A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.
In the News: (Registration may be required to read some stories)
U.N. Budget Boom - Most of our readers probably wouldn't mind working for an outfit whose budget is slated to expand by 25% next year. But then again, most of our readers don't work for the United Nations. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's proposed "initial" budget for 2008-09 is $4.2 billion, a mere 15% increase over the Secretariat's current budget. (READ MORE)
Bush Faces Pressure to Shift War Priorities - With violence on the decline in Iraq but on the upswing in Afghanistan, President Bush is facing new pressure from the U.S. military to accelerate a troop drawdown in Iraq and bulk up force levels in Afghanistan, according to senior U.S. officials. (READ MORE)
Despite Harsh Rule, Burma's East Proves Hard to Tame - KLERDEY, Burma -- For a repressive police state, Burma has borders that are curiously porous. Here along the eastern border with Thailand, legions of displaced farmers, smugglers and army deserters slip back and forth with little trouble and no paperwork. (READ MORE)
China Scouts Colleges to Fill Ranks of Modern Army - BEIJING -- The fliers circulating last month on the campuses of China's most prestigious universities showed three soldiers positioned against a Chinese flag and an appeal that read in part: "Carry Your Pen to the Army to Become More Accomplished." (READ MORE)
Synthetic DNA on the Brink of Yielding New Life Forms - It has been 50 years since scientists first created DNA in a test tube, stitching ordinary chemical ingredients together to make life's most extraordinary molecule. Until recently, however, even the most sophisticated laboratories could make only small snippets of DNA -- an extra gene or two to be inserted into corn plants, for example, to help the plants ward off insects or tolerate drought. (READ MORE)
Iraqis Back in Control of Basra - Britain yesterday turned over responsibility for security to Iraqi forces in Basra, concluding its principal mission in the last of four provinces that were placed under British command after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. (READ MORE)
Violence Quelled, Baghdad on Spot - President Bush's troop surge will end this month, and although the White House is pressing the Iraqi government to capitalize on the U.S. military's success, it is declining to set hard deadlines for Iraqi lawmakers to pass critical legislation. (READ MORE)
Contractors Elude Scrutiny - From federal inmate to federal security contractor, Richard S. Hudec's fast rise poses a troubling question about the government's oversight of security companies: How could a four-time convicted felon help broker more than $150 million in government security contracts without anybody knowing? (READ MORE)
Young Gunmen Try to 'Glorify' Columbine - Last week's deadly Colorado church shootings were no exception. Web postings left by 24-year-old Matthew Murray show he idolized Columbine High School gunmen Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and wanted to emulate their deadly 1999 rampage. (READ MORE)
On Some Streets Quaint is Better Than a Famous Name - The opening of another Starbucks coffee shop in the District isn't likely to draw much attention, but drive an hour north and the reaction is far different. (READ MORE)
From the Front:
all expenses paid afghan vacation: can do vs. must do? - As I’m sure many already know this year Afghanistan has seen the worst violence since we first came in 2001. There have been rough times with poppy cultivation exploding out of control, struggling corruption in the government, and an ongoing insurgency that still poses a real threat…as seen the by recent battle to recapture Musa Qala in Helmand province from the the Taliban who had control of the area since February. However, Iraq still remains a bigger priority in the eyes of American commanders…rightly so. (READ MORE)
Desert Dude: 15 December - Got up this morning around 0645 and hit the showers…mission day…going to check out a school and a district center about 30 minutes away…got my weapons and gear out to the truck and had to hunt down the big gun…two people had the same M249 signed out of the armory and neither one of them had it in their possession…had to go to another guy’s room and see if he had it…he had it but said he was using it today…I went back to check the patrol sheet, went back to his room, and told him he was using another weapon that he had signed out…that weapon was in someone else’s room too…went to wake up that guy to get the weapon for the other guy to put in his truck so I could get my weapon… (READ MORE)
