...because the phrase War Criminals and Nazis is much more fitting.

Let's begin at the end of Andie "Patron Saint of the Man Pooter" Sullivan's article.

Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I'm not. There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn't-somehow-torture - "enhanced interrogation techniques" - is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death.

Of course calls for the death of the Bush Administration is nothing new from the party of Love, Peace and Patriotism. If a few thousand more Americans have to die while they're at work in their offices, just so we can ensure the Freedom Fighters are comfortable in their cells, so be it and who the hell are you to question their Patriotism, you nazi bastard.

The part of the document Andie's hoping you didn't read or given the typical Neocon's lack of reading comprehension hoping you wouldn't understand:

1. The sharpened interrogation may only be applied if, on the strength of the preliminary interrogation, it has been ascertained that the prisoner can give information about facts, connections or plans hostile to the state or legal system, but does not want to reveal his knowledge and the latter cannot be obtained by way of inquiries.
2. Under this circumstance, the sharpened interrogation may be applied only against Communists, Marxists, members of the Bible-researcher sect, saboteurs, terrorists, members of the resistance movement,...
3. The sharpened interrogation may not be applied in order to induce confessions about a prisoner's own criminal acts...

Personally, I place the value of human life above my concerns of safety for a terrorist. But maybe I'm being unrealistic and we should just follow Saint Andie's lead and push for a kinder gentler form of questioning:

I guess Pablo the bikini-clad-pool-boy should question Saint Andie.

Posted by: phin at 10:55 AM | Comments (30) | Add Comment
Post contains 497 words, total size 3 kb.

Alternatively Titled: How can Bobby Flay challenge troops to a throwdown in the Mojave Desert when the US Military can't get civilians in Iraq the ingredients they need to "toss salad". Brevity is key, and all that.

While you were lounging around sipping mojitos and dreaming of replacing the Rosie "Patron Saint of Truther Conspiracy Theorists" O'Donnell on the view ace was all over the fake, but real, but accurate food shortage memo reported by our friends and neighbors at the WaPo. The Flopped Aced one has a pretty good synopsis of the entire escapade.

Being the good little storm troopers that we are we're wondering why the ever military friendly main stream media reporters aren't receiving their daily allotments of syrup or jelly. Which, if you're a deviant and I know you probably are, you'd know is critical for tossing salad (a search not safe for work, easily sickened or pure of heart, but if you're kinky go for it).

There really are lots of questions that go unanswered here.

• What type of knucklehead uses Flappy the flag waving wonder eagle instead of the official emblem / seal / logo of the US Embassy in Iraq.
• Who put the bomp in the bomp-a-bomp-a-bomp? Who put the ram in the ram-a-lam-a-ding-dong? Who put the bop in the bop sh-bop sh-bop?
• Why did Parvaz Khan a Human Resources Officer create a PDF of the "document"?
• Is Gleen Ellers Thomas Francis Nancy Greenwald behind this whole shenanigan? He was quoted by congress or the senate or something

I guess it is kind of hard to find a decent US Embassy Logo to use, I mean it was on the second page google's image search.

On the upside we've got Romentum and if anybody will get to the truth behind this whole fire melting steel thingy Ron Paul will and damn it, he'll get put an end to this illegal war we're waging, pronto.

This message was approved by Flappy the salad tossing wonder eagle.

He likes syrup.

And don't blame me or Flappy if you're disturbed after googling "toss my salad", you were warned.

In desperate woman news. It looks like Jessica Simpson and that no talent hack John Mayer are done, over, fineto. If you're not familiar with John Mayer, he's the guy that sang a song about my body being a wonderland. If you're not familiar with Jessica Simpson:

For those of you upset by the lack of "hard-hitting" "serious" reporting around here, well, I'll start as soon as the WaPo and ABC do. Which means you'll all be welcoming CY's return week's wend.

Posted by: phin at 01:16 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 448 words, total size 3 kb.

Don't you just love it when a plan comes together?

US and Iraqi forces captured an Iraqi militant accused of "acting as a proxy for an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps officer" on Friday after a fierce gunbattle, the military said.

The joint snatch squad called in an air strike after coming under fire during a raid on the hideout of an alleged weapons smuggling gang in the notorious Sadr City district, a Shiite militia bastion in east Baghdad.

[snip]

EFPs are roadside bombs designed to fire a chunk of molten metal through the toughest armour plating. The United States accuses Tehran of smuggling hundreds of the devices to Iraq, where they have killed scores of US troops.

"Intelligence reports indicate the individual targeted is suspected of having direct ties to the leader of the EFP network as well as acting as a proxy for an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps officer," the statement said.

American forces previously captured a suspect in the Iranian EFP smuggling network in late March. I wonder how much longer it will be until we capture known Iranian Quds Force or Revolutionary Guard Corps officers... other than the ones we've already captured, of course.

The Iranian EFPs are the most deadly threat to U.S. heavy vehicles; indigenously-made Iraqi EFPs consistently fail against U.S. armor.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:38 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 230 words, total size 2 kb.

Joe Klein, Keith Olbermann, Brian Ross, etc., I think this is directed at you:

"Hello media, do you know you indirectly kill American soldiers every day? You inspire and report the enemy's objective every day. You are the enemy's greatest weapon. The enemy cannot beat us on the battlefield so all he does is try to wreak enough havoc and have you report it every day. With you and the enemy using each other, you continually break the will of the American public and American government.

"We go out daily and bust and kill the enemy, uncover and destroy huge weapons caches and continue to establish infrastructure. So daily we put a whoopin on the enemy, but all the enemy has to do is turn on the TV and get re-inspired. He gets to see his daily roadside bomb, truck bomb, suicide bomber or mortar attack. He doesn't see any accomplishments of the U.S. military (FOX, you're not exempt, you suck also).

