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

Category: Foreign Policy

  • Suicide bomber news

    The Stars & Stripes reports that Pakistan claims that they wiped out a suicide bomber training camp in Swat last night;

    Army helicopters strafed the camp late Friday night after local residents tipped off security forces to its location on a small island in the Swat River opposite the town of Charbagh, said Lt. Col. Akhtar Abbas, the army spokesman in Swat. The army had in July declared the area, about six miles east of the valley’s main town of Mingora, cleared of militants except for small pockets of resistance.

    Intelligence reports linked the camp to attacks that killed a total of 10 soldiers and civilians this month, he said.

    What is suicide bomber training i asked myself? Then I remembered this clip from An American Carol and figured this is the kind of stuff they try to avoid.

    In other suicide bomber news, The Washington Times’ Sara A. Carter reports that the other night, a suicide bomber got a little too close to the Saudi royal family;

    Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the deputy to and son of Interior Minister Prince Nayef, was injured Thursday night at his office in Jeddah by a suicide bomber who infiltrated the receiving line at an iftar – the meal that breaks the fast at the end of the day during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

    U.S. officials are closely watching developments in Saudi Arabia and take “seriously” the attempt on Prince Mohammed’s life, a U.S. counterterrorism official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to the nature of the subject.

    “This is the closest al Qaeda has gotten to a member of the Saudi [royal] family,” the official said. “Terrorism in Saudi Arabia is always a concern. The Saudis have had a really strong counterterrorism campaign in the last several years, and we’re seeing al Qaeda react to it.”

    The Saudi government has claimed to have defeated al Qaeda in their country a few years back, but no one can beat these clowns unless you kill every last one of them. Those intellectually stunted anti-war folks need to take this as a lesson.

  • What’s the use?

    You probably read Uncle Jimbo’s post at Blackfive (by way of Mrs. Greyhawk and DVIDS) about a US Navy helicopter taking fire from some Somali pirates the other day. Uncle Jimbo rightly asks why they didn’t return fire.

    Today’s Star and Stripes reports that a ground-based UAV unit is moving to the area.

    About 75 U.S. military personnel and civilians will be headed to the Seychelles islands in the coming weeks to set up the Reaper operations, which could start in October or November. U.S. Africa Command is calling the Navy-led mission Ocean Look.

    The U.S. will base the Reapers — to be used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance — at Seychelles’ Mahé regional airport, Vince Crawley, AFRICOM spokesman, said.

    Two or three months seems like a long time to set up combat operations in a region that is plagued by pirates in little motor boats. The most disturbing part of the article is this line;

    The UAVs would not be armed.

    Then what’s the point? As Jimbo points out, we’re already not willing to let live people shoot at the thugs, so why bother launching more aircarft from which we won’t kill them? We already know that the Left has complained that this type of weaponry that doesn’t get our own troops killed on the grounds that it’s inhumane. Is this more of the Obama Administration pretending to do something about the threats to peace in that region without actually doing what needs to be done?

  • Offer made by Honduran president

    In an extraordinary gesture, the Honduran President, Roberto Micheletti, has offered to relinquish his seat, if ousted former president Manuel Zelaya will relinquish his claims to the presidency, according to the Washington Times‘ Sara A. Carter;

    The offer represents a turnaround by Mr. Micheletti, who has insisted until now that Mr. Zelaya should have been arrested rather than deported to Costa Rica on June 28. Mr. Zelaya was deposed by the military after he sought to change the constitution to allow him to run for a second term.

    But I think the real news in the story is that clintonista Lanny Davis sides with Micheletti’s government here in the US;

    Lanny Davis, a prominent Washington attorney who represents the Honduran Latin American Business Council, said the new proposal “shows Mr. Micheletti is not concerned about power — he is offering to resign entirely from public life. … The question is, does Mr. Zelaya acknowledge that no one, even the president, is above the law?”

    Zelaya would be well-advised to take this deal since his term in office would have ended in a few months anyway. It may be his last opportunity to return to Honduras. But I’m pretty sure that Zelaya and the Obama Administration will screw this up. the US is already moving to cut off aid to the Constitutional government of Honduras according to Reuters;

    U.S. State Department staff have recommended that the ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya be declared a “military coup,” a U.S. official said on Thursday, a step that could cut off as much as $150 million in U.S. funding to the impoverished Central American nation.

    The official, who spoke on condition he not be named, said State Department staff had made such a recommendation to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has yet to make a decision on the matter although one was likely soon.

    Washington has already suspended about $18 million aid to Honduras following the June 28 coup and this would be formally cut if the determination is made because of a U.S. law barring aid “to the government of any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree.”

    So now we’ve stooped to blackmailing small countries to settle their internal affairs – I thought we were over that kind of stuff now. Isn’t that what “hope and change” was all about?

  • Democrats discuss cut and run again

    Yesterday, I wrote that Admiral Mullen’s statement athat the public support for the war in Afghanistan slipping was actually the White House putting out feelers for a chance to abandon Afghanistan to the Taliban. Last night, Greyhawk sent along a link to the latest proof that Democrats are walking back from the war;

    Sen. Russ Feingold, D-WI, called on President Obama to announce a timetable for withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. “This is a strategy that is not likely to succeed,” Sen. Feingold said about the troop buildup in Afghanistan.

    “After eight years, I am not convinced that pouring more and more troops into Afghanistan is a well thought out policy,” said Feingold. The liberal Democrat said he has expressed his reservations with President Obama, Admiral Mullen, and others inside the administration and he says he has “never been convinced they have a good answer.”

    “I think it is time we start discussing a flexible timetable so that people around the world can see when we are going to bring our troops out,” said Feingold. “Showing the people there and here that we have a sense about when it is time to leave is one of the best things we can do,” he added.

    Yeah, a flexible timeline for withdrawal from Iraq has worked so well, hasn’t it? I guess they can just dust off their old Iraq timeline speeches and change the place names.

    It’s all because they’re losing their base on their domestic agenda and the Democrats want to appease the intellectually vacant MoveOn crowd – with lives. al Qaeda lost Iraq in a humiliating defeat, and I guess the Obama Administration wants to give them a morale raising victory in Afghanistan. All so we can have socialized healthcare. Sweet.

  • Murderer returns to hero’s welcome

    Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi arrived home in Tripoli, Libya to a cheering crowd after eight years in a Scottish prison for murdering 270 people in Lockerbie, Scotland. Ain’t that nice? (Telegraph link)

    After he left Scottish soil, Megrahi, who has served just eight years of a 27-year sentence, released a statement protesting his innocence and expressing his “sympathy” for the families of the 270 people he was convicted of killing.

    It’s nice that he has sympathy for the victims’ family, too. Of course, it would have been nicer if he’d had sympathy for the victims’ families before he bombed them out of the sky.

    Another Telegraph article reports that President Obama leads the condemnation of the murder’s release;

    Mr Obama said: “We have been in contact with the Scottish government, indicating that we objected to this, and we thought it was a mistake.”

    He added that he is now pressuring the Libyan government to keep Megrahi under house arrest until his death.

    Yeah, that’ll work. You can tell how the Libyans are going to punish him from the looks of his reception on the tarmac in Tripoli;

    Libya Britain Lockerbie

    The Daily Mail describes the scene;

    The US president’s pleas for Tripoli to refrain from idolising Megrahi when he landed on home soil went unheeded.

    Instead, he was greeted by a mob who had descended on Mitiga Airport brandishing placards and cheering.

    Some displayed Megrahi’s face on their t-shirts while others waved Libyan and Scottish flags.

    Yeah, it’s so nice that the world respects us now, ain’t it? The Libyans used to fear us – that’s why they turned over their weapons of mass destruction without us firing a shot at them. If they don’t put Al Megrahi into prison, we ought to reinstate the embargoes against them and put them back on the rogue nation list.

    Yeah, that’ll happen.

  • IVAW gives advice to State Dept. then promptly ignored

    Yes, according to junior space cadet, and newly-elected board member TJ Buonomo, he tried to give advice to the State Department earlier this month. Keep in mind that Buonomo spent a few months in the Army as a second louie (after soaking the US tax payers for an Air Force Academy education), so he introduces himself to a State Department “official” as a “former US Army Intelligence Officer”.

    Buonomo, in his own words, “I was discharged from the Army for vocally supporting the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney and for denouncing American imperialism as a betrayal of our revolutionary principles”. But he sure throws around that “US Army Intelligence Officer” around like he’s proud of it. And he writes like he’s in high school.

    So anyway, after he cleared up his status to the State Department “official” he pretty much got a “no comment” answer. “Numerous attempts to contact the State Department’s Office of International Labor and Corporate Social Responsibility by phone and email have not been responded to.”

    Probably because the State Department doesn’t answer letters from pseudo-experts who end their sentences with prepositions. It makes them sound like cranks.

    But Buonomo’s whole schtick is that he went to an Iraqi labor conference, well, once the shooting stopped. So he thinks that short stay makes him an expert on labor relations in Iraq – such an expert that he presumes he can advise the State Department.

    Of course, to someone who spent 14 months in uniform and calls himself a “former US Army Intelligence Officer” I’m sure a week or so in Iraq seems like time enough to know every thing.

    So let’s hear one more time how significant it was that Obama’s veteran adviser met with IVAW at the Democrat National Committee.

  • Elections over in Afghanistan

    The Associated Press reports some violence aimed at voters and polling places resulting in 26 deaths;

    Taliban threats scared voters and dampened turnout in the militant south Thursday as Afghans voted for president for the second time ever. Insurgents killed 26 Afghans in scattered attacks, but officials said militants failed to disrupt the vote.

    After 10 hours of voting, including a last-minute, one-hour extension, election workers began to count millions of ballots. Initial results weren’t expected for several days.

    JD Johannes trolled around Kabul during the voting. His photos and narrative are at Outside the Wire. More pictures at ABC News.

    Eurasiannet reports that the Afghanistan government is claiming the election is a security success;

    Voter turnout appeared to vary widely across the country, with some areas, especially the more volatile southern provinces, reporting low polling. No official polling figures were available and the country’s Independent Election Commission said the actual voter turnout would not be made public for three or four days.

    Preliminary results of the counting process are expected to be available by August 25. The certified results will take much longer, however, and can be released only after the Electoral Complaints Commission has completed its investigation into any complaints it receives.

    My infidel prayers are with them.

    More links at Mudville Gazette.

  • Who will get the oil in the Gulf?

    The Washington Examiner editorial board writes this morning that it’s going to get a little crowded off our shores in the Gulf of Mexico with oil platforms – unfortunately, none of those platforms will be American;

    Brazil, China, India, Norway, Spain and Russia have all signed agreements with Cuba and the Bahamas to initiate exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico within the next two years. So the prospect of seeing Russian oil rigs 45 miles off the Florida Keys — where American oil companies are now forbidden to drill — is a very real possibility.

    The other day I wrote about the Obama Administration underwriting Brazilian oil drilling off of their coast and ours. Now we face the prospect of watching the money and jobs that could be part of our economy floating a few miles off our own shores – financed by our own government (read that: our own earnings confiscated by the government).

    As I wrote the other day, there’s a very strong possibility that developing our own natural resources could be the engine that provides the jobs as well as making us energy independent for the next few decades. There hasn’t been a refinery built in the last 30 years (30 years ago last month, Jimmy Carter promised that we’d build a refinery and a pipeline every time we needed one). Decades worth of oil and jobs lay fallow in Alaska.

    And who do you have more confidence in to drill clean and protect the environment – China, Russia, Cuba or the US? Apparently, someone is going to drill no matter what we do – shouldn’t it be us?