ETT PA-C: Forget Osama! We found more Keebler Elves! - I know I said the other day I wouldn't talk about Qalat and all the desert stuff but when I downloaded the pictures I was reminded of the bakery at the provincial headquarters. SGM and I started wandering, as always and usually with the intent to procure items of interest, and came across a 10X20 room full of guys making dough and baking bread. I'd heard about it and reaped the benefit of the warm bread before but never seen it made. So, here we go........ (READ MORE)
From an Anthropological Perspective: Back in the Saddle - I've been offline in more than one way these past three weeks. I experienced my first Iraqi cold and it was a butt-kicker. It started up slow, kind of like a diesel engine, but once it warmed up it kept on going. But I'm well now and should be posting again (not that my record of posts is great). What to post about though is the new question. Surviving this cold has enabled me to view the conflict in Iraq from a new perspective because I am now assigned to Brigade headquarters and living on a super-fob. (READ MORE)
Outlaw 13: I'm Back! - America...F#@h yeah! It seemed like it took forever, but a couple of days ago I finally made it home. Someone in charge of customs and who goes where prior to flights home needs to be taken out and shot...but that's another story. Well 30 hours in the sterile area of customs awaiting your flight to the states is a long and boring story, a story that's almost enough to make you want to go out and hunt down the persons responsible. But I guess that's why they take your ammo away before you get there. But that's all done now. (READ MORE)
IraqPundit: An Inconvenient Truth? - It seems almost everyone knows that Iraq's getting better. The UK returned Basra to the Iraqis, children are back in school, shoppers crowd markets for holiday presents, and refugees are returning from Syria and Jordan. Of course there Iraq is still far from back to normal, but Inshallah it is on its way. British Maj Gen Binns said Iraqi security forces had proved they were ready to take over. "I came to rid Basra of its enemies and I now formally hand Basra back to its friends," he added. And the 4,500 British troops still in Iraq will now take a backseat role, focusing on training Iraqi forces. (READ MORE)
Jason's Iraq Vacation: A Letter to my Wife on her Birthday - Dear Rachael, As you know, I am pretty bad when it comes to being an emotional person. In fact, I suck at it. Every year, I try to write something nice and sensitive in a card for you, and every year you smile and lie and tell me how nice it was. In fact, I vaguely remember trying to write poetry about 8 years ago - HAHA - what a joke that turned out to be. So we both know where my strength is not. This year, however, I am not home for your birthday or Christmas, so my lame attempt at telling you how I feel in a Hallmark card will have to wait another 365 days (wait, 366 - stupid leap year!) Instead, this year, I've decided to lay it all out to bare for anyone on the internet to read. I figure 8 years from now, this could pass the poetry as the lamest thing I've ever done. (READ MORE)
Lt. Nixon: Zawahiri says "Brits fled Basrah", I ain't buyin it! - Yeah... I'm gonna call BS here: There was a lot of preliminary negative press in anticipation of the turnover of security responsibility to the Iraqis from the Brits dwon south in Basrah. It's clear that many mainstream media outlets have a vested interest in ensuring the British involvement in Iraq was nothing short of fiasco. There was the BBC poll conducted which not so subtlely stated that the Brits should never have been in Basrah in the first place, and there was the piece on women being targeted by Islamic fundamentalists for not covering their heads. (READ MORE)
A Surgeon's Letters Home From Iraq: 17 DEC 2007 Feast or famine - A couple of days ago, we had some distinguished visitors. They were congressmen and governors, visiting from the US. Each had a tour of the hospital at some point on their agendas. Their visit occurred during a calm spell, so the hospital was pretty empty. Most of our patients were Iraqi. In fact, there was only one American patient, a man who was being treated for testicle pain. Through the day, each visitor touring the hospital would be paraded by this unlucky man. Of course every one of them had to ask the question. “What are you in for?” (READ MORE)
A Surgeon's Letters Home From Iraq: 15 December 2007 - There are days when the world just doesn’t seem to work right. The little girl I was taking care of with the gunshot wound to the abdomen died this afternoon at 1700. I’m still at a loss to understand how she died, or even the fact that she is gone at all. She was improving. She made it through the night and was stronger when the morning came. I operated again and reconnected her intestines. I was able to close her belly and get her back to the ICU. I showed her mother the surgical wounds and explained what each tube was for. The girl was breathing well. When she heard her mother’s voice, she opened her eyes and seemed to recognize her. (READ MORE)
Matt Sanchez: Evicting the Taliban - KANDAHAR AIRBASE, Afghanistan –American soldiers from Task Force 1-508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, using Chinook and Blackhawk helicopters, just participated in one of the largest air assaults in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001. It was Dec. 7, the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, and these U.S. infantrymen were taking part in Operation Mar Karadad, their particular contribution to the fight being an air assault on the Taliban-dominated district of Musa Qala in the southern Afghan province of Helmand. (READ MORE)
Northern Disclosure: The Bad Boy Meets BAD VOO DOO! - Tis, the Season for everyone to do their good deeds, right? Well that has always been an impression that I have gotten. Some people want others to see them doing nice and compassionate things for others to gain attention which completely defeats the purpose of doing something nice in the first place because one is then serving him or herself not the charity designed. (READ MORE)
Richard's Deployment to Afghanistan: Change of Mission - Be careful what you ask for.... About a week ago I changed my status on my Facebook account to "ready for a change of mission". Little did I know how close I was to exactly that! It's been the plan for some time now that after I finished my command at the Salerno Hospital I would move too Qalat, Afghanistan to serve as a liaison to the Jordanian Field Hospital. I was planning to do that on or about 3 January 2008. Well, late on 12 December I got a call from my boss, "I need you in Qalat on 14 Dec!" For anyone who has served here, getting from point A to point B is rarely easy, and never quick. (READ MORE)
This War and Me: A fun run: my Oxymoron - It was shortly before 5am when my alarm went off this morning. The Everly Brothers sang me to life with the tune 'Wake up Little Suzie' and though it is a fun, catchy tune, it was way too early. It was a full 4 1/2 hours earlier than my normal wake up time. This morning it was a crisp 55 degrees and in my PT shorts it was a little colder than I would have liked. I knew it would be hard to loosen my muscles up for the 3.5 mile run ahead of me. As I headed over to the rally point, I was all alone. The walk over made me a little cautious. No one was in sight which made me check my watch a few times to make sure I wasn't too early, or even worse, running late. One thing about the Army, there is no such thing as 'fashionably late'. (READ MORE)
Those Wacky Iraqis: Disconnecting - Now that I have dropped paper and talked it out for my demob and Aloha bird out of here they want to try and talk me into staying. No, nada, nyet. I promised the little guy that I would be home for Christmas. That in itself is kind of strange though. Knowing I will be home before Christmas and beyond is some times a little frightening. I am so used to running full speed 12+ hours a day 7 days a week that I worry I will have trouble adjusting. Time will tell. Right now time is dragging. I find myself just trying to wrap up loose ends. The new CO keeps adding taskers to me and I keep telling him I won't be here. (READ MORE)
Tragically Famous: Good Morning Children - “Incoming!” It was yelled out in a concerned yet uncertain tone of voice. I wasn’t taking any chances, especially only two weeks into our deployment. “Get up, get up! Get into the corners!” Our rooms are made out of reinforced concrete walls capable of stopping a rocket or mortar blast. However, the entrance to our room is just typical interior door, hollow and rickety. The last thing I wanted was my guys and I to get hit by shrapnel darting through the doorway. These thoughts all sunk in at about one-thousand miles per hour, only half the speed the shrapnel would be traveling at until it found a nice, supple target. (READ MORE)
Yellowhammering Afghanistan: Middleman - Our recent visit to the orphanage and women's center made it clear to me I'm just a middleman, but I'm completely fine with that. I put some time into organizing these humanitarian assistance visits because I believe they pay huge dividends in building the image of the Afghan National Police. Increasing their credibility and effectiveness is our primary mission here. So we get HA stuff sent to us through the Army's own system and then I welcome donations from many of you who read this blog and from the people who support us through AnySoldier.com. (READ MORE)
never as funny the second time…: serious discussion, dammit! - i know, 2 of the last 3 posts have been serious. i apologize, and promise a top ten and/or more ridiculous pictures soon. since the invasion in 2003, the US-led coalition has shown a distinct tendency to create US/Coalition solutions to Iraqi problems. this is not news, and may spring from ignorance of Iraqi culture, ignorance of political realities, or just plain ignorance (my personal favorite). i share the frustration of many working here as we watch this play out again and again. and by “many working here” i mean mostly the gaggle of captains at CPATT who (obviously), had we been in charge, would have facilitated the creation of a free and democratic Iraq by now. (READ MORE)
On the Web:
John Fund: Here Dumbs the Judge - The Senate has failed to fill a slew of judicial vacancies, including 17 that have been declared "emergencies" by the Judicial Conference of the United States. Not satisfied with that, some senators are now trying to restrict the ways judges receive continuing legal education and how often they can visit private law schools such as Tulane or Emory. For all their talk about being in favor of education, it looks as if some senators want to dumb down the judiciary. (READ MORE)
Jason L. Riley: Huckabee's Immigration Fumble - With polls showing his lead gone in Iowa and narrowing in other early primary states, Mitt Romney has stepped up attacks on Mike Huckabee in the contest for the Republican presidential nomination. Social conservatives especially are exercised by our porous borders, and Mr. Romney sees his surging rival's past positions on immigration as an inviting target. When Mr. Huckabee was governor of Arkansas, it turns out, he supported letting the children of illegal aliens, who met the same academic standards required of legal residents, apply for taxpayer-funded college scholarships. Heavens to Betsy! (READ MORE)
Armstrong Williams: The Value of the O Factor - The talk out on the presidential campaign trail this week is all about one thing: the “O-Factor.” Everybody is trying to figure out just how much Oprah Winfrey’s support for Barack Obama will help the man become President. Some pundits believe that Oprah’s rallies last weekend in Iowa, South Carolina, and New Hampshire will turn not only the 65,000 plus attendees into Obama voters, but perhaps persuade another 65,000 more to push the Barack button. Other political experts are saying that the good will Obama gets from the Oprah tour will help him raise a few bucks, but little more than that. (READ MORE)
Paul Greenberg: The Specter of Victory - A specter is haunting the Democratic Party. The long-awaited defeat of American forces in Iraq, on which so many critics of this administration have built their fondest hopes, seems to have been delayed again and - unsettling thought - may not even materialize. Even the dreaded word, Victory, is being whispered. Who would have thought it? Besides, of course, that dwindling minority of Americans who never gave up on the valor of America's armed forces - and the flexibility of their commanders, including their much-despised commander-in-chief. (This president's ratings in the polls have dropped almost as low as Harry Truman's during the Korean War.) (READ MORE)
Mike S. Adams: Alexander the Mediocre - Recently, I gave a speech at Bucknell University, during which I urged responsible citizens to consider gun ownership – carefully explaining that certain people ought not to own firearms. I also urged those who would qualify to obtain a concealed carry permit (CCW). Finally, I talked about the need to change gun laws to stop mass murders inside “gun-free zones.” Alexander Tristan Riley, a sociology professor at Bucknell, was “unable to attend” the talk but, nonetheless, offered a scathing criticism of the event in a letter to The Counterweight, which is Bucknell’s conservative student newspaper. In his letter, Alexander described my ideas on firearms as simple-minded. (READ MORE)
Donald Lambro: Obama Not Going Down-'Hill' - WASHINGTON -- The question of whether TV megastar Oprah Winfrey can help Sen. Barack Obama win some of the key Democratic presidential primaries was answered last week in South Carolina. Sen. Hillary Clinton had led in the state for months, with Obama consistently trailing her but closing in. That all changed when Oprah flew in with the freshman senator on Sunday, Dec. 9, drawing a massive crowd of 30,000 cheering supporters at the University of South Carolina's football stadium in Columbia. (READ MORE)
Carol Platt Liebau: Teen Sex: The New "Midnight Basketball"? - Could preteen sex actually be a good thing? In what’s being billed as a blow to conventional wisdom, recent news stories have heralded two studies that appear to assert positive benefits to early sexual experience. The Washington Post reported results of an Ohio State University study finding that “youngsters who have consensual sex in their early-teen or even preteen years are, if anything, less likely to engage in delinquent behavior later on.” Even more recently, ABC News ran a piece with a headline trumpeting “Losing Virginity Later Linked to Sexual Problems,” and a sub-head adding, “Those Who Have Sex Later, Particularly Men, Seem to Experience More Sexual Dysfunction.” (READ MORE)
Meryl Yourish: Crude, homemade rockets score three hits in one week - The “crude, homemade rockets” launched by Palestinian terrorists from Gaza nearly every day have wounded three Israelis in three separate incidents this week, including one today that wounded a two-year-old child. “A rocket fired by Palestinian terror groups from northern Gaza landed in the yard of a kibbutz home on Sunday afternoon, wounded a two-year-old boy. Israeli police and paramedics said the infant sustained light shrapnel wounds and was evacuated to the Barzilai hospital in Ashkelon for treatment.” There is only one conclusion from three hits in one week: The rockets are getting better. (READ MORE)
Ron Winter: Politicians Want Veteran Support, But Government Shafts The Vets, Again! - Since the founding of this country the government has been putting the boots to military veterans once the wars have been won. This is not new, nor isolated to the US, as Rudyard Kipling so aptly pointed out regarding the British Army in his poem "Tommy," excerpted above. This also is not the first time I have written about this country's reprehensible treatment of its veterans, nor that I have used "Tommy" in leading this column. It fits nicely and I believe that repetition may be the best way to get the message across. (READ MORE)
Jay Tea: Learning The Wrong Lessons - This morning's Boston Globe has a column today that talks about the lessons to be learned from some recent terrorist attacks. Unfortunately, they learned the wrong lessons. According to the Glob's editors, the terrorists (mainly personified in Al Qaeda and its wannabes) are mainly interested in overthrowing governments in Muslim nations that they view as corrupt or not sufficiently Islamic. They only get mad at us when we meddle with them, so we ought to leave them alone. It's a nice little fantasy. It's warm and fuzzy and hopeful and precisely the kind of thing that led to 9/11. (READ MORE)
Andrea Shea-King: Oh What a Day This Has Been - It began with an 8:30 a.m. report to duty Saturday at Arlington National Cemetery where we heard Morrill Worcester's remarks about those we would soon remember and honor with Christmas wreaths. Some photos here give you a sense of the wonder and pride and privilege we felt at being able to place beautifully fragrant balsam fir wreaths at the gravesites of 10,000 of our servicemen and women who rest in eternal peace in Section 33 of our national burial site. (READ MORE)
Winds of Change: The Other Fallujah Reporter - “The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” — Thomas Jefferson - I just returned home from a trip to Fallujah, where I was the only reporter embedded with the United States military. There was, however, an unembedded reporter in the city at the same time. Normally it would be useful to compare what I saw and heard while traveling and working with the Marines with what a colleague saw and heard while working solo. Unfortunately, the other Fallujah reporter was Ali al-Fadhily from Inter Press Services. Mr. al-Fadhily is unhappy with the way things are going in the city right now. It means little to him that the only shots fired by the Marines anymore are practice rounds on the range, and that there hasn’t been a single fire fight or combat casualty for months. That’s fair enough, as far as it goes, and perhaps to be expected from a reporter who isn’t embedded with the military and who focuses his attention on Iraqi civilians. (READ MORE)
The Tygrrr Express: Hillary, while you’re apologizing… - Hillary Clinton recently apologized for something. Before anybody thinks that armageddon is upon us, keep in mind that Hillary is all about strategy and calculation, and if she thinks that apologizing for something will keep her on her quest for power, she will do it. What she lacks in decency, she does not lack in ambition. Her campaign attacked Barack Obama for using drugs, which would be shocking if this was not already public information. I do not endorse drug use, but Mr. Obama has handled his past with dignity. Unlike Bill Clinton, Obama admitted that he inhaled. Obama did not justify his behavior. He said he was young and foolish, and that he did not want young kids to waste away years of life as he did. Hillary’s campaign attacked, and only after the attack boomeranged on them, was an apology offered. (READ MORE)
