In a cartoon ostensibly about the options for Iraq available to General David Petraeus, cartoonist Ted Rall states in one panel:

Hate to admit it, but Saddam knew what he was doing after all. Too bad we had to hang the bastard!

What did Rall's Saddam suggest?

Troublemakers, eh? Kill them. Kill their families. Kill everyone who's ever met them.

Rall must not have had room in the panel for "...and let God sort them out," though it certainly seems implied.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:10 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Look past the overwrought editorializing of Pam Spaulding to focus on the anti-gay and probably racist tirade ascribed to U.S. Army recruiter, Sgt. Marcia Ramode, from an official army.mil email address.

Ramode is required to display professional courtesy, even if she fervently disagrees with someone else's opinions or lifestyle. If these emails are legitimate, then Ramode should face a disciplinary hearing, and I suspect, a court martial.

The irony of this, of course, is that the person Ramode was attacking in these emails could hardly be a less professional soldier than Ramode herself.

Update: A certain liberal buffoonist apparently has reading comprehension problems, and cites the closing paragraph of this post to say saying I'm attacking the gay man who was the target of Sgt. Ramode's tirades.

Perhaps being "reality-based" means, in his mind, that he can simply make up whatever meaning he wants out of what someone else writes (it sure seems to work for Glenn Ryan Ellers Wilson Thomas Ellensberg Greenwald), but he has his facts completely turned around.

Those of us with a reasonable grasp of conversational English language might note that the comment closing the post above criticizes Sgt. Ramode for being very unprofessional, and that the gay civilian she was arguing with would make a better soldier than she.

Somehow, this is an "attack." I guess liberals consider the insinuation that someone might be a decent soldier to be offensive.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:41 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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...and the lawn almost won.

I rented a rear-tine tiller to cut through the red clay and rock so that I can reseed my backyard over the weekend.

Fun thing rocky soil; tilling isn't easy anywhere, I suspect, but when you've got a 400 lb machine bucking every few feet when it hits a softball-sized rock, it takes a heavy toll on both the machine and operator. The yard killed the tiller. I broke off no less than four tines in the rocky soil, and perhaps as many as six. The folks I rented it from couldn't even get the engine to re-fire to unload it, and told me that it was going to have to be retired.

Sunburned, blistered and sore, I'm not feeling too good myself.

Light posting expected today due to work-related meetings.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:35 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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A witness claims it was hit by a SAM during its ascent. Details are still sketchy right now, and there doesn't seem to be any word on how many people were on the plane, or if anyone on the ground was killed or wounded as a result of the plane coming down.

As of yet it doesn't look like anyone has taken claim for the attack, but the obvious suspects are Somali Islamists.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:41 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I'm not familar with Mike Gudgell of ABC News, but his "Reporter's Notebook" article about what he is seeing in Iraq is a must read.

A taste of Gudgell's article, starting on page 3:

According to the U.S. military, a group of al Qaeda in Iraq fighters recently entered a small village east of Baghdad and announced they would be back and would take several houses for their base. When they returned two days later, their convoy was attacked by villagers. The military found out when the villagers told them to come out and pick up bodies and prisoners.

The numbers of civilian deaths are down a little but that's only a small part of the story. It's the little things together that make the difference. It might be too early to tell if this is a tipping point in the war, but it does appear as though the momentum has changed.

There's a long way to go, but there is room for some hope. It depends on your perspective; those snapshots and keyhole views of the broad landscape of what is a living war.

I strongly urge you to read the entire article. Gudgell is matter of fact, and pulls no punches.

More, please.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:49 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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This is U.S. Army General Vincent K. Brooks.

He might look familiar as the man once known as the "the face of the U.S. military" for his role as spokesman for U.S. Central Command during the beginning of the Iraq War, He was the former chief PAO (Public Affairs Officer) of the US Army. He is currently the deputy commanding general - support for Multinational Division-Baghdad.

Vincent Brooks is also the general that has just threatened to kick Michael Yon out of Iraq.

