September Eleven

Shadows Come

I listen to the voice of the train making it’s way east, a cacophony of whistle and thunder and clattering, muted by distance, but sharp edged as it resonates across the river. Now the whistle blows – but growing quickly fainter… the thundering…the clattering… gone. And now the sounds of the birds gathered at the feeder chatter back into my hearing, the swish of a passing car on the road below, all cocooned by this village’s velvet silence.

These homes.., these slightly tilting, nary-a-plumb-line-to-be-found homes stand as sentinels along the banks of the Ohio. I often wonder who their owners were, that such a small town could boast this avenue of once grand ladies, their grandeur rather forlorn, more so for never having been abandoned. And all these lady’s feet have been washed by the Ohio River, indeed, that river threatened many a time to climb right up their skirts…….but they stood. Their foundations shift, cracks write long lines of narrative across walls that have seen more human lives than can ever be written, all part of a village with roots over two hundred years old, built when the land supported people who were, well, true Americans……

The wind skitters through the branches now, trailing a shawl through early fallen leaves across lawns grown weary of trumpeting summer’s fecundity. Autumn has sent harbingers of her arrival and summer seems eager to bid adieu.

Normally I would snuggle cozily in the anticipation of winter’s cold, but now upon this land march harbingers trumpeting ill winds and evil weather unlike any we have ever known in all of our nation’s history. There may be no warmth to snuggle in and our hands may be stayed from putting food in the larder, and the grandchildren we normally would be buying early Christmas gifts for become the sum and substance of the only reason we live because now…now we can’t see their lives unfolding as ours did, or as our parents and grandparents did. We are realizing that we have to imagine a future where they must learn to fight for their very lives and Christmas, if even allowed to continue, will never be the same ….. Is this what people in the past felt like when the shadow of war and tribulation approached?

They Are Not Going to Let us Hide. They Are Not Going To Stop

(Source)

D-Day.

D-Day: The Battle for Normandy: fear and cruelty in sun-dappled orchards
Charles Moore reviews ‘D-Day: The Battle for Normandy’ by Antony Beevor.

A timely book for the 65th anniversary of D Day. [I can remember it! I was eight years old and can remember writing the date on my bedroom wall in a little square stuccoed farm house with 12 inch thick walls, that was at Wiblings Farm just outside the village of Graffham in West Sussex.]
Much in the book about the ‘heroic’ resistance of the Germans and the consequences of that resistance, inc delaying the inevitable end of the war thus giving the Russians more time to advance into Berlin and the heart of Germany. If the Germans were as smart as they think they are they would have surrendered as soon as the Normandy landings were successfully accomplished and let the allies take over before the Russians got anywhere near. Sometimes you can understand the peaceniks’ revulsion of all things military except they are even more stupid than the Germans were since by their lights the Germans would have had free rein and then they’d know unending horror.
I like this from the comments recognizing the contribution of the Canadians. In too many accounts you’d think they weren’t anywhere near Normandy in ’44.

#

I would like to pay tribute to the Canadians who fought in the Battle for Normandy.

All too often their contribution is lost – or forgotten – although the battle could not have been won without them. The Falaise Gap could not have been closed without them. In consequence Paris would not have been liberated in August and the war in Europe would have dragged on past the following May with potentially disastrous consequences.

The Canadians have always been with us. They are the most valiant, honourable, steadfast allies and we all too often forget that.

It is time that we remembered and honoured their sacrifice.

Opting Out.

A while back in an e-mail, Zee expressed an interest in finding a piece of land on which to live, grow vegetables and fruit, keep chickens and a couple of cows partly in order to become less dependent on government services and utilities. Well there is an interesting post and comments at Fresh Bilge on the subject and on opting out of the system as much as possible, lying low as some call it. Though I haven’t done much posting lately I think we bloggers are by definition ‘involved’ in our communities and our country and all without need of community organizers. We are ‘free spirits’ in some respects, independent by nature and our involvement is the necessary means to ensure that we and our friends and neighbours can stay that way, no ‘community organizing’ for us, we’d rather allow others to figure out for themselves what is in their best interest and if they or we fail sometimes well that’s the price we pay to learn. The socialists and community organizers will only lead you down a dead end street.