[snip]

"Media, we know you hate the George Bush administration, but report both sides, not just your one-sided agenda. You have got to realize how you are continually motivating every extremist, jihadist and terrorist to continue their resolve to kill American soldiers."

That refrain should be familiar to you by now, as similar thoughts are echoed across the blogosphere and in conversations with active-duty American servicemen almost universally.

But Funk isn't done. He doesn't leave out those of you who say you "support the troops, but not the war."

"We're treading water," the Ames man told the people closest to him. "We continue to kick butt on missions and take care of each other, even though we know the American public and government DOES NOT stand behind us.

Ohhhh, they all say they support us, but how can you support me (the soldier) if you don't support my mission or my objectives. We watch the news over here. Every time we turn it on we see the American public and Hollywood conducting protests and rallies against our 'illegal occupation' of Iraq."

Feel ashamed yet? Probably not. After all, he's just one soldier, and he's no Jesse MacBeth.

(H/T Blackfive)

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:52 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
Post contains 364 words, total size 2 kb.

It sure sounds odd but that is what the numbers seem to show in regard to military fatalities during the current and most recent administrations.

I'd be interested in countering arguments, should anyone feel like making them, though the figures provided may make a certain amount of sense in one context.

Anecdotally speaking, I recall that the various sports teams at my high school seemed to take more injuries in scrimmages than in games. Coaches often attributed such injuries to a lack of focus and less than full intensity on the part of the injured when other athletes were scrimmaging at "game speed."

Could it be that like athletes, soldiers take their "games"--real combat--more seriously than they do their practices, and are therefore perhaps more prone towards dangerous mistakes during peacetime drills and exercises than in combat?

David Petraeus, our commanding general in Iraq, could be a microcosm of these phenomena in his own right. Never wounded in war, he was shot in the chest in 1991 during a training exercise when a soldier tripped and his weapon discharged, nearly costing Petraeus his life.

IÂ’ve got no easy answers here, and would love to get your opinions in the comments.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:54 AM | Comments (19) | Add Comment
Post contains 220 words, total size 1 kb.

Allegations in today's Guardian that Iran may be supporting Sunni insurgents and al Qaeda in Iraq in anti-surge operations may come as a shock to some, but I can't imagine why:

Iran is secretly forging ties with al-Qaida elements and Sunni Arab militias in Iraq in preparation for a summer showdown with coalition forces intended to tip a wavering US Congress into voting for full military withdrawal, US officials say.

"Iran is fighting a proxy war in Iraq and it's a very dangerous course for them to be following. They are already committing daily acts of war against US and British forces," a senior US official in Baghdad warned. "They [Iran] are behind a lot of high-profile attacks meant to undermine US will and British will, such as the rocket attacks on Basra palace and the Green Zone [in Baghdad]. The attacks are directed by the Revolutionary Guard who are connected right to the top [of the Iranian government]."

The official said US commanders were bracing for a nationwide, Iranian-orchestrated summer offensive, linking al-Qaida and Sunni insurgents to Tehran's Shia militia allies, that Iran hoped would trigger a political mutiny in Washington and a US retreat. "We expect that al-Qaida and Iran will both attempt to increase the propaganda and increase the violence prior to Petraeus's report in September [when the US commander General David Petraeus will report to Congress on President George Bush's controversial, six-month security "surge" of 30,000 troop reinforcements]," the official said.

"Certainly it [the violence] is going to pick up from their side. There is significant latent capability in Iraq, especially Iranian-sponsored capability. They can turn it up whenever they want. You can see that from the pre-positioning that's been going on and the huge stockpiles of Iranian weapons that we've turned up in the last couple of months. The relationships between Iran and groups like al-Qaida are very fluid," the official said.

Iran is not "secretly forging ties" with al Qaeda; they've had them all along, possibly as far back as the 1996 Khobar Towers attack. al Qaeda operatives, including the 9/11 plotters have long used Iran as a gateway to Afghanistan, and al Qaeda operatives have lived in Iran since the fall of the Taliban.

That Iran would use "their" al Qaeda to hook up with al Qaeda operatives and other Sunni insurgents in Iraq to pursue their shared goal of forcing the United States out of Iraq is not only unsurprising, it is tediously predictable.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:31 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
Post contains 395 words, total size 3 kb.

Jules Crittenden takes a look behind the headlines to note that the intensive search operations for our missing soldiers in Iraq have led to a dramatic decease in al Qaeda activity in the so-called "Triangle of Death." He's got a dozen links, al worth reading.

Meanwhile, my buddy Michael Yon is in al Anbar, once al Qaeda's base of operations and the heart of the Sunni insurgency, and is bored out of his mind. This is the second time he's mentioned a lack of action there (here's the first) in as many days. He could get used to this. I think we all could, American and Iraqi alike.

Other parts of Iraq were not as quiet.

Sheikh Azhar al-Dulaymi, the Iranian-trained mastermind of the Karbala raid that killed five American soldiers killed in late January, was killed in Sadr City by U.S. forces.

Elsewhere in Iraq, seven U.S. soldiers were killed over the weekend, along with dozens of Iraqi civilians. Eight insurgents were killed and almost three dozen more were captured in a series of raids on Karmah, south of Baghdad.

Elsewhere in the War on Terror, Lebanese Army units fought intense battles with an al Qaeda-aligned group outside Tripoli. Speculation is that the group is backed by Syrian military intelligence at the behest of Syrian dictator Bashir Assad. The group is apparently led by Shaker al-Absi, a Syrian Air Force veteran that is thought to have fought against U.S. forces in Iraq and who is believed to have had links to al Qaeda in Iraq's former leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. According to a Washington Post report, on the terrorists killed, Saddam El-Hajdib , was a suspect in a failed train bombing in Germany.