Tel-Chai Nation: Earlier evidence of the al-Durah hoax - Years before the boy who was used as a tool in anti-Israel propaganda was paraded in front of cameras by propagandists, his father committed a similar act of deception. Nidra Poller has the details (via Little Green Footballs): “ Jamal al Dura, who claims that Israelis fired at him and his son in 2000, was in fact injured by axe blade and not bullets in 1992, according to an Israeli surgeon who performed reconstructive surgery on the wounds two years later. PJM’s Nidra Poller reports on the latest startling development in the mother of all fauxtography cases.” (READ MORE)
The Sundries Shack: Where The Left Looks For Answers, It Always Seems To Find Fascism First - For six years, we’ve heard the left wailing about an imaginary police state built by Chimpy McBushHitlerburton and his American Taliban. It’s been a complete load of codswallop, but the wailing has been mighty. I wonder how they’ll react to this (via Mark Steyn)? Hillman, senior fellow emeritus at the Policy Studies Institute, says carbon rationing is the only way to ensure that the world avoids the worst effects of climate change. And he says that the problems caused by burning fossil fuels are so serious that governments might have to implement rationing against the will of the people. “When the chips are down I think democracy is a less important goal than is the protection of the planet from the death of life, the end of life on it,” he says. “This has got to be imposed on people whether they like it or not.” What is it about leftists and the knee-jerk reaction toward totalitarianism to solve their problems? (READ MORE)
ShrinkWrapped: On Frying Pans and Fires - The Iraq War was initiated to solve several problems. The most immediate and easily resolved was the removal of the Saddam Hussein regime and its capacity to develop and use WMD. The longer term goal was to establish an alternative form of governance in the Middle East and the Muslim world, an alternative to the traditional strong man governance (prime divider societies in Richard Landes's formulation) which has spawned and supported much of the terrorism that has emerged since the 1960s. On this second goal there can be little doubt that even if Iraq becomes a more stable country and evolves a democratic tradition, for the foreseeable future, it will not be a beacon of democracy in the Middle East and will not provide a model to which their neighbors will aspire. The NIE more than anything else has codified the limits of American military power to effect far reaching change in the Middle East. (READ MORE)
Smooth Stone: Global bankrolling funds Jewicide - While world powers gather in Paris to bankroll a terrorist Arab Muslim state referred to as "palestine" , Jewish children are being brutalized and tortured with the same blood money. A rocket fired by Arab Muslim militants from Gaza scored a direct hit on a house in Kibbutz Zikim, an Israeli communal farm less than a mile from Gaza, wounding a 2-year-old boy. The toddler was hit by shrapnel and taken to hospital, and his mother was being treated for shock. With that same blood money, Arab Muslims in Gaza fired a Kassam rocket that slammed into a kibbutz factory near Gaza on Friday evening. The plant normally operates 24 hours a day, but fortunately was empty at the time. It destroyed equipment, but there were no casualties. Shrapnel was scattered throughout the coffee corner, where workers take their breaks. (READ MORE)
Melanie Phillips: Reason fights back - While the Bali-hoo plumbs ever greater depths of absurdity (see here, here and here, reason appears to have got its boots on at last. First the Pope denounces the man-made-global-warming prophets of doom for scare-mongering on the basis of dogma rather than science. It is an irony to be savoured that -- not for the first time – religion is mounting a defence of reason against the modern dogma of scientism, which cloaks irrationality and ideology in the guise of science. Now science itself is fighting back against the abuse of its integrity. More than 100 prominent scientists have sent an open letter to the UN Secretary-General warning that trying to control the Earth’s climate was ‘ultimately futile’: (READ MORE)