O/T but I found this amusing. On Valentine’s Day the local Classics radio station was taking requests and dedications from listeners all day. One guy phoned in and started, “My name is John Rainbow, R-a-i-n b-o-w”.
Firstly who wouldn’t know how to spell rainbow, then who the hell does he think would be interested and lastly there is all that technology in use and thousands of people listening while he takes the time to slowly spell out his name. It’s a bit like those in the supermarket who will leave their cart at an angle in the middle of the aisle while they saunter off to find something, or the cab drivers who stop three feet from the kerb to pick up a passenger, a complete unawareness or care on what is going on around them. Maybe it’s not so O/T, maybe it’s like a personal opting out or an ersatz opting out when the real thing is unobtainable.

A Man Obama is Unworthy to Lead

Liberal Trash Jeremy Funk Dissing Our Troops Meets a Couple Real Soldiers

This video is from the Founding Fathers blog. Click over to the link and scroll down the comments and you’ll find the contemptible Jeremy Funk from the video attempting to defend his Bush Legacy tour – and there ain’t no one buying the fool’s BS.

H/T: Gateway Pundit

Obama is Scared of Soldiers, Sarah Palin Visits Them

Sarah Palin embraces our troops….

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has breakfast and visits with Ramstein Air Base Airmen July 26, 2007, in Germany. Palin went on to visit wounded Airmen and Soldiers at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Landstuhl, Germany. (Source)

Barack Obama Avoids Our Troops

1:42 p.m.: SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that Obama has cancelled a planned short visit to the Rammstein and Landstuhl US military bases in the southwest German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The visits were planned for Friday. “Barack Obama will not be coming to us,” a spokesperson for the US military hospital in Landstuhl announced. “I don’t know why.” Shortly before the same spokeswoman had announced a planned visit by Obama.

(Source)

Who do you think will make a stand against our enemies?

(image source)

Words Worth Quoting

Excerpted from Michael Ledeen’s War & Democracy

The belief in the inevitability of peace and democracy rested on one of the great conceits of the European Enlightenment, namely the belief in the perfectibility of man. In this view, man’s basic goodness (as found in “the state of nature”) had been corrupted by a selfish society (a notion that finds much favor among today’s more extreme Greens), but that once the heavy weight of misguided was lifted, man’s intrinsic goodness would reemerge. In our modern rendition of that Enlightenment folly, an appeal to reason is sufficient to change the world. Back in the Clinton years, it was widely believed that all future conflict would be solely economic; the age of military warfare had passed, henceforth products, markets, and human ingenuity would determine who is rightly top dog and who needs to get with the program. And so the defense budget was slashed, military men and women were treated with contempt by the president and his wife, and we turned inward. After all, if historical inevitability ruled, why bother with national security? Tyranny was considered a passing phenomenon, headed for the ash heap, and certainly no threat to us.

It was all wrong, as are most beliefs in the vast impersonal forces that are held to determine human events. The great constant in man’s affairs is change, the direction of that change is determined by human actions, and many of the men and women who take those determinant actions are evil. Machiavelli is not the only sage who recognized it, but he put it nicely: “Man is more inclined to do evil than to do good.” Rational statecraft starts right there.

The American Founders knew it: recognizing man’s innate capacity for evil, they designed a system of checks and balances to thwart the accumulation of power by any group, lest the entire enterprise fall into wicked hands. They knew the battle for liberty would never end, Benjamin Franklin famously warned we would have to fight to keep our republic.
Continue reading…. War and Democracy

Georgia: Not Quite as Putin Intended.

In spite of Akira’s valiant attempts to portray Putin as a master strategist and the aggrieved party to the conflict, the consequences are beginning to be more in line with my views than his.

First from AP:

TBILISI, Georgia (AP) — German Chancellor Angela Merkel is offering strong support for Georgia, saying the country is on track to become a member of NATO.

Merkel flew to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi on Sunday, two days after she met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

In a speech Sunday, Merkel also suggested that NATO could help rebuild the tattered Georgian military.

Merkel supports the EU cease-fire, saying it needs to be followed “immediately” and that Russian troops need to pull out of neighboring Georgia.

From Radio Netherlands:

Ukraine has agreed to take part in a missile defence system designed by the United States to protect Western countries. The government in Kiev defended its decision for military co-operation with the West, saying Russia cancelled a bilateral treaty with Ukraine earlier this year.

A few days ago, Poland and the United States reached agreement on the siting of missiles on Polish territory. These, together with radar installations in the Czech republic, make up the missile shield. Russia is fiercely opposed to the defence system and has threatened retaliatory measures.

The Ukrainian offer to co-operate with the US on the shield comes as the situation surrounding Russia’s military operations in Georgia is increasingly tense. Ukraine’s pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko has strongly criticised Russia and is threatening to impose restrictions on Russian navy vessels’ use of the port of Sebastopol in Ukraine.

Gee, way to go Vladimir, guess you never made acquaintance with Dale Carnegie in your studies of human nature.

Victor Davis Hanson weighs in and I think more highly of his views than those of most other commentators on the world scene.

We are a little more than a week into the crisis, and already Russia has already gotten itself more than just fights with Georgia—but also issued creepy threats to Poland over missiles, and to the Ukraine over naval bases. Putin has galvanized into panic most of Eastern Europe and the Baltic states, prompted a radical change of policy in the United States, and embarrassed its once sure support from the appeasement bloc of the European Union. What will next week bring? A Georgian insurgency, replete with stingers, anti-tank guns, and ieds? Increased arms sales to the former republics? Tougher talk from Obama?

Read it all.

As I tried to explain in my comments on my previous post, Russia had a golden opportunity to become a normal civilized country, allies with the Anglosphere, and Putin has thrown it all away, and for what? Dreams of a New Russian Empire, controller of energy supplies to EUtopia and therefore having the EU countries under his thumb, aiding the enemies of the US with the aim of bogging down the US Military and economy in countering Iran, Syria, NK etc.
Vladimir old friend, you should have got your own country’s problems fixed before taking on the rest of the world and the US in particular. You are as dependent on supplying oil and gas to EUtopia as they are on being supplied, you don’t really have much else going for you, not even the Western capitalists eager to help you develop your economy in a more diversified way, you’ve pissed them off right royally, not to mention scared the shit out of them.
The invasion of Georgia is a colossal blunder because it has shown that there is no reason to hope that Russia can be a reliable partner in anything for the foreseeable future. Prospects for the Russian people got bleaker last week.

Update. David Warren has a column up on the subject.

A powerful state which, like contemporary Russia, is eager to play on the inevitable ethnic difficulties of its neighbours — to abet those problems, as the Russians have done, and then use them as pretext for the invasion and dismemberment of a much smaller neighbour — is regardless of its size and constitution, behaving as a rogue state.

We cannot continue to act on the polite assumption that Vladimir Putin and his minions (including the current nominal president, Dmitry Medvedev), are honourable. “Realism” requires that we act henceforth on the assumption that they aren’t.

It’s OK If It’s Russia

The left was shrill in their condemnation of America’s “invasion” of Iraq. Inflated figures on civilian casualties were bandied about as fact, even though troops were sacrificed and a quick victory made impossible by the US tiptoeing around attempting to strategically extract or kill the enemy. But Russia can go barreling into Georgia, justified or not, and knock off journalists and civilians alike and I hear no great wail of indignation and condemnation.

Below a journalist is nicked by a sniper bullet.
(H/T: Cassy Fiano)

also…

According to reports, four journalists have been killed in Georgia, since the country’s armed conflict with Russia began on Friday.

Dutch television cameraman Stan Storimans, 39, who was working for news channel RTL, was killed during the Russian bombing of Gori, the Associated Press has said. Storiman’s colleague Jeroen Akkermans was also injured by blasts, which killed five.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has also reported the deaths of two journalists in the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali. Grigol Chikhladze, head of Alania TV, and Alexander Klimchuk, head of the Caucasus Press Images agency and a correspondent for Itar-Tas, were shot at a roadblock erected by Ossetian freedom-fighters, RSF said. (Source)

also see…
Behind the Scenes: Shootings are painful reminder

also…

Human Rights Watch (HRW) officials have claimed that they have evidence of Russia using cluster bombs against civilian targets and infrastructure in Georgia.

