A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention.
In the News: (Registration may be required to read some stories)
Military Ties Iran To Arms In Iraq “Senior U.S. military officials in Iraq sought Sunday to link Iran to deadly armor-piercing explosives and other weapons that they said are being used to kill U.S. and Iraqi troops with increasing regularity.” (READ MORE)
Clinton's Search for Common Ground Gets Mixed Reviews in N.H. “Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) touted the politics of the possible Sunday during her inaugural visit to New Hampshire as a presidential candidate, a message that found an energetic but not ecstatic reception in town-hall meetings and house parties across the state.” (READ MORE)
Falling in Polls, French Socialist Offers Platform “Presidential Hopeful Royal Proposes Juvenile Boot Camps, Free Contraceptives.” (READ MORE)
Iran arms Iraqi insurgents “Iran is supplying deadly shoulder-fired missiles and armor-piercing bombs to Iraqi insurgents, along with TNT, triggering devices, rockets and other weapons that are killing and injuring hundreds of U.S. and allied troops.” (READ MORE)
Congress tackles global warming “More than a dozen competing measures have been introduced in Congress on the issue of global warming -- some minor, such as creating incentives for biofuel research, and others more drastic, such as taxing automakers for selling gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles.” (READ MORE)
Fallon to recruit Arab nations for help “The new commander of U.S. military forces in the Middle East, Adm. William Fallon, says he will set a high priority on enlisting the help of friendly Arab and Asian nations in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and against the al Qaeda terrorist network...” (READ MORE)
Sunni Arab states fortify against Iran “Leaders of Sunni Arab states are embarking on a military spending spree in an attempt to contain the growing threat from Iran.” (READ MORE)
From the Front:
Michael Yon: Roughnecks “While some enemy were attaching mortar tubes to base-plates, adjusting the bipods and dialing elevation and deflection, others must have been pulling the safety pins off the mortar fuses. Unfortunately for them, the 2-7 was loose in Mosul on the raid. In the air, the ‘Roughneck’ Scout Weapons Platoon (1-17 CAV from the 82nd Airborne) was buzzing over Mosul supporting our raid, and their little OH-58D ‘Kiowa Warrior’ helicopters were armed with rockets and machine guns. While we call the little helicopters ‘Warriors,’ the enemy calls them ‘mosquitoes.’” (READ MORE)
Bill Roggio: Pakistan -Peace in Our Time “U.S. forces have begun to conduct artillery strikes into western Pakistan from Afghanistan. In an interview with the Associated Press, Colonel John Nicholson, the commander of the 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, which operates in eastern Afghanistan, ‘described the fighting along the border, particularly in Afghanistan's Paktika and Khost provinces, as intense...’” (READ MORE)
Bill Roggio: Evidence of Iran supplying weapons, expertise to Iraqi insurgents “The U.S. military unveiled the first round of evidence of Iran's complicity in supplying Iraqi insurgents with sophisticated explosive devices and weaponry. An unnamed military explosive expert and a defense intelligence official, along with Coalition Spokesman Major General Bill Caldwell presented the evidence to the Baghdad press corps this morning.” (READ MORE)
Bill Roggio: Hunting al-Masri; Al-Qaeda's Strelas (updated with video) The Hunt for al-Masri “Coalition forces received a big break yesterday, with the arrest of a close aide to Abu Ayyu al-Masri, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Al-Masri's aide was captured at a gas station in Mahmoudiya, a city just south of Baghdad.” (READ MORE)
Acute Politics: Amazing Grace “The haunting wail of bagpipes is drifting over our corner of Camp Ramadi. Bravo company's amateur pipist is slowly pacing while he practices a song none of us want to hear. The tune he plays is Amazing Grace. Tomorrow morning he will play it at the memorial service for CPL Shannon, the first member of our task force to die here in Iraq.” (READ MORE)
Acute Politics: Heads Up “As many of you have no doubt heard, we lost three soldiers just a few days ago. There was something of a slip up somewhere in the process, and the facts of the incident were released before the official DOD brief (but after the families had heard, thank God). All three were from my platoon…” (READ MORE)
Badger 6: Badgers Down: The Work Continues “Department of Defense has still not released the names, and I am going to doggedly hang on to them until that is done, although it may be moot at this point. TD at Acute Politics will be doing the same thing. The Soldiers were all from his Platoon.” (READ MORE)
Andrew Olmstead: Considering Consequences “Let us imagine, for a moment, that it is summer 1944. Allied armies are rolling across France towards the Low Countries and the German border. Assume also that we are in charge of determining the Allied response to a surprise twist in the war: Spain is providing support to the Axis powers.” (READ MORE)
Tanker Brothers: My Iraq “What are we doing here? That is a question I hear quite often from those who oppose our actions in the Middle East. What are we doing here? We are giving people the opportunity to fight for their freedom. Freedom is not a concept that is given, it is earned. It is the costliest of human aspirations and the one thing most easily squandered.” (READ MORE)