Meanwhile, the McCain-Kennedy Illegal Alien Exploitation and Terrorist Proliferation Bill is under debate in the U.S. Senate. The bill would offer official documentation to illegal aliens without being able to verify who they actually are or where they come from, and would allow terrorists like the three illegal alien brothers who crossed over the Mexican border at Brownsville and were recently arrested plotting a terrorist attack on Fort Dix to continue to penetrate this country, now with the added bonus of being able to get legal status.

McCain and Republicans in the House and Senate want cheap labor at indentured servitude prices, while Democrats, knowing that illegals tend to break Democrat roughly 5:1 because of the Marxist/socialist politics of their home nations, hope to use illegals to establish an overwhelming permanent Democratic majority.

In the end, we're looking at a Congress that is willing to pass a law that would enable Osama bin Laden himself to get legal status here in the United States.

That is not a comment I'm making up; it comes directly from Mike Cutler, a 30-year veteran of the U.S. Immigration Service, who thinks the Senate bill should be referred to as the Terrorist Assistance and Facilitation Act of 2007.

I hate Mondays.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:37 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 493 words, total size 4 kb.

I don't agree with the threats, but I certainly share the frustrations.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:07 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 28 words, total size 1 kb.

The accused plotter worked for Doctors Without Borders. I'm guessing "first do no harm" principle of Doctors without Borders slipped by him in orientation.

The Israeli intelligence services say they have foiled a plot to assassinate Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other senior Israeli political figures. Details of the story were released yesterday after Israeli authorities lifted a media blackout.

The plot allegedly centered on Mazab Bashir, a 25-year-old Palestinian from Gaza who worked for the international medical relief organization Doctors Without Borders. According to the Israelis, Bashir was arrested in Jerusalem while he was gathering intelligence for future terrorist attacks.

It is not uncommon for Palestinians from Gaza to be granted travel permits by the Israeli security agencies if they work for recognized nongovernmental organizations. Bashir held such a permit, which allowed him to travel regularly from the Gaza Strip to Jerusalem, officials said.

The indictment said Bashir made several surveillance tours of the area surrounding Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Jerusalem residence but decided that the building was too well protected. Working with the Palestinian militant group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, he allegedly received hand to hand combat training and used the Internet to find alternative Israeli personalities to target.

Forbes was able to provide details of the alternative target list:

Once he deemed that the assassination of the prime minister was impossible, Bashir began collecting information on other top Israeli politicians, including Cabinet minister Avigdor Lieberman, deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh and Labor Party lawmaker Ophir Pines-Paz.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:31 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 266 words, total size 2 kb.

Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran.

That will be the take-away for most on this Telegraph article published today, and while that is an extreme bastardization of what former ambassador to the United Nations John Bolten actually said--he actually advocated an escalating course of significant economic sanctions, regime change, and the use of force only if nothing else works--the headline of "We must attack Iran before it gets the bomb" does accurately describe what appears at this point to be the probable end game.

Melanie Phillips does an admirable job of almost describing the stakes:

The choice is not between a negotiated peace with Iran and a war with appalling risks. It is a choice between a war with appalling risks and an Iran that will hold the world to nuclear ransom, having destroyed Israel as a throat-clearing exercise. It is a choice between war with Iran, and war with a nuclear Iran; war on our terms, and war on IranÂ’s terms; war in which we take the initiative and thus have every prospect of winning, and war in which Iran holds the trump card, which means we have a near certainty of losing.

At the same time, as Bolton also emphasised, making such a grim choice must be a last resort. All-out war with Iran is a prospect fraught with appalling perils and uncertainties. Only a fool would embark upon such a war precipitately. But only a fool would rule it out as a possibly inevitable last resort. The problem is that the EU — and parts of the US government — are behaving as if such a last resort is totally unthinkable. This has powerfully undermined the diplomacy, since Iran clearly believes — and with good reason — that the west simply isn’t serious about enforcing its will and will never go to war against Iran in any circumstances.

I this Phillips is right on the generalities of her statement, but would disagree with her comment that, "Iran that will hold the world to nuclear ransom, having destroyed Israel as a throat-clearing exercise."

Israel has developed an air force over the past decade with the express purpose of targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, which explains their purchase of long-range F-15I "Ra'am" and F-16I "Sufa" strike fighters. Israel has purchased 25 of the F-15I "Ra'am" strike fighters and 102 F-16I "Sufa" strike fighters, the last of which will be delivered in 2008. These aircraft have the capability of hitting Iranian targets without in-flight refueling, and with in-flight refueling, could target any location in that country. Both aircraft are capable of carrying "bunkerbuster" bombs thought to have been purchased from the United States, and would almost certainly be designed to carry the 60-85 nuclear weapons (according to the DIA) thought to be in Israeli inventories.

A U.S. Army paper cites the data of a fired Israeli nuclear technician, Mordechai Vanunu, who went public with his information in 1985, which seems to indicate:

...a sophisticated nuclear program, over 200 bombs, with boosted devices, neutron bombs, F-16 deliverable warheads, and Jericho warheads.

The same paper also indicates that Israel's military may already have official government authorization for a retaliatory nuclear strike if Israel was struck first with nuclear weapons.

Iran may very well destroy Israel as a nation in a nuclear first strike, but Israel's nuclear arsenal would answer holocaust with a holocaust, and as noted yesterday, the Hojjatieh cult running Iran may very well be depending on an Israel response to force a messianic return.

Iran will either be stripped of its nuclear weapons program, or Iran (and other countries) will be stripped of life.

While the headline was perhaps a bit misleading, it was nonetheless true: if economic sanctions and regime change efforts fail, we must attack Iran before it gets the bomb to avoid the deaths of tens of millions.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:48 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
Post contains 646 words, total size 4 kb.

I had an interesting twenty-minute face-to-face conversation with a Spec Ops soldier named "K.C." last night.

K.C. first jumped into Iraq on March 26, 2003 with the 173rd Airborne Brigade, in the largest combat air drop since WWII. He most recently served in a six-man Long Range Surveillance (LRS) unit. The LRS are direct descendents of the famed LRRP "A-teams" of the Vietnam War era.

He was careful not to mention assignments or duty locations, but based upon some of the things he stated in our conversation, I gather that he has served extensively in Iraq, and perhaps in Afghanistan as well. He is presently on leave.

During the course of our conversation, K.C. told me the same things I've heard time and again from soldiers at nearby Fort Bragg, airmen from Pope AFB, and the occasion Marines from Camp Lejune and MCAS Cherry Point.

Stop me if you've heard these before.

"The war you see in the media is not the war we are fighting."

If he has his way, K.C. would boot all media out of Iraq. Like others soldiers and Marines before him, he noted to problem of news organizations basing many of their stories based upon anecdotal conversations from locals with their own agendas, while ignoring the testimony of U.S. soldiers, or sometimes cherry-picking comments and dowdifying them to the point that they no longer reflected what the soldier actually said, reflected the battles they've fought, or the experiences they've had. Reporters have alsoeither ignored the physical evidence supporting soldiers contentions, or have been too ignorant or biased to assimilate the information.

K.C.'s observation reminds me of a conversation I had with a soldier who fought in Ramadi some months ago, who spoke of an attack in his area that left civilians dead. The media blamed the deaths on a firefight involving U.S. forces, even though it was 7.62x39mm shell casings (the cartridge used almost universally by Arab militaries, militias, and insurgent groups) and expended RPG fragments found at the scene of the attack, and no signs of American involvement were present.

K.C. related one particular story that obviously still bothered him, that of a school hit by insurgents during the early days of the war. The insurgents killed a number of children, and the media accounts he later saw attributed it to a U.S. airstrike.

I guess that even though the AP has stopped using his name since he was exposed as a fraud, Jamil Not-Hussein still really gets around.

I told him about milblogs, maintained by the active duty soldiers and veterans, and how I thought that if the military was smart, they'd make an effort to channel more information through them to bypass the media that he and other soldiers distrust so much, enabling soldiers to directly tell their stories and experiences to the world. He liked the concept quite a bit, even though he stated he couldn't write about what he personally did.

I hope any military brass that happen to be reading this listens.

"G--D--- Democrats"

Like every single soldier, airman and Marine I've talked to, K.C. is disgusted with Democrat politicians. He pulls no punches: he considers them supporters of terrorism. Period.

This is a sentiment I've also heard before, and interestingly enough, it seems, at least among those I've talked with, that the infantry soldiers and Marines who have spent the most time on the ground feel this the strongest.

Of course, this could have several reasons. The frontline soldiers have more personally invested blood, sweat and tears in the war, have lost friends, and have killed men in Iraq. They also interact with the Iraqi people, and would presumably know them and the culture better than support troops or the airmen I've spoken with. Some seemed to like the Iraqi people, some did not, but to a man, they all wanted to continue the mission and were visibly, coldly (and sometimes not so coldly) angry with Democratic attempts to lose the war.

I shook hands with K.C., wished him well, and told him to keep his head down as he prepares for his next deployment in Our Children's Children's War.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:46 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
Post contains 698 words, total size 4 kb.

I sincerely hope that I'm readying Steve Clemons wrong (my bold):

But this young man did serve his nation -- but his death is so incredibly tragic, like the others -- but his even more because his well-respected father has been working hard to end this horrible, self-damaging crusade. It's incredibly sad.

Is Clemon's really saying that this son's loss is more tragic than others, because the father shares Clemon's anti-war beliefs?

Jules Crittenden, who knew Professor Bacevich, offers a much more fitting tribute.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:57 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
Post contains 92 words, total size 1 kb.

U.S. News and World Report has a short post up concerning the simulation of nuclear detonations in the Middle East:

A simulation has determined that any major use of nuclear forces in the Middle East in the next decade would most likely be "existential," meaning that an attack would amount to an effort to destroy a nation and the ability of its people to ever recover from a nuclear exchange. The briefers determined that Israel would be vulnerable to such attacks--and so would any Iranian attacker. The simulation was developed by the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., to examine the nuclear dynamics likely to develop in the Middle East between 2010 and 2020.

"In fact," noted a Center for Strategic and International Studies summary of the briefing released today, "a nation like Iran--with so much of its economy, culture, and government concentrated in Tehran and a few other cities, might prove to be far more vulnerable to the forces Israel could develop than Israel would be to the forces Iran could hope to deploy" until the end of the 2010-2020 time period. The briefing covers the use of nuclear ground bursts, fallout, longer-term death rates, and population-killing strikes. Other targets will likely include oil and gas distribution and loading facilities, desalination and water purification plants, electric power plants, and refineries--targets likely to affect the general population.

First, is there ever a "minor" use of nuclear forces?

But that isn't my main focus here.

The writer of this piece seems to imply that Iran's vulnerability to a nuclear exchange would keep it from starting a nuclear exchange with Israel. To make such an assumption, if this is the writer's intent, is a failure of cultural understanding.

It would perhaps be fair to apply Western standards and values to the state of Israel, as so much of the Israeli population emigrated to Israel from western nations, and their society and government hold with Westernized cultural values, but to attempt to apply those same cultural values to an Iranian government run by this mullacracy is to avoid the plain fact that Iran's leaders have values shaped by a radical theology all their own.

The Iranian government--and hence its rapidly expanding nuclear weapons program, is slaved to the beliefs of a radical Shia sect called the Hojjatieh, a cult within Shia Islam so radical that it was outlawed in 1983 by Ayatollah Khomeini.

As notes the Persian Journal:

According to Shi'ite Muslim teaching, Abul-Qassem Mohammad, the 12th leader whom Shi'ites consider descended from the Prophet Mohammed, disappeared in 941 but will return at the end of time to lead an era of Islamic justice.

"Our revolution's main mission is to pave the way for the reappearance of the 12th Imam, the Mahdi," Ahmadinejad said in the speech to Friday Prayers leaders from across the country.

"Therefore, Iran should become a powerful, developed and model Islamic society."

"Today, we should define our economic, cultural and political policies based on the policy of Imam Mahdi's return. We should avoid copying the West's policies and systems," he added, newspapers and local news agencies reported.

Ahmadinejad refers to the return of the 12th Imam, also known as the Mahdi, in almost all his major speeches since he took office in August.

A September address to the U.N. General Assembly contained long passages on the Mahdi which confused Western diplomats and irked those from Sunni Muslim countries who believe in a different line of succession from Mohammed.

This fascination has prompted wild stories to circulate.

Presidential aides have denied a popular rumor that he ordered his cabinet to write a letter to the 12th Imam and throw it down a well near the holy city of Qom where thousands of pilgrims come each week to pray and drop messages to the Imam.

But what really has tongues wagging is the possibility that Ahmadinejad's belief in the 12th Imam's return may be linked to the supposed growing influence of a secretive society devoted to the Mahdi which was banned in the early 1980s.

Founded in 1953 and used by the Shah of Iran to try to eradicate followers of the Bahai faith, the Hojjatieh Society is governed by the conviction that the 12th Imam's return will be hastened by the creation of chaos on earth.

How seriously should we take the ruling Hojjatieh sect?

The executive summary of one study provided to the U.S. military by a strategic planning contractor stated:

Ultra-religious Shia clerics and Ahmadinejad are dedicated to the near-term messianic return of the 12th Imam via the creation of an apocalypse.

I don't think it gets much clearer than that.

The contention is that not only do the Hojjatieh anticipate the "creation of chaos on earth," they actively seek to create an apocalypse. Based upon their public pronoucements and nuclear weapons research, it seems quite clear that their preferred method is to instigate a nuclear attack against Israel. They know that Israel will respond with a retaliatory nuclear strike of their own, and are in fact, are more than likely counting on it.

It is this Israeli return nuclear strike on Tehran that Ahmadinejad and the Hojjatieh are counting upon to trigger the Madhi's return.

Iran and Ahmadinejad have been very clear in their desire to see Israel "wiped off the map," with multiple threatening pronouncements, and Ahmadinejad himself seems quite convinced that he is on a mission from Allah.

Mortal concerns and fears have little importance for an Iranian leadership seemingly bent on using a nuclear war to force a messianic return. Tens of millions may perish because a once-outlawed cult thinks a nuclear war will convince a four-year-old messiah to crawl out of a well in which he's been hiding 1,066 years.

I sadly fear that Democratic Party principles of avoidance will force our government to continue to discount the Iranian nuclear threat until after Iranian missiles are already arcing in towards Tel Aviv, at which point any further action against Iran will be addressed to a relative handful of survivors.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:41 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
Post contains 1020 words, total size 7 kb.

On Saturday, a U.S. patrol was ambushed near Mahmoudiya, Iraq. Four U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi soldier acting as their interpreter was killed in the ambush, and three soldiers are missing. The Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), an al Qaeda front group, is claiming responsibility for the attack, and has warned the thousands of coalition forces in the area to stop looking for the missing soldiers.

While we all obviously hope that the three missing soldiers will be recovered alive, I suspect that they were never captured alive to begin with, a sad suspicion shared at Hot Air. Knowing the fate in store for them if they did surrender--brutal torture followed by a YouTubed beheading--our soldiers would most likely fight to the death.

Because of this, I suspect al Qaeda managed a successful ambush and body thievery, but captured no living prisoners.

The al Qaeda cry to quit looking for the captured soldiers was likely issued from fears that the on-going search would further disrupt al Qaeda terrorist cells and turn up weapons caches. Thus far, two terrorists have been killed, four others wounded, and 100 people have been detained as the military sweep south of Baghdad continues.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:36 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 218 words, total size 1 kb.

Pat Dollard, Hollywood agent turned combat filmmaker and IED magnet, is echoing a sentiment I've been hearing more and more from fellow combat journalists: the war in Iraq is going very badly... for al Qaeda:

Terrorists are parasites. They rely on a host body to support them. Now they can terrorize a host body into providing them support, but that will only go so far. Ultimately, the host body must be somewhat sympathetic to the terrorists, or else, by sheer dint of numbers, the members of the host body will be able to reject the terrorists. These two principles explain the entire history of Al QaedaÂ’s reign over Al Anbar. Al Anbar, like Al Qaeda, is a Sunni entity. The people of Al Anbar were sympathetic enough to Al Qaeda that they provided them sanctuary, support and even manpower - which is to say, the very lifeblood that this parasite required. Finally, the Sunnis of Al Anbar had enough of the bleak and empty future, and very bloody present, that comprised the entirety of Al QaedaÂ’s offerings. And so the host body rejected the parasite. The parasite is now in its last possible refuge, the mixed Sunni/Shiite Triangle of Death & Diyala Province areas, just south and northeast of Baghdad, respectively. My time in Iraq started there, and will likely end there. Along with Al QaedaÂ’s.

There is a reason neither Al Qaeda or the Iranian Shiite Insurgents have no traction in Kurdistan. There is no sympathetic and compliant host body. There is a reason Al Qaeda has no traction in the southern/eastern Shiite areas of Iraq. There is no compliant, sympathetic (which is to say, Sunni) host body. There is only one place left with enough of a sympathetic, compliant host body for Al Qaeda to keep itself alive in. This is the mixed Sunni/Shiite Triangle of Death. An appropriate appellation for the battlefield of IraqÂ’s Apocalypse with its Public Enemy #1. Iraqis, Al Qaeda, U.S. forces. A triangle of death, indeed.