A general emailed in the past 24 hours threatening to kick me out. The first time the Army threatened to kick me out was in late 2005, just after I published a dispatch called “Gates of Fire.” Some of the senior level public affairs people who’d been upset by “Proximity Delays” were looking ever since for a reason to kick me out and they wanted to use “Gates of Fire” as a catapult. In the events described in that dispatch, I broke some rules by, for instance, firing a weapon during combat when some of our soldiers were fighting fairly close quarters and one was wounded and still under enemy fire. That’s right. I’m not sure what message the senior level public affairs people thought that would convey had they succeeded, (which they didn’t) but it was clear to me what they valued most. They want the press on a short leash, even at the expense of the life of a soldier.

Brooks was chief PAO when the miltary wanted to kick Yon out of Iraq in 2005 over his the "Proximity Delays" and "Gates of Fire" dispatches, and apparently Brooks still harbors a grudge. Now that Yon finds himself in Brooks' territory again, it appears he has taken special interest in trying to kep Yon from doing his job.

Austin Bay weighs in on the witch hunt:

This is stupid... Telling Michael Yon to exit the theater is the WWII equivalent of telling Ernie Pyle to quit filing dispatches.

With terrorist propaganda blanketing the Internet, General Brooks seems intent on silencing one of the few long-term combat journalists in Iraq that can offer a competing voice.

Not a smart move, at all.

Update: Yon speaks about the media war.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 06:50 AM | Comments (35) | Add Comment
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So says The Politico, which seems to have been overwhelmed by a pair of links from Drudge.

John Edwards is suspending his campaign for President, and may drop out completely, because his wife has suffered a recurrence of the cancer that sickened her in 2004, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, an Edwards friend told The Politico.

"At a minimum he's going to suspend" the campaign, the source said. "Nobody knows precisely how serious her recurrence is. It'll be another couple of days before there's complete clarity."

Other news outlets, including Fox News and CNN, are running screamers that report otherwise. It looks like The Politico jumped the gun.

CNN gets their story posted first:

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards said Thursday his wife's cancer had returned but his bid for the White House will go on.

John Edwards said tests this week had shown his wife, Elizabeth, had cancer in a rib on her right side. He said the cancer is treatable but not curable.

Elizabeth Edwards said she was "incredibly optimistic" and said her expectations about the future were unchanged.

John Edwards will apparently continue his doomed (okay, perhaps not the best word) Presidential campaign, even though his wife Elizabeth appears to have had a resurgence of cancer.

Frankly, I don't know whether to commend them for their courage as a family in trying to push on with their lives throught the cancer's return, or whether the candidate should be condemned for continuing an unlikely run despite Elizabeth's incurable cancer coming out of remission.

In any event, I'll be praying for Elizabeth Edwards tonight, hoping that God spares her from this cancer, and what appears to be her husband's naked ambition.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:47 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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Two brothers with ties to Muqtada al-Sadr have been arrested for their role in the killing of five American soldiers in Karbala two months ago.

From CNN:

"Over the past several days, coalition forces in Basra and Hilla captured Qais Khazali, his brother Laith Khazali and several other members of the Khazali network," the U.S. military said in a statement.

Qais Khazali has been known to reporters as a spokesman for al-Sadr's political movement, and Reuters news agency reported that Khazali is a senior aide to the anti-American cleric.

Al-Sadr's Mehdi Army, a Shiite militia, is suspected of being involved in Iraq's sectarian violence.

The U.S. military said the Khazali network is "directly connected" to the January killings in Karbala, the Shiite holy city south of Baghdad.

On Wednesday, a U.S. official said the brothers were suspected of being part of a network using weapons known as explosively formed projectiles or penetrators. Bush administration officials have alleged that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force have provided these munitions to Shiite groups in Iraq.

Those grains of salt I spoke of yesterday? They just got smaller, especially when considered with other developments, all of which are providing more evidence that the Iranian role in the Iraq War may be larger than we were previously aware, and potentially growing.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:28 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The editor of a French satire magazine has been acquitted of insulting Muslims by re-publishing cartoons of Mohammed.

Paris will begin burning this evening.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:09 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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It's based upon unconfirmed reports from unknown informants, but the allegations made in this story could be interesting if corroborated by another source:

Iraqi insurgents, guerrilla fighters and death squads are being trained in secret camps in Iran with the blessing of top Tehran leaders and at least three senior Iraqi political figures, an Iranian opposition figure said Tuesday.

