafayosofi, who works at the jail, as she made a cutting motion with her hands. "There's no need to see him."

Rahman's trial, which started Thursday, is thought to be the first of its kind in Afghanistan. It goes to the heart of the struggle between Islamic reformists and fundamentalists in the country, which is still recovering from 23 years of war and the harsh rule of the Taliban, a radical religious regime that fell in late 2001.

Even under the more moderate government now in power, Islamic law is supposed to be followed, and many believe it requires the death penalty for anyone who leaves Islam for another religion.

"We are Muslim, our fathers were Muslim, our grandfathers were Muslim," said Abdul Manan, Rahman's father, who is 75. "This is an Islamic country. Imagine if your son told a police commander, also a Muslim, that he is a Christian. How would this affect you? It's very difficult for us."

As Tony Blair's speech states, we are not in a clash between civilizations, but a clash about civilization. What Blair has not directly stated is that most Muslim countries have precious little civilization, or practice civilized behavior. They are trapped in a backward culture hundreds of years in the past. While we hoped that bringing democracy to them would be a start, the sadistic nature of fundamentalist Islam bared by the case of Abdul Rahman makes me wonder if a slow conversion to a moremodernized society is the correct course of action after all.

We did not deliver Afghanis from the Taliban to allow Afghanis to perpetrate the same crimes against basic human decency. If this murderous intolerance truly is the essence of fundamentalist Islam, then we need to rethink our basic approach to the "religion of peace."


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"A Religion of Tolerance"

Abdul Rahman is on trial for his life in Afghanistan. His crime (h/t Michelle Malkin, who has the round-up) is converting to Christianity:


Despite the overthrow of the fundamentalist Taliban government and the presence of 22,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, a man who converted to Christianity is being prosecuted in Kabul, and a judge said Sunday that if convicted, he faces the death penalty.

Abdul Rahman, who is in his 40s, says he converted to Christianity 16 years ago while working as an aid worker helping Afghan refugees in Pakistan.

Relatives denounced him as a convert during a custody battle over his children, and he was arrested last month. The prosecutor says Rahman was found with a Bible.

So Afghans are willing to take our economic aid to develop their battered infrastructure, our medicines to cure their ills, our EOD teams to clear their mines, and our soldiers to hold the Taliban at bay, and yet they are willing to kill a man because he has taken to heart another contribution from us in Christianity.

The "tolerant" judge hopes for a peaceful resolution:


"We will ask him if he has changed his mind about being a Christian," Mawlazezadah says. "If he has, we will forgive him, because Islam is a religion of tolerance."

Afghan is a country with its own laws, and we cannot force them to accept converts to other religions when the most extreme interpretations of their law supposes they have legal "right" to kill Abdul Rahman.

They, however, do not have any claim to economic or military aid from civilized nations. We have no moral obligation to support a government that would allow Abdul Rahman to be killed. It goes without saying that were we to withdraw our support, the "tolerant" judge himself might meet a judgement of his own at the hands of the remaining elements of the Taliban.

Judge Mawlazezadah should be introduced to an American phrase attributed to Ben Franklin at the signing of our Declaration of Independence:


We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.

The neck Judge Mawlazezadah saves may be his own.

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March 20, 2006

Utter Liars

It never ceases to amaze me how liberals claim to "support the troops but not the war."

What utter liars they are.

Four months ago in the Iraqi city of Haditha, an IED exploded, killing one Marine and wounding two others. After the explosion, the Marines stormed a nearby building and killed 15 people. Three were children. The Pentagon has now launched a criminal investigation.

Those are the facts.

There is the possibility that the Marines did gun down innocent civilians as local Iraqis claim.

But it is equally as possible that one or more people inside the house opened fire upon the Marines in an ambush after the IED went off. It has happened that way frequently, and that exact scenario left ABC anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt seriously wounded, when the IED attack that wounded them was followed by small arms fire from nearby buildings. The attack was broken when coalition forces counterattacked.

Someone who truly supports the troops, even if they do not support the war, would want this incident fully investigated to uncover the truth. They would want to know the facts.

They would want to know if the Marines fired out of blind rage at the loss of their friends, and they would be equally interested in finding out if the Marines assaulted that location because someone inside fired upon them, as they claimed. Was it a slaughter of innocents, or were insurgents firing from within civilian homes? Were those that triggered the IED among the dead? We do not yet know, and some are already passing judgment.

Steve Clemmons states in his Washington Note:


Don Rumsfeld's Pentagon Investigating Another U.S. Military Atrocity.
When will Rumsfeld be held accountable and fired? [my bold. - ed]

A crime has not even been established, and yet Clemmons and his nauseous ilk have already deemed our Marines guilty, and presume to pass sentence.

Steve Soto at the Left Coaster is equally as charitable, asserting:


At a time when Rummy and others say that things in Iraq are better than reported, and that bad news is the result of bloggers and other enemies of the truth, we find out today that if it hadn't been for videotape, the Pentagon would have blamed the deaths of 15 Iraqis including children four months ago on a roadside bomb. In fact, based on a Time magazine article and the inconvenient videotape of the bodies, the Pentagon now confirms they have opened a criminal investigation to see if our own troops gunned down innocent Iraqi civilians and children as a result of that roadside bombing in Haditha. This comes at the same time that Iraqi police are now accusing US soldiers of executing 11 Iraqis last week, including a 75 year-old woman and an infant.