We're not hearing very much like this from the professional media nor the U.S. military, for very understandable and strikingly similar reasons.

The media staked out their narrative to a doomed war long ago, and will only begin to back off of that position once they are sure that al Qaeda,
and the Sunni insurgency is nearing collapse. The Iraqi government, U.S. government, and Coalition military and police forces are likewise cautious about overstating successes knowing that previous claims of a faltering insurgency have turned out to be false.

But Dollard's comments are part of a low, growing rumble from observers who have seen Iraq firsthand. Bill Roggio, J.D. Johannes, and others have been noting for several months the turnaround in al Anbar province, formerly the heart of the Sunni insurgency, as the Anbar Awakening has seen the overwhelming majority of the Sunni tribes once loyal to al Qaeda and the Sunni insurgency reject the terrorists, and accept the U.S. and coalition forces as allies. It is these tribes that are now leading the hunt for al Qaeda, joining the Iraqi police and military in record numbers, and when they cannot get into official government security positions fast enough to hunt the terrorists, using their own ad hoc tribal militias to establish neighborhood security checkpoints and choke al Qaeda off and attack and kill al Qaeda aligned tribes.

This Awakening movement has spread as al Qaeda becomes the hunted in Anbar. al Qaeda continues its flight to Diyala, only to find the Sunni Awakening spreading to Diyala as well.

The media, quick to notice stumbling blocks and setbacks, seems unable to mention the obvious truth that al Qaeda and their Sunni allies, along with similar efforts by Shia militias trained and equipped by Iran, are also in their own version of a surge to counter our own.

Shia death squads will step up attacks against Sunni civilians in an effort to stoke Sunni militancy, just as the Islamic State of Iraq, a Sunni insurgent umbrella group, attempts to goad Sunnis into attacks against Shia, and al Qaeda continues to indiscriminately target Sunni, Shia, and Kurd to increases tensions among all groups.

What the U.S. military is hoping to accomplish with the COIN doctrine will not end the insurgency overnight, nor was that ever the promise. What it does intend, and where it is succeeding, is in engaging the Iraqis and helping civilians tired of war turn on Sunni, Shia, and al Qaeda militants among them.

As Dollard and others have noted, and as the British noted in Mayala, insurgencies are only viable as long as the population will support them. While it typically takes a decade or longer to completely defeat an insurgency, they rarely (never?) succeed once the bulk of the population turns against them. Once that tipping point is reached, much more blood may yet be spilled, but the final outcome all but assured.

Dollard is correct when he states al Qaeda in Iraq may end in Diyala. The tipping point against them seems to have already been reached in al Anbar, with the bulk of their former allies turning against them, and now hunting them down like dogs. As the Diyala Awakening gathers momentum, al Qaeda and aligned insurgents will no doubt mount more spectacular, bloody attacks in an attempt to intimidate the population into compliance. Like in al Anbar, those attacks are only likely to fuel anti-al Qaeda, anti-insurgency sentiment.

It is still very possible, considering the political climate, that we can still lose the war in Iraq because of its unpopularity here in the United States, and a corrupt and incompetent Iraqi government apparently more interested in personal profit than national unity and reconciliation. Our military is stretched close to its limits, and the will of Iran and Syria to continue supporting various militias and insurgent groups does not appear to lack resolve, or any real consequences for their support from either the United Nations or the United States.

The governments of the United States, Great Britain, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and perhaps a dozen other countries near and far are attempting to shape Iraq's future for their own best interests. The various religions, sects, and tribes within Iraq have formed and split alliances over the past four-plus years, attempting to do what they think is best for themselves. With all of these internal and external actors attempting to exert power and influence, it is ultimately up to the Iraqi people to determine which fate will envelope their nation. Perhaps the rise of The Awakening al Anbar and Diyala are an indication that the future they are choosing is one of hope amidst the carnage.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:20 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 1119 words, total size 7 kb.

Writing today at RealClearPolitics, Mort Kondrake's basic solution to the problems poised by the Iraq War is genocidally specific:

Without prejudging whether President Bush's "surge" policy will work, the administration and its critics ought to be seriously thinking about a Plan B, the "80 percent solution" - also known as "winning dirty." Right now, the administration is committed to building a unified, reconciled, multisectarian Iraq - "winning clean." Most Democrats say that's what they want, too. But it may not be possible.

The 80 percent alternative involves accepting rule by Shiites and Kurds, allowing them to violently suppress Sunni resistance and making sure that Shiites friendly to the United States emerge victorious.

There is a certain simple genius to Kondrake's formulation.

If you don't like the problems poised by 20% of the population, simply eliminate the problematic population.

Why would anyone object?

Allah tackles this "solution" as well.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:33 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 156 words, total size 1 kb.

Once again, Congressional Democrats show which side they support in the Iraq War, and it isn't ours:

The Democratic-controlled House voted Thursday night to pay for military operations in Iraq on an installment plan, defying President Bush's threat of a second straight veto in a fierce test of wills over the unpopular war.

The 221-205 vote was largely along party lines and sent the measure to a cool reception in the Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is seeking a compromise with the White House and Republicans.

The bill was passed by House Democrats only as an act of political gamesmanship with our soldiers lives, as they that knew it would likely die in the Senate.

The continuing failure of anti-victory House Democrats to deliver a viable war funding bill is already impacting the military:

Delays in getting an emergency supplemental war-funding bill approved are causing disruption within the Defense Department, particularly among programs at home, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said today. The Army has slowed spending in numerous areas to free up money to fully fund wartime costs since President Bush vetoed war-spending legislation because it set a date for the return of combat forces from Iraq, Gates told the Senate Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee.