Would-be Iraqi fighters are smuggled into Iran, schooled in everything from sniper techniques to explosive devices and sent back to Iraq to wage war on U.S.-led coalition forces, Alireza Jafarzadeh said at a news conference.

It is important to note that Jafarzadeh has worked for the Mujahedin al-Khalq, an anti-Iranian terrorist group, and presently leads the Washington-based Strategic Policy Consulting think tank.

Perhaps the most interesting part of his claim is his specificity of those named as being among the Iranian leaders involved in the plot.

Jafarzadeh said Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are closely connected to the training. He said Abu Ahmad Al-Ramisi, governor of southern Iraq's Al-Muthanna province, and two members of Iraq's National Assembly are also involved.

He identified one as Hadi Al-Ameri, who he said is chairman of the legislature's security committee and head of the Badr Corps, the Iran-based military wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. The other is an assembly member known in Iraq as Abu Mehdi Mohandas, he said.

Before the day is out, I expect that a fevered left-wing blogger (or ten) will state that the Bush Administration is behind Jafarzadeh's comments, and that these comments will be used to justify a military attack on Iran.

I don't think that is the case.

If there is any Administration involvement behind Jafarzadeh's charges, it seems that the goal of such specific charges would be to embarrass the Iranian government to stop or restrict their involvement in funding and supplying violence in Iraq.

It is known fact that Iran is supplying anti-government forces within Iraq with weapons—the confiscation of more than 100 Iranian Styer HS50 sniper rifles proves that beyond any reasonable doubt—but blaming Iran the nation is far easier for the mullacracy to dodge than are charges levied against individual Iranian officials.

Will specifically alleging the involvement of key senior Iranian government officials have any impact in slowing the flow of weapons, funding, or training from Iran to Iraq's anti-government forces? I somewhat doubt it, but at this point, it may be the only option on the table.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:02 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Yesterday in his Chicago Tribune blog "Change of Subject", Eric Zorn wrote about a two-page letter written to President Bush by Richard Landeck, father of Captain Kevin Landeck. Captain Landeck and Staff Sgt. Terrance D. Dunn were soldiers of the Tenth Mountain Division killed by a roadside bomb on February 6, south of Baghdad.

Richard Landeck said he mailed his letter to the President a little more than six weeks ago, and has yet to receive a response.

The letter, written two days after his son's death, is printed in full on Zorn's blog, but I'll replicate it here as well.

Feb 4, 2007

Dear Mr. Bush:

This will be the only time I will refer to you with any type of respect.

My son was killed in Iraq on February 2, 2007. His name is Captain Kevin Landeck.

He served with the Tenth Mountain Division. He was killed while riding in a Humvee by a roadside bomb just south of Baghdad. He has a loving mother, a loving father and loving sister.

You took him away from us. He celebrated his 26th birthday January 30th and was married for 17 months. He graduated from Purdue University and went through the ROTC program. That is where he met his future wife. He was proud to be a part of the military and took exceptional pride in becoming a leader of men. He accepted his role as a platoon leader with exceptional enthusiasm and was proud to serve his country.

I had many conversations with Kevin before he left to serve as well as during his deployment. The message he continued to send to me was that of incompetence. Incompetence by you, (Vice President Richard) Cheney and (former Secretary of Defense Donald) Rumsfeld. Incompetence by some of his commanders as well as the overall strategy of your decisions.

When I asked him about what he thought about your decision to "surge" more troops to Baghdad, he told me, "until the Iraqis pick up the ball, we are going to get cut to shreds. It doesnÂ’t matter how many troops Bush sends, nothing has been addressed to solve the problem he started."

Answer me this: How in the world can you justify invading Iraq when the problem began and continues to lie in Afghanistan? I donÂ’t want your idiotic standard answer about keeping America safe. What did Sadaam Hussein have to do with 9/11? We all know it had to do with the first Iraq war where your father failed to take Sadaam down.

Well George, you have succeeded in taking down over 3,100 of our best young men, my son being one of them. Kevin told me many times we are not fighting terrorism in Iraq and they could not do their jobs as soldiers. He said they are trained to be on the offensive and to fight but all they are doing is acting like policemen.

Well George, you or some "genius" like you who have never fought in a war but enjoy all the perks your positions afford you are making life and death decisions. In the case of my son, you made a death decision.