Omar: A Sunday Night in Baghdad. “Last night was a sleepless one for me. It rolled on until around 4 in the morning and though exhausted I couldn’t sleep. I’ve come to actually like these times because at this hour 99% of Baghdad’s private generators are shut down and the city becomes, for a brief period, enjoyably silent. It was dark in my room except for a pale ray of moonlight coming through the window. Suddenly the floor began to tremble and a loud roaring sound broke the silence "What the…!" I thought. Then something really creepy happened. That pale ray of moonlight vanished leaving me in total darkness.” (READ MORE)
On the Web:
Suzanne Fields: I'm in Denial, You're in Denial “Nothing corrupts intellectual power like the abuse of the language. Free speech becomes an endangered species when powerful words, misused, become shortcuts for specious argument and repetitious cliches trivialize noble ideas.” (READ MORE)
Dinesh D'Souza: Letting the left off the hook “Why are some conservatives so determined to let liberals off the hook for 9/11?” (READ MORE)
Harry R. Jackson, Jr.: Psalm 2:8 “Most Americans are only starting to wake up to the fact that modern Islam is planning a sinister plot to take over the world during the next two decades” (READ MORE)
Crazy Politico: Where's the Beef? “So, Barak Obama is running for President. Yahoo, really, Yahoo. One of the cornerstones of his candidacy is his thought of universal health care for America. He's mentioned it in a number of speeches, including yesterday's making his run officials. He tells us how important it is, but He's never given any specifics on how he's going to make it happen.” (READ MORE)
Bruce Thornton: The Truth about Tolerance “Acceptance of a double standard has always been a sign of inferiority. To let someone behave according to one set of principles or values while demanding that you be subjected to others is to validate a claim of superiority that justifies the inconsistent and unfair behavior. A double standard can also reflect incoherent thinking, a failure to apply consistently a principle that presumably has universal validity.” (READ MORE)
Kobayashi Maru: Global Warming Logic: Ten Yes/No Questions “One thing that strikes me as particularly absurd in the climate change 'debate' is the grand leap of logic those on the left tend to make. If they were to clearly lay out their logic in getting from data to specific policy prescriptions (a process requiring answering a handful of simple, logical questions--see below), one of two things would occur. Either a) their detractors would be much more easily convinced or b) their logic and/or assumptions would be shown to be faulty.” (READ MORE)
Allahpundit: AP alters CAIR quote in story about Ayaan Hirsi Ali “The first quote comes from an AP article written by William C. Mann and entitled ‘Critic of Islam finds new home in U.S.’ that moved on the wire at 2:05 a.m. The second is from an AP article by the same author with the same title that moved at 10:14 a.m. I compared the text of the first story to the text of the second side by side in MS Word and the two are completely identical except for the CAIR quote.” (READ MORE)
Jay Tea: Surprise, surprise, surprise! “This just in: raising the minimum wage COSTS JOBS! Gee, who coulda seen THAT one coming? Oh, yeah, I did. And so did a lot of others. Back when the Democratic plan to raise the minimum wage was being debated, I had a question: of all the people who get hired at minimum wage, how many of them are still making that a year later?” (READ MORE)
William Teach: Wasn’t America The Root Of All Evil In The World? “Funny how so many around the world, and here in the USA (read liberals /lefties /progressives /Democrats) think that the USA is the worst, most dangerous country in the world. Meanwhile, people are streaming in, both legally and illegally, to take advantage of the freedoms and possibilities one can only get here. Case in point:” (READ MORE)
The Sundries Shack: Horribly Oppressed Dixie Chicks Win Award, Remain Horribly Oppressed “It’s obvious that the Bush Administration doesn’t have its dissent-crushing machinery fine tuned quite yet. ‘The Dixie Chicks know about negative talk: The country superstars turned into red-state pariahs after lead singer Natalie Maines criticized President Bush during a 2003 concert, on the eve of the Iraq invasion.’” (READ MORE)
TigerHawk: On the building of armies from scratch in times of war “Lt. Gen. David Petraeus (pictured with TigerHawk in October 2005 at right) has assumed command of Coalition forces in Iraq. His job is to give effect to the Bush administration's new plan for stabilizing Iraq sufficiently to allow for the further development of its post-Ba'athist political and military institutions.” (READ MORE)
Baron Bodissey: Sheikh Gilani’s Money Pipeline “Khadijah Ghafur is a follower of Sheikh Gilani, the Pakistani founder of the Muslims of America and Jamaat ul-Fuqra. She herself established the Jamaat ul-Fuqra compound known as ‘Baladullah’ in rural California. Last August a California Superior Court judge sentenced her to fourteen years in prison for embezzling money from a chain of charter schools that she established.” (READ MORE)
Blue Crab Boulevard: Hard, Cold Fact “Peter Brown, the assistant director of the Quinnipiac Polling Institute, takes a look at the electoral chances of two dark horse candidates for the presidency, Al Gore and Newt Gingrich. Both men appear to be waiting in the wings for a possible run at the nomination, with ardent advocates among the party faithful.” (READ MORE)
Bladilocks: Anna Nicole Smith “A woman died today, one who had money, fame and good looks. She had everything—and nothing. Here was a woman who seemed to go every which way in her public and private lives to gain ‘love’ but it seemed to elude her nonetheless.” (READ MORE)
Right Wing Nut House: Obamania: Run Obie Run! “It’s been a long time since we here in Illinois had a favorite son to cheer on in the Presidential race. The much beloved former Illinois Senator Paul Simon, was a candidate in 1988 and ran a throwback race. The gentle man with horn rimmed glasses, bow tie, and professorial manner was an unreconstructed liberal in the classic sense.” (READ MORE)
ShrinkWrapped: Paradigm Shift and Paradigm Collapse “The Cold War and, especially the period between the end of the Cold War and 9/11, represented a unique period of illusory stability which was shattered by 9/11. However, the underlying changes to our society had been eroding the sense of stability and undermining our paradigms well before 9/11; such underlying changes are accelerating.” (READ MORE)
Jules Crittenden: Guess Who Iran Into “Strangely, there are people in this country and elsewhere who think we are bullying Iran, who talk about the threat of an unprovoked US attack on Iran, who can’t believe George Bush is manufacturing excuses for another war, this time with Iran.” (READ MORE)
Dan Riehl: Up To $250k In Heinz-Kerry Money Went To So-Called Global Warming Expert “Amid unfounded and frivolous charges that the Bush administration and the American Enterprise Institute are involved in pay for play science on Global Warming, it seems Theresa Heinz Kerry previously directed an unrestricted cash gift of up to a quarter million dollars to a nuclear scientist become climatologist, now leading the charge of doom-sayers on Global Warming.” (READ MORE)
Scott Johnson: Not ready for prime time “On his first day of campaigning as an official candidate for president, Barack Obama committed what would in days of old have been recognized as a major international blunder. Times have changed, of course.” (READ MORE)
McQ: "Loose Change" and Global Warming consensus - the similarities “Apparently, among many others, the "Loose Change" phenomenon has claimed another convert at the Evening Standard in the UK: Of course Loose Change cobbles together a string of "facts" which, on first blush, seems to paint a plausible picture. Of course, the problems arise when you get under the surface of the story.” (READ MORE)
Reformed Chicks Blabbing: Yeah, they really want debate “The Democratic House leadership is demonstrating that they want debate as much as the Democratic leadership in the Senate: ‘A House vote on Iraq this week will be limited to the question of supporting President Bush's troop escalation, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said Sunday.’” (READ MORE)
Chickenhawk Express: A Haditha Marine Father Has a Question for Alan Colmes “I am still fuming about Alan Colmes' claims of convictions and confessions from the Haditha Marines. Below is a copy of an email that David Allender at Defend Our Marines has put together to send to FoxNews and Alan Colmes...” (READ MORE)
John Noonan: Throwing Down “Kevin O'Meara, the same guy who launched a one-man campaign to hate on The Blog of War, has come after our own beloved Lightning. Responding to Lightning's "A Mercenary's Perspective" post, O'Meara writes: ‘Talking to these people is like talking to my dog... they look and probably turn their head a little but cannot understand anything. Here one of the wingnuts tries to prove I was wrong by saying the soldiers work for the "populace" by showing how brilliant he is.’” (READ MORE)
Cassandra: Next Up In The Cognitive Dissonance Sweepstakes... Jim Webb!!! “Heh. Keep digging, Senator. Because if you can keep coming up with material like this, I can keep drinking all week:” (READ MORE)
Amir Taheri: Gen. Petraeus Real Problem “When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says that she does not consider Iraq to be ‘a war to win, but a situation to manage,’ Iraqis otherwise likely to side with Petraeus will think twice. All this past week, the discussion in Baghdad teahouses centered on a mystery: How could so many senators declare support for U.S. troops in Iraq while pressing for a resolution to oppose their mission?” (READ MORE)
Neptunus Lex: There’s all kinds of respect “Other folks are all over the quote attributed to WaPo blogger William Arkin by Deborah Howell, the paper’s ombudsman: ‘Arkin is unrepentant about two things: He works for The Post. Period. And he said he is ‘probably one of the best-known and respected anti-military military bloggers.’ Apart from the obvious AHA! reaction, this raises a couple of interesting points:” (READ MORE)
Confederate Yankee: Missing in Action “According to a source in Baghdad, the dozens of checkpoints manned by Madhi Army militamen in the Shia areas are now missing in western Baghdad as of Monday, and the militamen themselves are absent from public view. The western media should be able to confirm this fairly soon. In the meantime, the U.S. has locked down the Rusafa district in preparation of sweeps in eastern Baghdad. These operations have been confirmed as part of the much-discussed surge:” (READ MORE)
Captain Ed: Obama Goes After Hillary “The Democrats can forget about the 2008 primary being a love-in. The same weekend that Barack Obama threw his hat into the ring, he also aimed a few brickbats at the front-runner over her vote on the war in Iraq. Obama wants to make a clear delineation between himself and Hillary Clinton as the obvious standardbearer for the Left:” (READ MORE)
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