August 7, 2006

Web Reconnaissance for 08/07/2006

A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention.


Victor Davis Hanson writes Not Just Land: Middle East Conflict Is About Failed Culture. “Despite the claims of terrorist organizations, Israel's current two-front war is not just about land. After all, Hezbollah and Hamas fired rockets from Lebanon and Gaza well after Israel had withdrawn from both places. Indeed, if sacred Arab ground were the driving force of the Middle East crisis, then surely Syria itself would now be willing to risk a shooting war over the all important Israeli-occupied Golan Heights . Meanwhile, Cairo is still perhaps the nexus of virulent Arab anti-Semitism, even though Israel finished handing over Sinai to Egypt in 1982.” (read more)

Quid Nimis writes Chait: Blind Guy Touching the Elephant “Jonathan Chait, a senior editor of the New Republic, takes a look at how Hollywood is making best efforts to bridge the cultural divide by developing a sitcom that features a conservative pundit. Really, this being Hollywood, they are just trying to make money by appealing to the faceless millions who inexplicably voted for George Bush, but they are spinning it as outreach. Its an interesting strategy to supposedly appeal to Liberals and Moderates by reaching out, and to Conservatives who may be able to identify with the central character. Uh-huh.” (read more)

MAJ P of Rule 308 and OPFOR writes MAJ Fridley and the Class of 08 “I want to say WELCOME HOME and GOOD WORK to all the men of the Army reserve 80th Division who have just returned from a year in Iraq. Many steps forward, some steps back during this year, but the advances are due to soldiers like them. One of them is my BR, MAJ Mitch Fridley VMI '89. Here's an article he wrote some weeks ago that I wanted to save until he was home safe and sound. In the photo below you can see him during the convoy he described. In his hand is a little ingot of metal he took with him, and that he sent back to the cadets of the class of 2008, who had it melted down so that a little of it could go in their rings, which they will receive this fall.” (read more)

Dafydd writes Yet Another ‘18½ Minute Gap’ “The surreal argument advanced by Democrats -- now including nearly all of them, other than the soon to be unemployed Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT, 80%) -- is that we should have waited until the last, possible moment before the invasion window closed, just on the off chance that it was all a terrible mistake: that there were no WMD programs, that Saddam Hussein was really a nice guy, and all things black and ugly we thought we knew about him were just lies, spread by his competitors.” (read more)

Blackfive writes US Army Infantry Graduation Speech “Via SFC (ret) Joseph, LTC Randolph C. White Jr. delivers the graduation speech for the newest batch of Infantrymen to complete training at Ft. Benning, Georgia, on April 21st, 2006. This video is 12 minutes and 11 seconds long and will be the best 12:11 minutes you'll spend online this weekend.” (read and view more)

Jack Army writes Willing to Adopt? “If you are willing to adopt one of my Soldier's for our upcoming deployment, send me an email. I'll match up Soldiers with folks who want to correspond with them. For those of you interested, I ask two things:” (read more)

John Hawkins writes Reutersgate: Is Adnan Hajj Just The Tip Of The Mountain? “The hottest story in the blogosphere this week-end was a photoshopped picture that Reuters ran. The pic was put together by Adnan Hajj, who has now been fired. Of course, this raises a lot of questions. For example, are there other photoshopped pics out there by Adnan Hajj? Although I'm not a photoshop junky, this one certainly looks suspicious.” (read more)

Cassandra writes Seeing Is Believing “How often in life do we prefer the evidence of our eyes over what we hear with our own ears? After all, words can be deceptive. People twist the truth, beguile our hearts with honeyed phrases or pour subtle poison in our ears to make us doubt where we once loved. But what we see with our own two eyes must be the truth, isn't it? The eyes don't deceive us. They are an unfiltered and neutral recorder of life's ups and downs, its glowing victories and bitter defeats; those quiet moments of beauty amid the storms of daily events. They are, aren't they? Of course they are. We can trust our eyes.” (read more)

No comments: