This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Author: Jonn Lilyea

  • Petraeus report dismissed as “Bush Report”

    When I made the public comment days after 9-11 that Democrats would end their charade of supporting this country and it’s national security in short order, I was criticized and chastised. But that’s why I made the comment, I suppose.

    Since then, we’ve had recorded incidences of wounded soldiers being spat upon, we’ve had Little Dick Durbin calling them SS Nazi camp guards, John Murtha calling them murderers, John Kerry telling us that the troops aren’t very smart, John Edwards calling the war against terrorism a bumper sticker phrase, Harry Reid told us the surge had failed before it even started…well, I could go on, but you get the idea.

    Today, the Washington Times’ S.A. Miller writes that they’ve already dismissed the upcoming Petraeus Report;

    Congressional Democrats are trying to undermine U.S. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus’ credibility before he delivers a report on the Iraq war next week, saying the general is a mouthpiece for President Bush and his findings can’t be trusted.

    “The Bush report?” Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin said when asked about the upcoming report from Gen. Petraeus, U.S. commander in Iraq.

    “We know what is going to be in it. It’s clear. I think the president’s trip over to Iraq makes it very obvious,” the Illinois Democrat said. “I expect the Bush report to say, ‘The surge is working. Let’s have more of the same.’ ”

    The top Democrats — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California — also referred to the general’s briefing as the “Bush report.”

    Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Gen. Petraeus’ report was potentially compromised by the White House’s involvement in drafting it.

    Imagine that – the Executive Branch actually cooperated among the various agencies to produce a report to the Legislative Branch. Van Hollen, you’re an idiot. That’s what the Executive Branch should be doing. Where did you take civics? In space?

    Robin at Chickenhawk Express sums the current variation of BDS very well;

    These moveon morons can’t see anything because they are just totally consumed with hatred for President Bush and anything Republican. They are still smarting from President Bush’s trip to Iraq this week and the overwhelming support for the CIC demonstrated by the troops.

    Rather than embrace the report from the General that is up to his armpits in the situation in Iraq, the Dems would rather pick their own little reports to refer to. No surprise here – the reports they are banking on are less than optimistic. But why would we expect anything else from the Defeatocrats?

    Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive targets my favorite imbecile, Little Chuckie “the Putz” Schumer who says that the surge is working despite our troops;

    Wow Senator, really. So the Sunni tribes that before had either helped Al Qaeda, tolerated them, or were intimidated into submission by them, decided to fight them on their own. And somehow they chose to show this by allying themselves directly with us and conducting operations with US troops. Hmm go figure, but noted military expert Chuck Schumer wouldn’t just be running his mouth would he? Just standing on the Senate floor flappin’ his gums about things  he is woefully ignorant about, this is the US Senate for cripes sakes.

    And yet there he is, lying in that disgusting tone those collegial jagoffs use.

    Ed Morrissey at Captain’s Quarters disputes “The Putz”;

    The Iraqis aren’t fooled. They named the police station after the man who masterminded the liberation of Ramadi from al-Qaeda. They named it after US Army Captain Travis Patriquin.

    Peejz at Right Voices points out that they haven’t read the darn thing yet, so who are they to judge?

    What is it that they do believe? Well, the GAO report, of course, and why is that? The Democratic Congress ensured that the report would deliver negative “grades” for the Iraqi government by asking the GAO to evaluate whether or not the benchmarks have been met now–just two months after the major combat operations of the surge began.

    And me? Well, the surge working was inevitable – the reason Iraqis are stepping up is they were certain that if the Democrats won the Congress last November, they’d pull US troops out – just like the Democrats told us they would. Instead, Bush sent more US troops – the Iraqis realize that our support to them isn’t hinged on political rhetoric, but genuine commitment. The reason they didn’t step up before was that they were pretty certain that Americans would cut and run and leave them hanging – like we’ve left Vietnamese, Somalians, Haitians, Serbs, Croatians, Bosnians and Cubans hanging. And the iraqi Shi’ites in 1991. Why would Iraqis commit to hanging thier own asses out after we’ve become famous worldwide as cut-and-runners?

    George Bush proved to them that the US is there to win despite the political climate here. And they responded in kind. The Iraqis cowboy’d up.

    My buddy, Kate, likes to quote Jose Marti; Man loves liberty, even if he does not know that he loves it. He is driven by it and flees from where it does not exist. We just needed to show the Iraqis that we are willing to point the way to liberty.

    And Gateway Pundit has all of the good news from Iraq in one neat, handy package. Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs posts pictures of US atrocities in response to Schumer.

    Curt at Flopping Aces, in “The New Democrat Offensive“, parses two articles from WaPo’s Karen Young on the subject “Iraq Army Unable to Take Over in a Year Report Says” and “Experts Doubt Drop in Violence in Iraq“. She might have a shred of credibility or at least the appearance of journalistic integrity if she’d ever written an article on the other side.

    Brings to mind Spiro Agnew’s comment about the “nattering nabobs of negativity” from our Viet Nam Era.

  • VA town shuts “day labor” center and KKK leaflets muddy debate

    The controversial “Day Labor” Center in Herndon, Virginia will be closed by the Town Council finally, according to the Washington Post’s Bill Turque;

    The Town of Herndon announced yesterday that it would close its 21-month-old day-laborer center next week instead of complying with a judge’s ruling that the site must be open to all residents, including those who might be illegal immigrants.

    The decision to close the site, which became a flash point in the national debate over immigration, was reached late Tuesday by Mayor Stephen J. DeBenedittis and the six-member Town Council after a 2 1/2 -hour closed-door session. It brings the western Fairfax community virtually full circle in its attempts to regulate — critics say drive out — its large population of Latino day laborers. The center was established in late 2005 as an alternative to the streets for laborers and prospective employers to come to terms.

    Judges are idiots. Period. This country was a much better place before judges started making idiot decisions based on emotion instead of law;

    At issue was an ordinance the council approved in 2005 as a legal companion to the day-laborer center, barring workers and motorists from striking deals for employment on the streets. The courts have generally required that communities barring public solicitation for work — a form of speech — must provide an alternative venue for that speech, such as a hiring site.

    As the town enforced the anti-solicitation ordinance, many residents grew resentful of the center. Reston Interfaith, a group of religious institutions operating under a grant from Fairfax County, did not require workers to document their immigration status. Opponents of the center said the town was essentially abetting illegal immigration.

    Of course, no rational discussion of immigration can’t exclude the completely irrational KKK;

    Dozens of Ku Klux Klan leaflets calling for a ban on “all non-white immigration” were distributed last weekend in Manassas, where a dispute over illegal immigration has raised tensions in recent weeks.

    The leaflets, dropped at night into mailboxes and on driveways along one street, urged “white Christian America” to stand up for its rights. Smatterings of racist literature are distributed in communities throughout the region every few weeks, but this incident struck a raw nerve in Manassas.
     
    Klan officials, who are based in Arkansas, said yesterday that Virginia residents had asked them for Klan literature to deliver in Manassas.

    It sounds like a set-up actually. I’m pretty sure that the pro-illegal-immigration-at-any-cost crowd planted these leaflets in oder to make the debate about racism than about rule of law. I’m fairly sure that no half-way rational person who truly wants to end illegal immigration into Northern Virginia would think that KKK literature would strengthen support there. If I had to pick out the organization most likely to use racist literature, I’d pick an organization with a racist name – like “Mexicans Without Borders” or “La Raza”. In fact it didn’t take long for them to start marginalizing the opposition;

    “Any time lawmakers pass initiatives that . . . single out a segment of the population and try to drive them out of the community, they are laying the foundation for increased bigotry and hatred,” Mexicans Without Borders said in a statement issued yesterday in response to the reports of Klan leafleting. They said a recent wave of anti-immigrant rhetoric had “opened the door to racist organizations.”

    The only racism here from the groups who support lawbreakers merely because they happen to have a certain skin color  – against people who want the law enforced who happen to have lower levels of melanin pigment.

  • So why Fred Thompson?

    Fred Thompson finally came out of the Presidential closet last night. I know this will piss off the Ron Paul freakazoids, but I’m going to have to vote for Thompson. Why? Well, who else is there?

    Giuliani, “America’s mayor”, was a fine prosecuting attorney, he cleaned up New York City and demonstrated a lot of leadership by ignoring the critics and doing what was right. He led NYC out of the dust cloud after the attack on the World Trade Center – great job. But he’s no President. What kind of goofball lives with his girlfriend while his wife is across town with his kid? During a Senate campaign? The same measure I applied to “Wide Stance” Craig, I apply to Rudy Giuliani – poor judgement, not a mark of a true leader. I wouldn’t trust Giuliani with the combination to the restroom. And I’m not a big issues guy, but anti-gun and pro-abortion just shows how poor Giuliani’s judgement really is.

    Then there’s that other northeast Liberal Republican, Mitt Romney. I just don’t trust northeast Republicans – I backed Pataki for governor in ’94. Clearly, he was a better choice than Cuomo, but his time in office accomplished almost nothing. New York is as bad now as it was under Cuomo. Romney spends too much time explaining himself – George W Bush and Ronald Reagan never explained themselves – you just knew what they stood for without waiting for an explanation. And honestly, he’s too nice a guy to deal Hillary what she needs to be dealt. He might make a good Vice President, but….

    John McCain would be a good candidate – probably the most electable out of all of them, except he has the baggage from the Keating S&L scandal – and that crack in South Carolina in the 2000 campaign about George Bush’s “tax cut for the rich”. I made my mind up for Bush then, and I still hold it against McCain.

    Brownback? He can’t make a splash. Hunter? Most of America hasn’t heard of him – mostly because they haven’t been paying attention. Ron Paul? America wouldn’t recognize him without his tinfoil hat. Hucka-what?

    My number one reason for backing Thompson, though, is that the media has spent more time on Thompson’s candidacy than on the others – trying to dig up dirt on him or his wife. I can’t turn the page of a newspaper or watch a news program without some mealy-mouthed, half-wit leftist journalist telling me what’s wrong with Thompson as a conservative candidate. I keep hearing from those media talking heads why I, a conservative voter, won’t support Thompson because of some obscure vote ten years ago.

    Honestly, I’d be a bit wary of a candidate that supported all of my issues – I’m a bit nutty.

    Thompson has the name recognition, the communication skills and the credentials to win the election. And I think he’s just enough of a leader to take this country where it needs to go in the next several years. Most importantly, just by being himself, or that Arthur character from Law and Order, at least, he’ll be able to beat a Clinton/Obama ticket.

  • Malcontents focus on Europe

    I guess the terrorists haven’t taken time off from their escapades. There was a report of an attempted ETA attack in northern Spain on Sunday, the day after four ETA members were arrested. Monday, Denmark scooped up a couple of the sociopaths and today Germany halted an attack  still in the planning phase on the German Frankfurt Airport and US’ Ramstein Air Base. Swedish Muslims (what are they doing in Sweden, for Pete’s sake?) are gearing up for protests there. The Dutch have their own problems with Filipino communists as well as Muslims.

    So, I guess the Danes, Germans and Spanish are all in cahoots with Bush these days to spread the fear of terrorism. That’s what the Left says whenever a fledgling terrorist group gets scooped up here in the States – that the President is just trying to terrorize citizens into voting Republican (you’d think he’d get the timing a little better, though, and schedule the arrests near elections or something).

    Yeah, the terrorists are fairly incompetent – but look where they come from, look at their ideology. They’re living in the 7th Century, they’re witing for a 1200-year-old Imam to rise from his magic well – you can’t expect them to be very competent when they have the minds of childrens. Yeah, they’ll get successful occasionally and they’ll probably get better (luckily, the few who live to learn from their failures are in Guantanamo) it’s inevitable. That’s why it’s best to kill them before they get much better – in droves – in Afghanistan and Iraq.

    But Europeans should be asking themselves why they’re the targets when we all know that those radicals want to target the US. It might be because it’s too costly to strike the US these days. The terrorists can just bide their time until next fall when they might get a President of the US likely to strike at real targets and do real damage to their operations.

    The Europeans, in the meantime, have proven to be handwringers who won’t face the truth or the problems in their own countries. I suggest that their terror problems stem from their weak-kneed reactions to pointless protests and “youths” who burn cars in their streets.

    I dunno – just thinking outloud.

    Just ventured out on the net for the first time today and it seems everyone’s talking about the “homegrown” German terrorists;

    Ace of Spades;

    Once again terrorist attackers in the West are linked to Al Qaeda in Pakistan, and not, notably, Al Qaeda in Iraq. Our very tough, strong liberal war critics may argue this indicates that Al Qaeda in Iraq won’t “follow us home” if we stop fighting in Iraq, but this seems a farcical claim. Of course the Arab branch of Al Qaeda would be plotting against us at home were they not engaged with us more directly on what they consider more friendly ground.

    Baldilocks:

    Under the stating-the-obvious heading, the suspects are said to have a “profound hatred of U.S. citizens.”

    Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive;

    America-hating is a long popular pastime around the world, but we need to focus on any of these folks who decide to take action. I haven’t seen any indications that there has been an overall increase in terrorist acts around the world, outside of Iraq. In Iraq we have had the privilege to return thousands of America-hating fanatics back to room temp, and none of them are back home now bragging to their buddies about how coll it is to go Crusader hunting along the banks of the banks of the Euphrates.

    Pamela Geller from Atlas Shrugs:

    The three Islamic terrorists busted today in Germany fiercelynhate America. How long before Pelosi and Reid ask them to lunch?

    All stuff I’d say if I didn’t have to work so durn hard today.

  • ACLU; US Military hides attrocities in plain sight

    Yes, the AMERICAN Civil Libeties Union is busy bashing our troops again. I emphasized the AMERICAN part of their moniker because they’ve lost sight the fact that their stated purpose is to protect AMERICAN civil liberties, yet they want to interject themselves into Iraqi civil rights. From an Associated Press article;

    New documents released Tuesday regarding crimes committed by U.S. soldiers against civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan detail a troubling pattern of troops failing to understand and follow the rules that govern interrogations and deadly actions.
     
    The documents, released by the American Civil Liberties Union ahead of a lawsuit, total nearly 10,000 pages of courts-martial summaries, transcripts and military investigative reports about 22 incidents. They show repeated examples of soldiers believing they were within the law when they killed local citizens.

    Wow! 22 incidents and 10,000 pages – that’s a lot. And the government is hiding this from us? Well, no.

    In the suffocation, soldiers covered the man’s head with a sleeping bag, then wrapped his neck with an electrical cord for a “stress position” they insisted was an approved technique.

    Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer was convicted of negligent homicide in the death of Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush following a January 2006 court-martial that received wide media attention due to possible CIA involvement in the interrogation.

    Oh, so he was convicted in a publicized court martial. That’s hardly being secretive.

    But even after his conviction, Welshofer insisted his actions were appropriate and standard, documents show.

    “The simple fact of the matter is interrogation is supposed to be stressful or you will get no information,” Welshofer wrote in a letter to the court asking for clemency. “To put it another way, an interrogation without stress is not an interrogation — it is a conversation.”

    Oh, I see it’s the government’s fault because this fellow didn’t know that the military frowned upon strangling people. I guess he’s the first person in history to deny culpability in his actions by appearing to not know the difference between right and wrong.

    Considered against recent cases, including soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division convicted of killing detainees in Samarra, Iraq, last year and the ongoing courts-martial of Marines accused of killing 24 civilians in Haditha, these new examples shed light on the frequency soldiers and Marines may disregard the rules of war.

    Nasrina Bargzie, an attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project, said the documents also show that theres an abundance of information being withheld from public scrutiny.

    Oh, so how do I know about the incidents in Samarra and Haditha if this is all being witheld from public scrutiny WHILE THE INVESTIGATIONS AND TRIALS ARE ALL ONGOING, you pinheaded dorks? Oh, and by the way, most of the Marines in the Haditha incident have been cleared of wrong doing – I guess you just failed to mention that for the sake of space, huh?

    “The government has gone out of its way to hide the human cost of this war,” Bargzie said. Releasing the documents now “paints at least a part of that picture so people at least know what’s going on,” she said.

    They’ve gone out of their way? Then why are they releasing the documents to you? Seems they didn’t can’t go far enough out of their way, does it? ACLU must be having a fund drive this month and they can’t find any US citizens being abused so they’re fishing for some Iraqis to represent.

  • DC Mayor Fenty on gun rights

    I’ve seen some stupid poltical remarks before, but today’s opinion piece in the Washington Post by DC’s new mayor, Adrian Fenty, is probably the most juvenile and faulty writings of any politician – ever. Aside from mistating constitutional precedence, he also mistates the purpose of the US Constitution;

    On a related note, the courts also repeatedly recognized that the Second Amendment is meant to constrain the federal government alone. Another longstanding Supreme Court precedent, Presser v. Illinois, establishes establishes that the Second Amendment simply does not apply to state regulation of gun possession and use. The District should have authority just like that of the states, if for no other reason than to avoid the absurd result that the nation’s capital alone would lack the ability to take the steps the local government believes are needed to keep its residents safe.

    On it’s face, it sounds almost reasonable – except that I wonder how Mayor Fenty would feel if the same principle were applied to the abortion issue. Since the Constitution only applies to restraining the Federal Government, how about we let the several States decide whether they want to ban abortions or not – without interference from Federal courts.

    Or, we could just let the States decide whether or not they want to enforce the 14th Amendment, or, Hell, they can just decide whether they want to fiddle with the First Amendment, for Pete’s sake.

    The handgun ban has saved countless lives, but this fundamental part of the District’s public safety laws will be no more if the Supreme Court does not review and overturn this year’s decision by the D.C. Circuit.

    I’d give a coupla bucks to see how the Hell Fenty can make such an irresponsible statement. Prove to me that the handgun ban has saved lives. There have been 126 homocides in the District this year as of August 31st  (there were four more over the weekend). And the DC cops, according their own statistics at the above link, after thirty years of a handgun ban, still took 1519 guns off the street THIS YEAR ALONE. Your ban isn’t working and only criminals have guns – law-abiding citizens are undefended. Even long-gun ownership is so restrictive that personal protection is impossible. Why do you think the city with the most restrictive handgun laws in the country has the highest murder rate? Stevie Wonder could see the answer from space - the handgun ban isn’t  disarming criminals.

    So, Mayor Fenty, it appears that you’re on the side of criminals in this. And for all of the wrong reasons.

  • Clinton, Clinton & Co.

    The Wall Street Journal’s Jackie Calmes writes that Hillary is easing her “husband” back into her campaign in “Two-for-One Deal” – as if we’ve completely forgotten that 90s brought us to the point where we are today;

    Hillary and Bill Clinton kicked off her fall campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, a rare joint effort calling to mind the uncharted waters of a White House with an ex-president in residence. Many voters in their audiences, even some nonsupporters, saw the potential precedent as a plus.

    The Clintons’ Labor Day weekend of stumping in New Hampshire and Iowa, the states with the first nominating contests in four months, was the third time they have publicly campaigned together this year. The campaign has focused on letting the New York senator make her case independently of her husband.

    Yes, she made her case independently of her husband – and her campaign, using the tactics of her husband’s 1996 campaign, began taking in money from shady characters, as documented quite thoroughly by Curt of Flopping Aces, Gateway Pundit and Michele Malkin.

    mRed at Invicible Armor tells us that, in true Clinton form, Bill says you could have knocked him over with a feather when he found out that yet another Chinese businessman handing the Clinton campaign cash was a crook. You’d think that it’d be the other way around, wouldn’t you? I’d be more surprised that legitimate Chinese businessmen were contributing to the Clinton campaign.

    Bill Gertz in today’s Washington Times recounts some of the events we have forgotten from a decade ago;

    The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee investigated what it called the Clinton campaign fundraising “scandal” in 1997 and issued a report showing that four persons were linked to large illicit contributions thought to have come from China’s government through Hong Kong.

    […]

    William C. Triplett II, a former Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff member whose 1998 book “Year of the Rat” highlighted the 1996 funding scandal, said he suspects that the Chinese are involved in Mrs. Clinton’s presidential bid.

    “What we saw in 1996 was similar,” Mr. Triplett said. “Whenever the Clintons have money trouble, they turn to the Chinese and the Chinese don’t let them down. Perhaps it is only a coincidence that both 1996 and 2008 are Years of the Rat in the Chinese calendar.”

    The WSJ story quotes the most ominous statement from Hillary yet;

    “The day I’m elected,” she said, “I’m going to be asking distinguished Americans — including my husband — of both parties, to start traveling around the world, and not just talking to governments and leaders, but talking directly to people and telling them that America is back.”

    Yeah, that crooked, panty-waisted America that kept turning the other cheek towards al Qaeda, handed out money to bribe corrupt governements and apologies for things we’d never done  and sold off our defensive technology to China in exchange for illegal campaign cash will indeed be back.

  • Anti-war movement’s death throes

    Since I went to the Gathering of Eagles counter-protest last March 17th, I’ve been convinced that the pathetic and pointless, culture of personalities, anti-war movement is in its death throes. In fact, I’ve wrote about it several times on this blog. The sparse participation at the March on the Pentagon convinced me of that – it was a Saturday morning in the middle of the Spring semester in a hugely college town, yet they could barely scrape together enough people to outnumber the counter protesters – if they did.

    Well, apparently, Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard arrived at the same conclusion, for different reasons, in this week’s issue;

    It would be silly to make too much out of one item on a Time blog. But it does suggest that even the respectable elements of the antiwar movement have jumped the shark. Unwilling seriously to debate the choices before us, and the consequences of those choices, antiwar advocates are now down to name-calling.

    Well, that’s not all. I see on the Gathering of Eagles blog, the Move America Forward tour and it’s organizer have been threatened by Daily Kos diarists (the post was obviously removed but the evidence remains). Marooned in Marin has more substantial evidence of the Left’s intentions towards the MAF caravan. When the Left resorts to threats, they’re losing – and we’re winning!Â

    More evidence, in my mind, is the fact that the anti-war movement’s studly hero, a crybaby by the name of Adam Kokesh, whom I’ve written about extensively here, is calling for a longer commitment than just one day from the mindless zombies of the Left;

    To kick off the week of action, after the rally we will march from the White House to the Capitol, and go straight into a mass civil-disobedience die-in around the Peace Monument. The die-in will be led by an Honor Guard of Iraq Veterans Against the War who will simulate a 21-Gun Salute before taps is played to initiate the die-in. We are asking as many members of VFP as possible to sign up to wear cammies and die-in around us to symbolize the American cost of this war. We will be encircled by bolts of red cloth to symbolize the Iraqi deaths and invite anyone else from the rally to participate in the die-in.

    Sunday will be a day of teach-ins including a Truth In Recruiting Workshop led by IVAW. That evening, IVAW DC will be holding a benefit concert. Monday is National Truth In Recruiting Day, and there will be numerous activities planned and we will need your help with an action at the main recruiting office in DC. Tuesday is Congressional Challenge Day led by Tina Richards. Wednesday or Thursday will be Veterans Lobbying Day, and Friday is the Moratorium. Also, the 14th, the Friday before the rally, is the IVAW CD Release Party. All of these events are on the calendar at Sept15.org.

    I doubt very much that they’ll be able to keep the interest of 15-second attention span generation for an entire week. Especially if there’s a sign of rain, or the temp drops below 70 degrees, or they walk past the Hard Rock Cafe on their way to the protest, or if  American Idol Rewind is on their cable TVs in their hotel rooms.

    I think its funny that Kokesh is pushing for a “Truth in Recruiting” day – since he lied to all of the major media outlets and told them he’d been discharged from the military before his participation in protests and that the military was targeting him for harrassment. Kokesh wouldn’t know the truth if it bit his face.

    William Kristol calls for the anti-war crowd to action against Kokesh’s “Die-In”;

    Will mainstream antiwar groups and antiwar politicians denounce this action, which is scheduled to begin the weeklong protest? Will the respectable parts of the antiwar movement stand with veterans and veterans’ families who intend to protest this disgusting appropriation of their loved ones’ names? Surely most critics of the war still have a sense of decency.

    Obviously, Kristol has more faith in human nature than I. This last Spring, Kokesh, while still in the military, roamed the National Mall in uniform with his cohorts, pretending to be on a patrol in Iraq. They forced  tourists into makeshift prison cells and began humiliating them to simulate the way our troops treat innocent Iraqi civilians. There is no expectation of a “sense of decency” from people so steeped in their hatred for this country and the troops that defend us.

    Kokesh has an axe to grind with the Marines – he was reduced in rank and placed in the inactive reserves. On his blog, in which he calls himself “Sergeant Kokesh” (which in itself is a lie – he was dischaged as a private E-2 – he was busted. I guess he thinks that he gets to call himself whatever he wants now) describes his tour as a “civil affairs specialist” and says that his first tour soured him on the war. But he neglects to mention that before his second tour (for which he volunteered, by the way) he was busted for smuggling an Iraqi pistol back to the US after the first tour. Doesn’t sound like the actions of someone destined to be the public face of the anti-war movement, does it?

    Regardless, I plan on being there to bring you the photos of the pathetic end of the anti-war movement – as well as photos of the Gathering of Eagles who plan on lining Saturday’s event route for GOEIII. Tentatively, some fellow bloggers are planning to meet me there so, there should be lots to write about on September 15th.

    Anyone else planning on being there, drop me a line at admin@thisainthell.us Â

    Others blogging on the same thing as my meandering mind;

    Robin at Chickenhawk Express on William Kristol

    Skye at Midnight Blue on GOE III

    Michele Malkin on Answering ANSWER and GOE III

    SWAC Girl on GOE III

    The Redhunter on GOE III

    DragonMG at Tanker Brothers wonders “Where’s Harry?” when the GOE is there to welcome home Nevada’s sons and daughters, but Reid isn’t. While Dadmanly recounts Reid’s conversion to surrender monkey over the death of the first Nevadan in Iraq.

    Speaking of sharkjumping and the Daily Kos, Markos may have just jumped the shark by calling his readers gullible fools (from Newsbusters’ PJ Gladnik).