Let me explain a few other points he and I discussed. He said when he and his men were riding down the road in their Humvees, roadside bombs would explode and they would hear bullets bouncing off their vehicle. He said they were scared. He thought "why should we be the ones who are scared?" He asked permission to take some of his men out at night with their night vision glasses because as he said "we own the night" and watch for the people who are setting roadside bombs and "take them out." He said, "I want them to be the ones that are scared." He was denied permission. Why? It made perfect sense to me and other people who I told about this.

When he was at a checkpoint he was told that if a vehicle was coming at them even at a high rate of speed he could not arbitrarily use his weapon. He had to wave his arms and, if the vehicle did not stop, he could fire a warning shot over the vehicle. If the vehicle did not stop then, he could shoot at the tires. If the vehicle did not yet stop he could take a shot at the driver. Who in their right mind made that kind of decision?

How would you like to be at a check point with a vehicle coming at you that won't stop and go through all those motions? You will never know!

You or Cheney or Rumsfeld will never know the anguish, the worry, the sleepless nights, the waiting for the loved one who may never return. If the soldiers were able to do their jobs and the ego's of politicians like you, your "cronies" and some commanders had their heads on straight, we would be out of this mess which we should not be involved with in the first place.

My family and I deserve and explanation directly from you... not some assistant who will likely read this and toss it. This war is wrong.

I want you to look me and my wife and daughter directly in the eye and tell me why my son died. We should not be there, but because of your ineptness and lack of correct information I have lost my son, my pride and joy, my hero!

Again, you, Cheney and Rumsfeld will never understand what the families of soldiers are going through and don't try to tell me you do. My wife, my daughter and I cannot believe we have lost our only son and brother to a ridiculous political war that you seem to want to maintain. I hope you and Cheney and Rumsfeld and all the other people on your band wagon sleep well at night... we certainly don't.

Richard Landeck

Proud father of a fallen soldier

Eric Zorn's position on the war is abundantly clear and permeates his blog entry like grease on a paper bag, and so I'll skip his unseemly attempt to hijack Richard Landeck's grief, and focus on the letter itself.

I first read Mr. Landeck's letter on Zorn's blog last night. The anger, anguish, and loss he feels over what he sees as the needless death of his son has to wash through all but the hardest of hearts. Richard Landeck clearly loved a son he will never see again, never watch mature, raise children, and grandchildren...

I could not easily come to terms with the hurt and rage behind Landeck's letter, the loss of his son, framed by what both the grieving father and the lost son thought of the Iraq War. I still can't.

I cannot imagine sending a child to fight a war in which neither my child nor I believed, nor the pain that Mr. Landeck, his wife, daughter, and widowed daughter-in-law must now endure as the result of Captain Landeck's death. There is a huge void now in their lives that will never be filled, one that cannot be expressed. Others will see the pain and sense the loss, but they be unable to address it, and they will feel shame. There simply are no words to sooth a wound to the soul.

My own response, couched in that same embarrassed shame of not knowing what to say, is unfulfilling, and inadequate.

I somewhat suspect that President Bush has not personally seen Mr. Landeck's letter. Even if he has, what precisely would he say? What should he say? How do you respond to a grieving father that hold's you personally responsible for his son's death?

Would Richard Landeck have felt any less rage, anger, or loss if his son had been killed by an IED in Khandahar, Afghanistan? Would Kevin's death have been "better" if he had died fighting another war started by this same President? Somehow, I doubt the suffering of the Landeck family would have been much less.

We cannot fill that part of our lives where a fallen loved one once stood.

Mr. Landeck has exercised the option to feel that his son's mission and death were not worthwhile. He has every right to feel that way, to question the competence of the leaders that placed his son in combat, the commanders on the ground that declined Captain Landeck's requests for a certain specific type of mission, and the rules of engagement.

Mr. Landeck has that right, but is doesn't mean he is right.

Neither Bush, nor Cheney, nor Rumsfeld, nor the generals, nor the colonels, are responsible for the deaths of Captain Landeck and Staff Sgt. Dunn on February 6. The names of the man or men who planted and triggered the roadside bomb that took the lives of these soldiers may never be known.

What is known is that these men, and others like them, will continue to plant roadside bombs, detonate VBIEDs in markets or in front of police stations, killing and wounding scores of soldiers, policemen, and civilians until men like Captain Landeck stop them.

Sixty-three years and seventeen days before Kevin Landeck died, correspondent Ernie Pyle wrote about the death of another U.S. Army Captain highly regarded by his men.

The unburdened mules moved off to their olive orchard. The men in the road seemed reluctant to leave. They stood around, and gradually one by one I could sense them moving close to Capt. Waskow's body. Not so much to look, I think, as to say something in finality to him, and to themselves. I stood close by and I could hear.

One soldier came and looked down, and he said out loud, "God damn it." That's all he said, and then he walked away. Another one came. He said, "God damn it to hell anyway." He looked down for a few last moments, and then he turned and left.

Another man came; I think he was an officer. It was hard to tell officers from men in the half light, for all were bearded and grimy dirty. The man looked down into the dead captain's face, and then he spoke directly to him, as though he were alive. He said: "I'm sorry, old man."

Then a soldier came and stood beside the officer, and bent over, and he too spoke to his dead captain, not in a whisper but awfully tenderly, and he said:

"I sure am sorry, sir."

Then the first man squatted down, and he reached down and took the dead hand, and he sat there for a full five minutes, holding the dead hand in his own and looking intently into the dead face, and he never uttered a sound all the time he sat there.

And finally he put the hand down, and then reached up and gently straightened the points of the captain's shirt collar, and then he sort of rearranged the tattered edges of his uniform around the wound. And then he got up and walked away down the road in the moonlight, all alone.

I sure am sorry, Mr. Landeck.

It is an inadequate response to a grieving father, but it is all I have to give.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:54 AM | Comments (55) | Add Comment
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Or at least that is how Keith Olbermann is likely to report it.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:32 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I missed the 60 Minutes interview of Marine Frank Wuterich that Allah discussed on Hot Air yesterday, and therefore can't dispute nor affirm the Neil Boortz claim that the interview was, "one of the most outrageous displays of media bias ever."

What I will comment on briefly, however, is the screen capture Allah was able to grab of a photo showing the bodies of the five Iraqis that Wuterich said he suspected of planting the IED, and then shot as they were running away.

The picture is grainy and not of great quality, and I don't have the detail I would generally like to have, but I'll make an observation all the same:

I don't think these men were running, from anyone.

The bodies are closely clustered together within steps of the car in which they were traveling. A person standing still, if shot with a killing wound or multiple wounds, often falls in place. They may get up and move locations, but based upon what I interpret as pooled blood in the admittedly sub-par photo, I don't think that occurred.

It is highly unlikely, if this men had decided to run, that:

• they would have taken off in unison;
• that Wuterich would have been able to react, fire, and fatally hit five running men within feet of the vehicle.
• that they would have fallen in unison if on the move when shot.

It isn't impossible that this occurred, but I think it is very unlikely.

Now, we don't know if the bodies of the men have been touched. I think that if they had been moved (dragged) that blood trails would have been in evidence, even in a picture with quality this poor. I think that if they have been touched, they might have been rolled over to see if they were still alive, but I don't think they would have been turned to face the opposite direction.

In general, I'd expect someone shot during the first few steps while attempting to flee (which would almost have to be the case if the Wuterich account can be correlated in any way to the photo) would fall headfirst in the direction that momentum would take them. I'd also find it unlikely that a person taking just a few steps would generate enough momentum to somersault.

All that said, look at the orientation of the bodies in the photo.

Two bodies (labeled 1 and 2) are oriented clearly with their heads generally toward the car, which makes it doubtful they could have been moving away from the vehicle, at least at any speed approaching a run. The body closest to the camera, labeled 3, is roughly in the position you might expect of someone standing still when shot, then falling backward. The black box I drew, merely for illustrative purposes, gives a very rough idea of where the shots appear to have come from, based upon a number of guestimates, factoring in the position of the white car, and the object in the top right that would have likely screened these men from view of anyone much further back down the road.

The photo, bad as it may be, seems to validate the Dela Cruz version of events, and based upon Dela Cruz's own description of what he did to one of the bodies, might even explain why the stain near the head of the body labeled 2 appears to be lighter in color than the other dark stains around the bodies in the photo.

This, of course, does nothing to establish the guilt or innocence of Wuterich, nor any of the other Marines. It does nothing to establish a state of mind, nor a motive.

What is does suggest, at the very least, is that Wuterich does not recall events as the photo seems to suggest they took place.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:39 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Anti-War protestors support the troops... by burning them in effigy, of course.

This display just boggles the mind for sheer stupidity, but then, consider the source:

Truly, how many more Christian Muslims must die?

Bong water is not an acceptable tea substitute, kids.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:53 AM | Comments (17) | Add Comment
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I don't think there is a lot to this AFP photo and caption, but there is just barely enough to make it interesting.

The photo shows a pair of parked HMMWVs on the left, a single U.S. soldier running, and a mostly hidden HMMWV that appears to have been hit by an IED between two large trucks that may (or may not) be recovery vehicles.

The caption reads:

A US soldier takes cover as a roadside bomb targets a US convoy in Baghdad's Bayaa district. Meanwhile, Iraq hanged Saddam Hussein's former deputy Taha Yassin Ramadan as the nation entered the fifth year of the US-led war still battling a raging insurgency and sectarian conflict.(AFP/Wissam Sami)

The caption is present tense, and is is quite possible that combat engineers have detected another IED near the site where the one HMMWV was disabled. It is not uncommon of insurgents to place multiple IEDs at an ambush location.

That said, there is no sign that the attack happened with the immediacy the caption suggests.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that mounted vehicle patrols in Baghdad typically do not bring recovery vehicles with them, and yet, it appears that two recovery vehicles are positioned in front of and behind the damaged HMMWV. The close proximity of the two other HMMWVs in the picture on the left-hand side (both in relation to the damaged vehicle, and to each other), strongly suggests that security had already been established and the site cleared of other possible IED threats.

Then there is the fact we see recovery vehicles and no movement other than the one soldier, suggests that those soldiers in the damaged HMMWV have already been evacuated from the area.

An AP picture taken in the same neighborhood on the same day seems to be from the same incident (the door in the street the AP photo also seems to match up with the missing door in the AFP photo), and states that casualties were medevaced by helicopter from the scene. This would have happened in advance of a vehicle recovery effort. Perhaps more telling, the AP caption mentions only one bomb.

Is the AFP exaggerating the immedicacy of this photo in order to sell it to news outlets? It's impossible to tell from just a pair of photos, but it would not be all that surprising if that turned out to be the case.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:30 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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The House Judiciary Committee has posted more than 3,000 emails released by the Justice Department in regards to the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys by the Justice Department.

I don't have the time (nor the inclination) to dig through the documents, but maybe you do.

The documents are posted, and more will be posted, on the House Judiciary Committee web site in the right hand column in PDF format, 50 emails per PDF. If you find anything interesting, please post your findings in the comments. Please provide the text you cite, what you think it means, and which PDF document it came from.

This story has certainly evolved into a scandal, but for all the embarrassment and grandstanding, I still don't see where anything illegal has occurred. Have I just not been following this closely enough?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:46 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Kristin Collins of the Raleigh, NC News & Observer is all about feelings today, in a near-hysterical lament about the impact of immigration enforcement on local illegal alien families. Pardon me while I grab a tissue:

Maricruz and her husband had lived illegally in the United States so long she had almost forgotten it was a crime.

Then, on Jan. 24, her husband disappeared.

U.S. immigration officials arrested him and 20 other workers at Smithfield Foods' gigantic Bladen County slaughterhouse. They drove him to Georgia and locked him up as an illegal immigrant.

You know Kristin, you just aren't making a strong enough case for their victimhood. Could you try a little harder?

Yeah, now this is what I'm talking about:

Maricruz said it was well-known in her village near Acapulco, in the Mexican state of Guerrero, that there were well-paying jobs at the Bladen County plant. Two of her brothers had already made their way to Tar Heel and were working for Smithfield.

In Mexico, they lived with her parents -- a dozen people in a two-room house. Her husband earned money picking crops. The pay at Smithfield started at about $8 an hour. To them, it was an incredible sum.

They rented an apartment in the Robeson County town of Lumberton, about 100 miles south of Raleigh. Eight years ago they had a son, Andy, a U.S. citizen who has never seen Mexico.