Citing eyewitness accounts, as well as video and photographic evidence, the HRW officials said that Russian aircraft dropped RBK-250 cluster bombs, each containing 30 PTAB 2.5M submunitions, on the town of Ruisi in the Kareli district of Georgia on Tuesday.

The Washington Times further quoted it as saying that the attack killed three civilians and wounded five. The group says that a cluster strike took place the same day in the center of the city of Gori, killing at least eight civilians and injuring dozens.

Human Rights Watch spokesman Mark Hiznay denied a request by the paper to see the video and photos, citing the need to protect journalists and researchers in the field.

In May, 107 countries agreed to a ban on cluster munitions. Neither Russia nor the United States participated in the talks.

Human Rights Watch researchers said they interviewed victims, doctors and military personnel in Georgia, analyzed photos of craters and had seen video footage of Tuesday’s attack on Gori. Researchers also say they saw a photo of the sub-munition carrier assembly and nose cone of an RBK-250 bomb in Gori.

The Gori video showed more than two-dozen simultaneous explosions during the attack, which is characteristic of cluster bombs, the organization said. (Source)

I haven’t read all that is out there, but there seem to be quite a few writing of this who are quite obviously salivating at what is perceived as Russia’s re-awakening and a comeuppance for America…. “The Empire has struck back and shaken the order of the world.“, opines one pundit.

Of course, when it’s America’s presence in Iraq , it’s blood for oil, it’s invasion, it’s occupation. But Russia is going to admired, defended.

This gushing reporter barely restrains herself.

“This is without a doubt a founding moment,” says Anne Applebaum, a historian and author of the international best-seller “Gulag: A History.” “This week the Russians set an example. Just like when they killed journalist Anna Politkovskaya. There is no need to kill all the country’s journalists. One is enough, and all the rest get the message. That’s what [Russia] did this week: There is no need to invade all the countries in the region, but they will all get the message.
[...]
Historian Simon Sebag-Montefiore, author of two biographies of Josef Stalin, believes this is “the start of the twilight of America’s sole world hegemony.
(Source)

Unreal. But then, the West has largely become a culture that admires evil, applauds dictators and forever cheers for the anti-heroes. I shouldn’t be surprised that the return of the “Evil Empire” receives a standing ovation.

Are You Prepared?

I often regret that I at one time found survivalists amusing. Now I wish to hell I had taken heed. I have been thinking of worse case scenarios a lot lately and realizing that, like thousands of Americans, I am screwed when it comes down to it.

The following is an entry I found at SurvivalBlog.com, a place I’d highly recommend if you want to become conversant with survival. I truly envy this dude and there are probably quite a few like him. Most of us do not have the finances to stock up and hunker down. I do know that a good portion of my future income will go towards food, fuel, water and ammo.

Apocalypse by Sharlene Lindskog-Osorio

Jim: I am not a religious nut when I tell you the Holy Spirit impressed my entire family we were all to leave where we lived and head to Montana. So I started visiting
the real estate web sites searching for homes that might fit our particular requirements. We arrived with a list of 46 homes in a binder sorted by area/city etc. After
spending seven days working out of the Flathead Lake / Kalispell area and looking at 28 homes we were discouraged. We looked at properties up to $450,000. Price was not the issue. The issue was being at peace with our purchase. After seven days my son in law called to say we should go up to Eureka and look at the houses we had printed out for that area. So I called a realtor’s agent and gave her a list of eighteen properties with the liberty to weed out those that she thought would not fit. We looked at eight properties and one twice.

All of the properties appeared to belong to Christians of one flavor or another. Some we met just outright stated they were believers. After leaving the realtor we discussed the merits of one property some more. It had all the things we require: five bedrooms, two for offices, 2 plus acres, multiple bug out routes, two tillable acres, about two feet of snow per year, plenty of wood nearby, a lake filled with ducks and geese. Plus we have plenty deer, elk, bears, game birds, chickens in the spring, and more available land in the general area. The growing season is 158 days. The land is sub irrigated and we have a deep thirty gallon per minute well. Water is just seven feet down. After several hours of contemplation, some prayer the Holy Spirit simply said you will be safe here. After purchasing we learned the seller failed to disclose the presence of a questionable unrecorded easement and spring. These undisclosed issues will work themselves out in time.

We are about 20 miles from the Canadian Border. I am an American, so I will stay here regardless of what happens. This is a very nice home, but it may just prove to be our base camp while establishing something more remote. In the coming times of confusion, I believe that boldness, good planning, stealth and mobility will be key to retaking our nation. The wind currents are favorable to protect us from most fallout. We are situated on the edge of a valley between two mountains. I can close the roads with chain saws and some old vehicles stored nearby without trouble. The hillside provides three good LP/OP positions with places for many spider holes. Bug out into the National Forest is behind the home or down the road.

John McCain:A Man Tortured, Barack Obama: A Tortured Clown

I have no love for John McCain, no wish to sing his praises. But I can’t deny that Barack Obama seems an insignificant clown next to him. A dangerous, mad clown. Barack Obama may have finally mustered up the interest and guts to face American troops in Iraq, but he has not yet faced John McCain in debate, nor has he had the wherewithal to stand true to any of his positions, as reprehensible as most of those are.
Obama’ story reads like an Oprah book of the month. Had he not been propped up as a politician, he , like his books, would be fodder for the discount bins. How many conflicted young men on a tortured journey in search for their identity can anyone stomach anymore anyway. And who the hell elects one into the highest office in the land?

Discover The Networks offers the story on Obama.

DiscoverTheNetworks examines Barack Hussein Obama’s connections to a number of key individuals and organizations. In some cases, these affiliates are notable for the leftist views and objectives they share with Obama. In other cases, they are notable for their collaboration with Obama in controversial or unethical activities. In all cases, they offer a window into Barack Obama’s values and priorities. Taken as a whole, they verify Thomas Sowell’s observation that Obama has “spent decades aiding and abetting people who hate America.”
Do not vote for Barack Hussein Obama.
Smooth Stone via Ocean Guy

McCain’s story reads far differently and you can read a portion of it here.

Thomas Sowell has sobering and wise advice regarding the choices that face America in this election. We’d do well to heed his words.

Not since 1972 have we been presented with two such painfully inadequate candidates. When election day came that year, I could not bring myself to vote for either George McGovern or Richard Nixon. I stayed home.

This year, none of us has that luxury. While all sorts of gushing is going on in the media, and posturing is going on in politics, the biggest national sponsor of terrorism in the world— Iran— is moving step by step toward building a nuclear bomb.

The point when they get that bomb will be the point of no return. Iran’s nuclear bomb will be the terrorists’ nuclear bomb— and they can make 9/11 look like child’s play.

All the options that are on the table right now will be swept off the table forever. Our choices will be to give in to whatever the terrorists demand— however outrageous those demands might be— or to risk seeing American cities start disappearing in radioactive mushroom clouds.

All the things we are preoccupied with today, from the price of gasoline to health care to global warming, will suddenly no longer matter.
Obama and McCain

Honorable Men

Warriors…In Their Own Words

We have always had warriors, from as far back in history as one can go — warriors are timeless.Warriors have a moral code and are not simply trained killers (as they are all too frequently portrayed).If we did not have warriors, we would undoubtedly be speaking another language, German,Japanese, Chinese, or Russian.Warriors are born, they are not created. Certainly they are trained, but to be a warrior is a calling.[...]With this documentary, photo exhibit and book our aim is to raise funding for and awareness of the men and women warriors that have given so much to protect our freedoms. Freedom is not free.

Riots in Egypt

Did you know there are riots in Egypt? No? Yeah, well, apparently Google news doesn’t either. A quick search brings no accounts of the disturbances. As usual, you have to seek out bloggers.
It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? The media is overly fond of protesters and riots. Why do they have nothing to say about this?

From Rantings of a Sandmonkey…

..allow yourselves to enjoy those brief moments of joy before the get crushed, as they’re going to. If this spreads, then the regime will spare no expense to squash it, especially with the visible absence of the western media and their coverage. Without international cover, this won;t survive, and the government will fuckin air bomb the demonstrators if they truly became a threat to the regime. The point isn’t the overthrow of the government, not yet. It’s a warning shot, letting them know that they can’t get away with this shit much longer, that the corruption must stop, that political liberties must be respected and that the mismanagement of the economy can not continue. That the people won’t just bend over and take it anymore. That they better change or this might breed the revolution you so rightly fear. But that won;t happen today, or next week, so please, quit your whining, worrying and bitching about the protesters, and start fearing for their lives. Those people have almost nothing and are risking what little they have for a chance for a better life.!(all bold mine) (Source)

Very unlike the pathetic protesters in America, these men and women have actual cause to make demands of their government. Unlike their cowardly imitators in the West, they stand to lose their lives.

Matt Maupin: Under an American Sky

If this nation is to live true to the principles of our founding fathers, the Maupins of this country will be the Americans who will safeguard our heritage. Simple men and women whom the press denigrates as neanderthals and the Obamas of the world despise as “typical white people.”

Below is a post that I did at the time of Matt Maupin’s capture. Links marked thus ^**, are dead, but, not any of my sentiments.

I’m off to run errands with the grandchildren that Matt died to protect.

Under an American Sky

April 19,2004

Matt Maupin, the soldier being held prisoner in Iraq, grew up under the sky you see in the photo to your left. He hails from about 15 miles from here. He’s probably driven past this marina many times – maybe after a concert at Riverbend he’d jump on 52, heading West towards town, and hit Annies for more music, or Allyns for some Mexican.

I go cold inside when I see the video, his face reflecting the fear being held at bay by a type of courage I’ll never own. He lived under my skies and now he is captive under an alien sky. How vivid a memory is an Ohio sky for Mr. Maupin while in the hands of Islamic terrorists?

I have come to loathe the irresolute will of the American people. I have come to hate what we’ve become. The following passage is eloquent and accurate. from Lowry’s Legacy, pg. 5

” Clinton was a weak person, and so ultimately a weak president. His weakness related to the kind of man he was. If Clinton’s presidency was “post greatness” – on a determinedly minor key – it also was “post masculine”.

Clinton was the new,sensitive man elevated to high office: sentimental and easily moved to tears, undisciplined and self-indulgent, endlessly and thoughtlessly expressive, schooled in the language and attitudes of therapy, fundamentally out of sympathy with that center of another, different kind of masculinity, the military. He was a soft man for a soft age.”

And men like Mr. Maupin are protecting the soft men. And the soft men are us. Under American skies Muslims seek to erect mosque after mosque. Under these skies they are beginning to indoctrinate our children.. I n every sizable American city, Muslims are slowly inserting their will. They are infiltrating^** the schools^**, our government. Their objective is not to participate as American citizens but to gain a political foothold, develop networks, form alliances and propagate utter deception^** – all with the intent , often stated, just as often ignored, that America will,in the end, become theirs^**. Under an American sky, Muslims will soon shrill their mournful dirges to “allah”. Under our skies they build youth camps.

So, tell me again – why, exactly, is Mr. Maupin a prisoner under a foreign sky when under his home sky, we who say we care, fail to guard his back?

Bitch Slapping the Taliban: Trouble in the Hood

Al-Qaida supporters on the Web have unleashed an unprecedented flood of criticism of Afghanistan’s Taliban, once seen by extremists as the model of an Islamic state.

Now extremists accuse the Taliban of straying from the path of global jihad after its leader Mullah Omar issued a statement saying he seeks good relations with the world and even sympathizes with Shi’ite Iran.

In February, the Taliban announced it wanted to maintain good and “legitimate” relations with neighboring countries. Then, last week online militants were outraged when the movement expressed solidarity with Iran, condemning the latest round of sanctions imposed on Teheran by the UN Security Council over its nuclear enrichment.

The Shi’ite Islamic state of Iran is viewed as anathema by the Sunni militants of the al-Qaida and other extremist movements.

“This is the worst statement I have ever read … the disaster of defending the (Iranian) regime is on par with the Crusaders in Afghanistan and Iraq,” wrote poster Miskeen, whose name translates literally as “the wretched” and who is labeled as one of the more influential writers on an al-Qaida linked Web site.

Culture for All: Al-Queda Jaw dropper !!

H/T:LGF Links

The Art of Jihad

The Midnight Sun is a blog that you will want to bookmark if you haven’t already. Unafraid to tackle the damn difficult issues that threaten Western civilization and with a posse of intelligent commenters, you’ll find a friendly seat in our present theater of war from which to monitor the West’s many enemies..

Aurora has posted a piece that I find rather stunning.

Imagine if America were balkanized; black states, Latino states, white states. Racism is a bad idea. Why would Islamists in the community be promoting it? Divide and conquer perhaps?

The answer to that question can be found in an online forum…

Al-Jawfi wrote: “I suggest that brothers who are fluent in English write
messages, phrasing them skillfully in such a way [that they will seem to be]
written by a black person slandering [the whites] or by a white person
[slandering the blacks]… “

Forum member “Abu Hamed” wrote in response: “… I’d like to suggest a very
simple idea: to quote [inflammatory] stories and sayings from [American]
movies in order to spread civil strife among [blacks and whites]. For
example, there is a movie called *I Am Legend*. According to its plot… the
only person left in the sane world is black, while all the others have been
infected by a virus and have turned into human monsters. We should visit
forums of black Americans and present whites as monsters of this kind [that]
should be exterminated…”

Read it all along with other excellent research at The Midnight Sun: America: Who’s Stirring Up Racial Hatred?

Would-be Commander-in-Chief Obama Corrected by Those He’d Presume to Lead

You know, I’ve heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon — supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon. Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq.

And as a consequence, they didn’t have enough ammunition, they didn’t have enough humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.

You know, Obama, you’d be wrong on that.

The image of bereft and bumbling troops that Obama conjured up, however, probably confirms conclusions that he would prefer to reach. Just like his wife’s deficit in American pride is derivative of a certain mind set, so also is the would-be commander-in-chief’s. I fear Obama -and whatever leftist posse he drags into office with him – will dress the troops in shades of UN Goon Blue and send them traipsing around the world, redistributing America’s wealth, which, he has already promised, you’ll have no choice but to labor for. All for the greater good (but not your grandchildren’s greater good).

Amy Proctor’s husband, currently deployed, is one of hundreds who have responded to Obama’s questionable statements on arming the troops. He “wrote from Iraq that Obama has his facts completely wrong and that his words are a diversion”. Read his email and others weighing in at Amy’s site

Also of interest is ABC’s Jake Tapper’s attempt to fact check Obama’s statements, concluding, in his mind, that Obama was not in error. A perusal of the comments convincingly demonstrates that Mr. Tapper would likely be wrong, too. This one sums up the general consensus pretty well….

Obama said:

“You know, I’ve heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon — supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon,” he said. “Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq. And as a consequence, they didn’t have enough ammunition, they didn’t have enough humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.”

The captain disavowed the complete last sentence of the anecdote. Obama’s wording in the first part makes it sound like this platoon didn’t have enough basic ammunition as opposed to specialized ammo. And he makes it sound like the platoon was split up, rather than individuals being reassigned to other units that eventually wound up in Iraq.

But the anecdote checks out? Tapper might be a good writer, but he’s not a magician. Obama more than shaded the truth. He didn’t “let the facts get in the way of a good anecdote.”

Well, they’re in the way now, and Tapper’s article, while it softens the blow, does nothing to dissuade objective observers from concluding that Obama is uninformed about military procedure (for example, many military personnel have pointed out that platoons are rarely at 100% strength) and clearly willing to distort the facts for political gain – the precise thing he accuses the current administration of doing.

Posted by: Me | Feb 22, 2008 6:00:43 PM

European Awakening.

We had the Anbar Awakening after a long, long time of brutal attacks by Al Quaida, now after a long time of head in sand posture it seems that Europe has the glimmerings of an awakening. A few straws in the wind, first Sarkozy was elected in France of all places, he was already awakened, the Danish newspapers are re-publishing the cartoons as an in your face gesture to the Muslim fanatics and now from Britain comes this report by The Royal United Services Institute.

The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a body of the country’s leading military and diplomatic figures, says the loss of British values and national identity caused by “flabby and bogus” Government thinking has made the country vulnerable to attack from Islamic extremists.

Gordon Brown, who is due to unveil his national security policy next week, has described the think-tank as “leading the debate about homeland security and global terrorism”.

Read it all as they say, it’s very encouraging that those not of the stupid lefty persuasion are ready to speak up and tell the people the truth. [Most people who live with the results of governmental, media and academic idiocy do already know.]