The bill included $93.4 billion to help fund U.S. forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the global war on terror, but stipulated that U.S. combat troops be out of Iraq by Aug. 31, 2008. It also included costs unrelated to the war.

Bush vetoed the bill because he rejects establishing a deadline for troop withdrawals, insisting that such decisions must be based on conditions in the war zone.

Gates told Congress today that delays in getting a spending bill approved are having "a growing impact here at home."

"The Army is already trying to cope with this," he said. Spending in various programs has slowed or stopped altogether, he said. Defense contracts are being withheld; hiring of civilian employees has slowed; and bases have begun resorting to month-to-month service contracts for services and supplies.

The failure of Democrats to fund our military at war has some U.S. Servicemen wondering if their paychecks may stop. It sounds like it's time for an important action alert:

Is it possible airmen might not get paid due to the rising costs of the war?

That's what many airmen have wanted to know since the Pentagon requested to divert $1.6 billion from the Navy and Air Force personnel accounts to the Army.

The Air Force has sent conflicting answers in the past three weeks. Last month, the Air Force hinted in a statement sent to Stars and Stripes that it was possible such a move could affect airmenÂ’s paychecks.

On Monday, an Air Force spokeswoman said that would "never" happen. A day later, Maj. Morshe Araujo said she made a mistake and such a scenario could happen if the money is not returned.

However, the Air Force is optimistic about the money being restored.

"I misspoke," said Araujo, a public affairs officer in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. "If the money is not returned or restored, there is a possibility."

Some might argue that servicemembers are underpaid, but it is not believed there has ever been a time in modern history that troops have not paid, especially while the country is at war.

Chet Curtis, director of Policy and Communications for the Air Force Association, said he couldn't recall off the top of his head whether such a thing has ever happened.

The association, an independent nonprofit Air Force advocate group, is calling upon its members to contact the Bush administration and members of Congress and urge them to boost funding for the Air Force.

The association put out an "Action Alert" on its Website under the headline: Air Force Funding Critical.

Although the Air Force is confident Congress will pass a supplemental bill and restore the funding to the personnel accounts, the service said on Tuesday it needs the money to pay their people.

But just remember...

...they support the troops.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:39 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
Post contains 687 words, total size 5 kb.

They keep telling us we're not at war with Iran:

U.S.-led forces conducted a raid in the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City early Thursday, killing three militants as they tried to break up a cell accused of smuggling weapons from Iran to fight U.S. forces, the military said.

The raid was part of the military's 12-week-old Baghdad security plan, meant to tackle the Sunni-led insurgents and Shiite militias and bring order to the violence-wracked Iraqi capital.

Just after midnight, a joint U.S.-Iraqi force on a raid in the southern part of the Shiite slum of Sadr City, came under fire from two buildings, the military said in a statement. After a gunbattle, the soldiers called in an airstrike that killed three armed insurgents, it said.

The force was searching for a cell suspected of smuggling weapons, including the devastating explosively formed penetrators, from Iran, the military said. The group was also accused of sending militants to Iran for training, the military said. The force detained four of the suspected militants during the raid, the military said.

This on-going Iranian involvement in Iraq should force Americans, particularly Congressional Democrats and waffling Republicans, to consider what will happen if American forces precipitously withdraw from Iraq. Iran, accused of training thousands of Shia insurgents and supplying weapons to both Shia and Sunni insurgents, is posing to fill the vacuum left by an American withdrawal.

If Democrats are successful in their neo-copperhead attempts to force an American withdrawal, many experts and long-time journalists expect that the Iranian attempts to take over Iraq by proxy may result in genocide and a clear PR victory for al Qaeda. Others rightly fear that such a threat will draw Saudi Arabia into a regional war based in Iraq, where Shias funded, trained, and equipped by Iran, will square off against Iraqi Sunnis trained, funded, and equipped by Saudi Arabia.

If the proxy war is contained to Iraq, the overwhelming numerical superiority of Shias in Iraq may very well lead to a either a mass exodus of Sunnis, or a mass genocide dwarfing the civilian casualties of the Iraq War thus far. The failed state would presumably fall under Iranian control from Baghdad south.

If the war is not contained to Iraq, and open hostilities break out between Iran and Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Gulf States such as Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, we could very well see a more expanded, more violent version of the 1984-87 Tanker War. In that conflict, which resulted from the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, Iran and Iraq began targeting merchant shipping in an attempt to cut off each other's oil exports. Seventy-one merchant ships, including oil tankers, were attacked in 1984 alone, forcing Lloyds of London to increase insurance rates on tankers and leading to a twenty-five percent reduction in Gulf shipping. Since the 1980s, advances in military missile technology has made it possible for all sides potentially involved in a regional war to unilaterally stop all Persian Gulf shipping. The result of such a stoppage would threaten global oil supplies, and the economic and national security of many nations.

This is at a minimum. It could get much worse.

A U.S. pullout in 2008 could potentially lead to an economically-necessitated re-invasion of Iraq and a direct conflict with Iran within the next five years.

While Iran's naval and air force assets could be theoretically be reduced with minimal U.S. losses, a scenario predicted by DOD strategic planning contractor VII, Inc. called "Yalu II," in a January 2006 document called "Iranian President-Islamic Eschatology: Near Term Implications," posits that the Iranian military may respond to their air and naval shortcomings by sending up to 350,000 conventional Army forces, supplemented by roughly 1,800 tanks and 2,300 towed and self-propelled artillery pieces, across southern Iraq. This scenario was presented by VII before threats of a wider regional war were being discussed. I would add to VII's assessment that Iran may do more than invade southern Iraq, and may opt to attack Saudi Arabia though Kuwait, threatening, at least on paper, King Khalid Military City, the Saudi Persian Gulf city of Jubail and the Saudi military bases concentrated around Jubail, and the Saudi Capital of Riyahd itself.