Maricruz got a part-time job cleaning rooms at a hotel. Juan enrolled in English classes. They joined a Catholic church. They spent weekends with their extended family, all of whom lived within a 20-mile radius.

They regularly sent money to their families in Mexico, paying for their daughter to enroll in a university there. They started paying on a piece of land in Mexico, so they could one day return.

Maricruz said she never worried about their immigration status. She seemed only vaguely aware that their residency in North Carolina was illegal and said she didn't realize, until her husband's arrest, that they could be deported.

And then, on that Wednesday in January, Juan didn't arrive to pick her up from work. Smithfield officials told her only that her husband no longer worked there, she said.

Eight days after his disappearance, Juan called from Georgia's Stewart Detention Center.

"He told me not to cry," Maricruz said, "that he was OK."

But they do cry

A few weeks after the arrests, a group of families gathered in a Catholic church in Red Springs to tell their stories. Children played in the corners. Teenagers talked of their fears that their mothers would also be taken. Wives cried at the thought of returning to Mexico. Parents pleaded for the return of their grown children.

All said they had no idea why their family members had been chosen for arrest from the plant's more than 5,000 workers, about half of whom are Hispanic. All, including Maricruz, said their relatives were longtime Smithfield employees who had never been convicted of a crime.

Now, that's how you establish a good victimhood piece. Establish the "American Dream" aspects of their lives, while overlooking as much as possible the fact that they are criminally in this country. Collins refuse to ask the obvious question: How can these "victims" pay a coyote to smuggle them across the border (mentioned elsewhere in the article), buy false birth certificates and social security cards, and then claim of the woman she profiles:

She seemed only vaguely aware that their residency in North Carolina was illegal and said she didn't realize, until her husband's arrest, that they could be deported.

Kristin Collins isn't a reporter looking to find answers to obvious questions. She is an advocate transparently interested in promoting a cause.

To advocate for her cause, Collins overlooks stories that have been of far more importance to her English-speaking readers. That or perhaps Collins doesnÂ’t know two other writers at the N&O, Thomas McDonald and Marti McGuire, who wrote recently. about an illegal alien that killed a father and son in a hit-and-run accident that saw a father and his nine-year-old son burned beyond recognition. The killer, Luciano Tellez, had twice been convicted of drunk driving in North Carolina, but had not been deported. Leeanna Newman was killed by another drunk illegal behind the wheel on Feb 6. Illegals account for 5-percent of NC's population, and yet they account for 18-percent of our DWI arrests and a string of recent deaths. It is an epidemic Collins ignores to promote her chosen cause.

This isnÂ’t professional journalism. This is naked advocacy supporting criminal behavior.

Collins goes all out to get one side of the story.

The illegal alien families she profiles are allowed to be victims. Those that have been killed by illegals driving drunk apparently are not.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:58 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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The Gathering of Eagles in Washington, DC this past weekend was huge; the National Park Service estimated that 30,000 supporters showed up. Michelle Malkin was there, and has an excellent roundup, complete with photos.

The socialists, communists, anarchists, radical Muslims and others in the pro-defeat crowd were unable to deface the Vietnam Veterans Memorial as they had done in anti-war marches in the past. Momma Moonbat, Cindy Sheehan, was at her borderline-insane, America-hating worst.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:02 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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Sweetness & Light has a fascinating chronology posted this morning that suggests that it was Joe Wilson himself that "outed" the identity of his non-covert wife, CIA analyst Plame, in an attempt to lend credibility to the Niger story he was trying to pitch to various national media outlets, who at the time, apparently didn't see his story as being credible enough to publish.

I haven't followed the story very much even though I know others are completely enthalled with it, so tell me: is there anything wrong with this chronology?

Or did a publicity-hungry Joe Wilson "out" his own wife?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:59 AM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
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The Gathering of Eagles is today in Washington, DC. It is a gathering of military veterans and proud Americans that will be ther to protect the Vietnam Veterans Memorial ("The Wall") from an anti-war protest sponsered by radical Muslim groups, anarchists, leftover 60s radicals, Marxists, and others invested in an American defeat.

Michelle Malkin and Bryan Preston will be there, as will Melanie Morgan and what we expect to be a substantial number of veterans groups and the families and friends of active duty soldiers.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:29 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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