A Soldier's Mind: They Were The “Lone Wolves” Of Iraq - Now that they’re back from Iraq, the leaders of 3rd Brigade Combat Team “Grey Wolf”, 1st Cavalry Division has the opportunity to reflect on the deployment to Iraq that they’ve just completed. While they’ve achieved great success and accomplished many things in the Diyala province of Iraq, those accomplishments didn’t come without a price. The accomplishments that were made however, are something that the men and women of the Brigade can be proud of, despite their losses (which were many), as they can know that they carried on the great work that their fallen comrades had help to begin. (READ MORE)
Ed Morrissey: Omnibus Follies - As I have written before, omnibus spending bills give Congress a lot of power to create mischief and hide corruption. These appropriations roll up all spending authorizations into a single spending bill, creating fragile alliances that these days rely more on pork than real consensus on priorities. This approach makes it difficult for the White House to use its veto without shutting down vital portions of the federal government, a type of extortion that usually means that Congress has hidden its own selfish interests in this poison pill. According to Senator Jim DeMint, today's omnibus bill is exactly like your father's: (READ MORE)
Don Surber: Not so fast - Why moving all the troops from Iraq to Afghanistan won’t work. After spending half our lives in West Virginia and raising 3 kids here, people still point out that we weren’t born here. Doesn’t matter that my great-grandfather founded a store here that last 100 years — or that my wife’s family has lived in Calhoun County going back to when it was part of Gilmer — we weren’t born here. No complaint. An observation. As American troops prepare to come home victoriously from Iraq, there is a temptation to demand that they be redeployed to Afghanistan — ostensibly to catch Osama bin Laden and give him the old what for before George W. Bush turns into a pumpkin on Jan. 20, 2009. (READ MORE)
Bill Roggio: The Awakening, al Qaeda clash in Iraq - Fighting between the US and Iraqi government-backed Awakening movements and al Qaeda in Iraq spiked over the weekend. At least four high profile engagements and bombings occurred in Baghdad, Anbar, Ninewa, and Diyala provinces. The largest clash occurred on Sunday in the eastern region of Diyala province in the villages of Nai and Safit. Al Qaeda in Iraq fighters attacked the villages but the local tribes fought back, Twenty-two al Qaeda fighters and seventeen tribesmen were killed in the battle, KUNA reported. (READ MORE)
Jules Crittenden: Iranian Atomkraft? Nein Danke! - Such a cute bumpersticker. Remember that? Can we get a Hebrew one? Because Israelis who just won’t take “maybe not” for an answer are here trying to talk sense into the U.S. intel community: “JERUSALEM - Israeli intelligence officers are in the United States to convince U.S. officials Iran is still developing nuclear weapons - contrary to the findings of a recent U.S. intelligence report, security officials said.” (READ MORE)
American Ranger: Al Sadr's Quest for Power in Iraq - My “series” of posts on Muqtada al Sadr and the Mahdi Army continues. Al Sadr may be trying to position himself in order to eventually declare that he is the “Mahdi” or “the guided one”. According to many fundamentalists, this individual will appear when Muslims are being oppressed throughout the world. The Mahdi will make war against those who are deemed to be oppressors. All Muslims will be joined together in peace and justice and the Mahdi will rule over all Arabs. According to believers, the Mahdi will even pray at Mecca with Jesus (“Isa” in the Quran). Although Muqtada’s father was a high-ranking ayatollah, Muqtada has not even completed his formal religious training. This article talks about his quest for Islamic credentials: (READ MORE)
Quid Nimis: I'm Not A Terrorist, I Just Play One On TV - I often run off down rabbit holes while I'm reading on the net. That's why the internet is both a great boon and a great bane. I get to satisfy my craving for following up on minutiae and I become deeply inefficient at my day job. I'm addressing that, and as proof, I offer this recent scenario: I'm scanning the Townhall column snippets in my daily email. I see that Jonah Goldberg has written something about waterboarding. I go to that but only get about two paragraphs in before I closely examine the accompanying picture. A swarthy man with duct taped wrists is lying in repose on a wet pavement with two empty jugs behind him. I read in the caption that this unfortunate is Maboud Ebrahimzadeh, "after his ordeal in a simulation of waterboarding outside the justice department." (READ MORE)
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