[snip]

Maybe we can call a blogger's ethics conference now on why we are inferior to whatever propaganda is spewed by Rummy. You can bet that if Rummy could have snuffed out that Iraqi journalism student and grabbed that videotape, he would have. [my bold. - ed]

"Support the troops?"

Not ours.

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FBI Report Shows Evidence of Civil War

Thousands of news stories have been slavishly devoted to a brewing civil war in Iraq.

Acording to USA Today:


Â…about 15 Americans and 73 Iraqis are killed or injured each day. A USA TODAY analysis of U.S. military data shows the number of U.S. forces killed during the war has declined steadily since November.

But while preliminary report cites statistics that show a decline in U.S. forces killed, other statistics show an exact opposite trend in another theater of operation far closer to home.

The January-June 2005 murder rate is up 9.3% in cities with a population of 100,000 to 249,999, and the region "spiraling out of control" isn't the Middle East, but is the Midwest, with a murder rate jumping 4.9%.

Forget Baghdad, let's pull out of Des Moines.

Update: Ed Driscoll notes this might be an extension of the Cartoon War.

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He's Not Here...

Went to visit with my parents and grandparents this weekend, so weekend posting was virtually nil. I'll be getting back into the swing of things later today...

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Shall We Play a Game, Part IV

...In which the ex-USNS San Diego goes to sea, and plots an intercept course for Hurricane Beryl in the continuing "Salvation Navy" narrative over at Beauchamp Tower Corporation's OES Project blog.

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March 18, 2006

More Abuse From Iraq

Task Force 6-26 is under the stark, naked bulb of the New York Times crack investigative staff (the one that never makes mistakes), and picked up something from their unhealthy obsession with abuse at Abu Ghraib:


Most of the people interviewed for this article were midlevel civilian and military Defense Department personnel who worked with Task Force 6-26 and said they witnessed abuses, or who were briefed on its operations over the past three years.

Many were initially reluctant to discuss Task Force 6-26 because its missions are classified. But when pressed repeatedly by reporters who contacted them, they agreed to speak about their experiences and observations out of what they said was anger and disgust over the unit's treatment of detainees and the failure of task force commanders to punish misconduct more aggressively. The critics said the harsh interrogations yielded little information to help capture insurgents or save American lives. [my bold - ed.]

Once again, the Times is unable or unwilling to provide any direct evidence of their charges, relying on anonymous sources and injuries that could have come from combat against American forces or resisting capture as well as the abuse they allege.

I hope survivors of the overzealous NY Times interrogations weren't coerced into giving statements under duress that would free insurgents or endanger American lives.

I'd hate to have to drag Bill Keller in front of a tribunal...

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March 17, 2006

...A Persistent Vegetative State

Let me get this straight:

You cannot believe documents released by un-named government sources, because you cannot vouch for the credibility of the source,

-BUT-

You must believe documents released by un-named government sources, because the credibility of the source must be impeccable for them to want to remain anonymous.

"Paging Dr. Sanity..."

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Sea Change

By now, the importance of the information provided by bloggers before, during, and after a major disaster such as a hurricane, earthquake or a tsunami is well-established.

Here in America, bloggers provided much of the accurate first-hand information during Hurricanes Katrina and after landfall, and to this day they—we—continue to play an important role in informing the public and providing perspective about the successes and failures in coping with the storm's aftermath.

If everything goes as is planned, during up-coming hurricane seasons selected bloggers will have even more front-line access:


After a Beauchamp Tower Corporation emergency meeting with state, federal, and local officials, the decision is made to deploy the ex-USNS San Diego at the earliest possible moment of readiness—whether or not the cargo holds have been filled. Food stores onboard will be at less than half capacity, however water and ice supplies are considered more important, therefore the ship will not wait to load all designated supplies before she gets underway.

The announcement that the ex-USNS San Diego is ready to go to sea is made public. Crew members and volunteers are contacted and told to report immediately to the ship. Bloggers and news crews are screened, checked through security, and allowed to board the ex-USNS San Diego. The Bloggers will report from the ship while underway and document the disaster relief efforts of the ex-San Diego and crew for Hurricane Beryl. [my bold -ed.]



This bit of an on-going narrative description from Beauchamp Tower Corporation's OES Project blog recognizes the importance of bloggers in hurricane response as information providers on par with that of the mainstream media outlets.

Who among us wouldn't like to see someone like hurricane blogger Brendan Loy on board these ships, blogging in real-time as events unfold, or crisp, riveting post-landfall reporting from someone like Michael Yon?

The entire premise of Beauchamp's Operation Enduring Service concept has been based on "thinking outside the box," blending the old-but-serviceable with the cutting edge.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that they'd want to apply it to everything they'll touch.