Ultimately, such a direct assault on Saudi Arabia would probably lead to an Iranian defeat as their supply lines would be very vulnerable to Saudi Arabian and allied air superiority, but by then, Iran would have either captured or destroyed Iraqi and Kuwaiti oil terminals and wells. Were this scenario to play out, this would mean that Iran would control or would have destroyed 32% of Gulf oil production, based upon 2003 estimates.

This sequence of events is of course speculative.

Iran may very well be content to use their Shia militia allies to overthrow Iraq internally, and confine themselves to isolating Iraqi Sunnis and Kurds instead of eliminating them wholesale. They would then control roughly 20% of Persian Gulf oil exports directly, while still being able to threaten the 90% of Persian Gulf oil exported by supertanker through the Straits of Hormuz as they continue down the path of developing nuclear weapons.

What is the best way to head off either scenario?

The answer is obvious: keep Coalition forces engaged in Iraq targeting Sunni and Shia extremist cells like the one American soldiers attacked today. Force the Iraq government into making progress on unresolved issues, and perhaps consider replacing Prime Minster Maliki if he fails to make progress, by supporting other candidates for the position. Keep engaging Sunni and Shia moderates, while building up Iraqi police and Army forces. While internal Iraqi groups are relying on external forces to build their powerbases, America should continue to support that national cultural, political, and security needs of Iraq. Continue the COIN strategy to root out insurgents and develop regional and national Iraqi unity. Continue to support insurgent movements in Iran to destabilize the mullacracy.

It should be blindingly obvious to all sides concerned that a failure to resolve the political and security needs of Iraq now will only necessitate a later, perhaps larger and longer military reentry into the region, after what many predict will be a large and unnecessary loss of civilian lives.

After four years of muddled strategies, real progress is being made in Iraq. Al Anbar, long the home of the Sunni insurgency and al Qaeda's launching ground, has turned against al Qaeda and is joining the political process, developments that have been reported on scarcely in the western media. A similar movement is now emerging in Diyala Province, as Iraqis target, hunt and kill al Qaeda terrorists and the insurgents of the Islamic State of Iraq.

You will have a very hard time discovering this through the traditional media, however, as they tend to underestimate the importance of such tectonic cultural shifts which are very hard to translate into a press dominated by "if it bleeds, it leads" philosophy.

The groups primarily active in an opposition to the "surge" of American troops are al Qaeda and their allies in the Islamic State of Iraq, who are staging their own counter-surge, aimed as much at western media as the Iraqi people.

If you note news accounts of the last several months as the surge began, the types of attacks in Iraq shifted.

Sectarian attacks have dropped substantially, as al Qaeda and the ISI have shift to an intensified pattern of often randomized car and truck bombings meant to capture media attention and draw away from the fact that their internal support within Iraq is faltering. The goal of their media campaign is transparent; make it appear that the situation on the ground in Iraq is unchanged or becoming worse, thereby increasing American resistance to remaining in Iraq, even as their own base of support falters and threatens outright collapse.

Indeed, the U.S. military and astute observers predicted this, and so they expect an increase in spectacular media-generating attacks on civilians and Coalition military and police casualties as these forces more forcefully project themselves into areas and increase pressure on anti-government forces.

If you listen to our men in the field—not the Washington politicians who say they will refuse to believe signs of progress, or lie about what they have heard—you will hear many opinions, but the one most common is that they see a real difference in Iraq since the implementation of the COIN strategy. They are even petitioning Congress for courage, and not to give up, even when it is their lives on the line.

We're going to have to finish this war. The only question is whether Democrats lead the cut-and-run now and give al Qaeda and Iran a clear victory setting up a potential genocide, or whether or not we continue the successes now being seen in al Anbar, Baghdad, and Diyala.

The later approach will save for more Iraqi and American lives in the long run. I hope we have strong enough leadership that we only have to fight this war once, but with Democrats still attempting to surrender to al Qaeda and other Islamofascists, and the far left increasingly in bed with Islamofascists, I fear all we may accomplish is a brief, bloody intermission before we refight this war on a larger, bloodier scale.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:56 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 1549 words, total size 11 kb.

If you use bloglines and have the ABC News International feed, you might have seen something like this today:

It you actually clicked the link, however, you'd end up here.

Do you have questions about situation in Darfur? Send your questions and see them answered next week on our 24-hour news network, ABC News Now.

Screen Cap:

I've got a question, Terry: Why can't ABC News tell the difference between Darfur and Iraq?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:31 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 77 words, total size 1 kb.

Via CNN:

British police arrested the wife of one of the July 7, 2005 suicide bombers as well as three other suspects in early morning terror-related raids Wednesday.

While the identities of the suspects have yet to be officially released, sources told CNN the woman being held is 29-year-old Hasina Patel, the widow of Mohammad Sidique Khan, one of the 7/7 suicide bombers.

Patel and two men aged of 30 and 34 were arrested by officers from the Metropolitan Police Service Counter Terrorism Command in the West Yorkshire, England area. A fourth man, 22, was arrested in West Midlands.

A statement from Scotland Yard said, the four were arrested under the country's terrorism laws "on suspicion of the commission, preparation, or instigation of acts of terrorism."

The arrests were made in a "pre-planned, intelligence-led operation," the statement said, as part of an ongoing investigation into the July 7 attacks on London's transportation system that killed 52 people and injured 700.

The arrests are part of an on-going investigation to help roll-up the support network that enabled four suicide bombers to carry out the series of attacks that occured almost to years ago, and more arrests are possible.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:13 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 213 words, total size 1 kb.