Update: Welcome Instapundit readers. If you feel you're coming in mid-story, you're right. Start here with "Shall..We...Play...A...Game? Part 1," or as I like to call it, "Pimp My 7,000 Ton Ride."

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Shall We Play a Game?

BCT/OES has Part 2 of their "Salvation Navy" disaster response narrative up.



Check it out.

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Hell no, we won't go...



...to work:


This week, students were protesting a newly passed law that has the support of Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, a leading presidential candidate from Chirac's party. The measure, due to go into effect in April, will make it easier to hire and fire young people at a time when the youth unemployment rate averages 23 percent.

The protesters' anger focuses on provisions that will allow companies to fire employees under 26 at any time during their first two years of work, without cause.

"They're offering us nothing but slavery," said Maud Pottier, 17, a student at Jules Verne High School in Sartrouville, north of Paris, who was wrapped in layers of scarves as protection against the chilly, gray day. "You'll get a job knowing that you've got to do every single thing they ask you to do because otherwise you may get sacked. I'd rather spend more time looking for a job and get a real one."

Why, the nerve of employers, expecting you to do what they ask!

It's like these kids expect to have tenure, or something.

Cheese-Eating Tenure Monkeys...

Heh.

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March 16, 2006

Chatter

Several bloggers... okay, a bunch of bloggers... have noticed increasing al Qaeda "chatter" as high or high than the months leading up to 9/11. Many are attaching this "chatter" to a significant date around the corner, the March 20th third anniversary of the U.S invasion of Iraq.

Some folks are spooked over the possibility that the NCAA mens's basketball tournament might be a target, and today's scare in San Diego didn't help to quite that theory.

Quite frankly, if I were an al Qaeda planner, a basketball game wouldn't be my first pick.

I'd consider the NCAA tournament arenas too hard of a target to easily penetrate, without enough civilian targets to warrant the effort needed for a major attack. The Twin Towers were "soft" targets to a certain extent and had roughly 50,000 potential victims. Why waste limited resources on a post-9/11 basketball arena with increased security, an unfavorable layout, and far fewer people? It doesn't make the most tactical sense.

And there are other issues.

In addition to pure carnage, al Qaeda is also into symbolism. The Twin Towers were a symbol of our economic reach and might, just as the Pentagon was the symbol of our military power. Flight 93 ended up in a field in Shanksville, PA, but was more than likely targeted at one of the seats of our political power, either the White House or the U.S Capitol.

If you were a terrorist planner, imagine a scenario where:

  • the potential victim pool more than twice that of the Twin Towers
  • the target is "soft," completely exploitable in some way
  • there is some cultural significance to the target
  • the attack can be tied to a culturally important date

If you were a member of al Qaeda with that tempting target in front of you, what would you say?

How about, “Gentlemen, start your engines.”

NASCAR, while scoffed at by some, is the second most popular professional sport in U.S. television ratings, and draws by far the largest crowds of any U.S sporting event. The NEXTEL Cup Series is the premiere division of NASCAR, and they happen to be racing at the Atlanta Motor Speedway, a 1.5-mile track, this Sunday, March 19.



By the time the race starts at 1:30 PM local time (9:30 PM in the evening in the Middle East), up to 125,000 fans could be in attendance, along with the dozens of drivers to which fans have developed fierce loyalties.

An unmodified single-engine plane can carry a bioweapon agent over this concentrated open-air target, disperse it into the crowd by the crudest of means, simply pouring (a powder) or spraying (an aerosol) over the grandstands and infield, and run a significant chance of infecting hundreds or thousands or more, just before intentionally crashing the plane into the stands in horrific fireball in front of a live nationwide audience.

Footage of the crash is sure to be played over and over again on the 20th throughout the Middle East, with credit claimed by al Qaeda on the third anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

It could be hours or days later after infected fans have scattered to their hometowns across the country that symptoms begin to show, with a predictable public panic ensuing in a country already primed by the media for an avian flu epidemic.

Chatter?

I sure hope the NSA is listening...

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:58 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Which One of these Things is Not Like the Other?

As folks on the right and left are both botching their reporting on Operation Swarmer, which CNN accurately reports (for a change) as the "largest air assault operation since the invasion of Iraq nearly three years ago" I want to take a second to get things straightened out.

The is a huge difference between an "air assault" and a "bombing raid."

This is a Blackhawk helicopter, most often used to transport men and equipment to combat zones:




This is a F/A-18 Hornet, one of the premiere strike fighters in the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, and an aircraft often called upon to drop guided and unguided bombs on the bad guys:



Now, which do you see warming up on the runway in this CNN photo prior to Operation Swarmer?



An "airborne assault" is moving infantry units via air transport to a combat zone. It is often accomplished via helicopters, but can also be accomplished by dropping soldiers from airplanes via parachutes or in glider insertions, though I don't think we've used gliders since Operation Market Garden in World War II.

We've been using helicopter air assaults for over 40 years, and bringing soldiers to a combat zone by helicopter is quite different than an airstrike dropping bombs.

Let's see if we can keep that little detail straight, okay?


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