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

Category: Terror War

  • Potential US jihadists to be deported

    sissies

    The five Americans who were picked up in Pakistan this week on their way to jihad will probably be deported says Pakistani officials to the Associated Press;

    The men have allegedly told investigators they tried to connect with al-Qaeda-linked militant groups in Pakistan and were intending to cross the border into Afghanistan and fight U.S. troops there.

    They were reported missing by their families in the Washington D.C. area a week ago after one of them left behind a militaristic farewell video saying Muslims must be defended. Pakistani police detained them this week — along with one of their fathers — in the town of Sargodha in eastern Pakistan.

    Let ’em go. Just release the little sissies on the Pakistan border and let them go wage jihad. That’s what’ll happen anyway, save us some money and let them come at our troops where the troops can defend themselves.

  • “…Not only stupid, it’s not worth a peace prize”

    Twelve Republican congresspeople held a press conference on the steps of the Supreme Court this morning to protest sending Kalid Sheik Muhammad to New York City for trial. They were Congressman Steve King (R-IA), Andrew McCarthy (Former Federal Prosecutor), Congressman Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), Charles Stimson (Former Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary For Detainee Affairs), Congresswoman Sue Myrick (R-NC), Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Congressman John Shadegg (R-AZ), Frank Gaffney (President, Center For Security Policy), Congressman Todd Akin (R-MO), Congressman John Fleming, M.D. (R-LA), Congressman Trent Franks (R-AZ).

    Here’s the video of some clips from the Washington News Observer;

    Uncle Jimbo of Blackfive was there, too;

    The press conference for H.R. 4127 that would amend the Military Commissions Act of 2009 to make it mandatory that all alien unprivileged enemy belligerents stand trial in a constitutionally established military commission rather than a civilian court, was this morning at the Supreme Court.

    Go see Jimbo’s video of Cully Stimson.

    Fat chance that it’ll pass, but your congressman needs to know how you feel about it so he knows why he won’t get your vote next year.

  • Save the rest of us instead

    The Wall Street Journal has an Op/Ed from Salam Al-Marayati, from the Muslim Public Affairs Council in which he says we should allow a cluster of Muslim clerics to explain to Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood murderer how he was wrong to think that he was justified in murdering us infidels;

    Consider allowing Muslim-American religious leaders to meet with Nidal Hasan. Muslim leaders could encourage him to repent. And they could engage Maj. Hasan on his deeply flawed understanding of Islam, explaining that the Quran is an instrument to take people from darkness to light, not the opposite.

    Ya know, that’s all well and good, but how about pulling aside the radical clerics operating across the world and urging them to repent, too. How about a little preventive maintenance on Islam. Another good place to start is with those Revolution Muslims – they’re the guys who called Hasan an “officer and a gentleman” for murdering 13 (14) people.

    revolution-muslims

    Here’s a report from Anderson Cooper from last month right after the Hasan attack;

    It seems to me that if Al-Marayati wanted to do some good, he’d forget about Hasan’s soul and start saving some of these folks who are on the precipice of doing some harm to folks.

    I’ve watched some of the videos of the Revolution Muslims and it’s some scary shit to watch them mouth words that they’ve obviously memorized and practiced.

    Even Jesse MacBeth is concerned about them. He emailed the other day to tell me he’s assembling a group of moderate Muslims to debate the Revolution Muslims on YouTube. I commend MacBeth for his efforts, but it’ll have the effect of spitting in a hurricane.

  • 300 casualties in Iraq bombings

    The Washington Times and Associated Press report a series of four coordinated attacks in Baghdad which has caused at least 300 casualties this morning;

    At least 103 were killed and 197 wounded in the worst wave of violence in the capital in more than a month, authorities said.

    A total of four attacks, which also included a suicide car bomb on a police patrol, showed the ability of insurgents to strike high-profile targets in the heart of Baghdad and marked the third time since August that government buildings were targeted with multiple blasts that brought massive bloodshed.

    It also was another embarrassment to Iraqi forces in their expanding role as front-line security as U.S. forces plan their withdrawal.

    I’m pretty sure this attack was intended to embarrass the Iraqi government and to prove that terrorists in Iraq have more staying power than the US. USAToday reports a bomb which killed 12 detonated near a Pakistani intelligence office;

    The bombing in Multan signaled a relentless determination on the part of the militants, who — despite being pressured by a major army offensive in one of their Afghan border havens — have sustained a retaliatory campaign since October that has killed more than 400 people. On Monday, bombings elsewhere in the country killed 59 people.

    I’d say these bombings are directly related to the Obama Administration’s 94-day decision period on the Afghan Surge and ultimately the president’s weak response to his generals. If the bombers didn’t think they see an opening and a chance to win the wars, these bombings wouldn’t have happened.

  • Rewriting the history we watched

    The Washington Post’s Anne E. Kornblut, Scott Wilson and Karen DeYoung try to portray President Obama as a pragmatic leader on the issue of the war in Afghanistan in their total tonguebath of the president in the Post entitled “Obama pressed for faster surge” subtitled “AFGHAN REVIEW A MARATHON; ‘What was interesting was the metamorphosis’. Interesting? Hardly.

    As everyone (and their grandmother) predicted, the “metamorphosis” began with his trip to Dover AFB;

    On the evening of Oct. 29, Obama flew to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to meet a returning C-17 cargo plane. In its hold were 18 flag-draped “transfer cases” carrying the remains of soldiers and Drug Enforcement Administration agents. He stepped inside the plane for a few minutes with the caskets.

    October was the deadliest month in Afghanistan for U.S. troops since the 2001 invasion. Fifty-eight troops died, more than three times the toll during the same month last year. A senior administration official said Obama “always believed it was important for him to acknowledge the sacrifice” at some point in the review.

    Yeah, we all knew that the trip was orchestrated even to the point of teaching Obama how to salute properly just so he could appear to be weighing the costs of his decision. Ray Charles could have seen through it from space.

    But the part that gets me is the last meeting supposedly on November 29th, in which the Post tries to make it look as if Obama is a consensus builder;

    Obama then went around the room asking one question: Do you support the strategy?

    “If they didn’t support the decision, he was going to issue another decision” until there was unanimity, a senior administration official said. “But it was his assessment that everyone could and should get behind it.”

    No, he wasn’t building a consensus. He setting up everyone in the room for the blame in case the plan fails. Now we know, thanks to the Post, that all of the President’s advisers approved “the surge”, so, if for some reason the plan falls apart in Afghanistan, it’s not Obama’s fault-all of those clowns are going under the bus.

    Oh, and, by the way, it makes him look weak that he couldn’t make a decision based on the information that every department of the government presented him. A leader doesn’t build consensus – a leader makes a plan and then convinces everyone that it’s a good plan. Building consensus is how weak-kneed pussies operate.

  • Iran cracks down on it’s citizens abroad

    The Wall Street Journal (link might require subscription) writes that the Islamic Republic’s regime now reaches outside it’s borders to stifle dissent;

    Interviews with roughly 90 ordinary Iranians abroad — college students, housewives, doctors, lawyers, businesspeople — in New York, London, Dubai, Sweden, Los Angeles and other places indicate that people who criticize Iran’s regime online or in public demonstrations are facing threats intended to silence them.

    Although it wasn’t possible to independently verify their claims, interviewees provided consistently similar descriptions of harassment techniques world-wide. Most asked that their full names not be published.

    Before this past summer, “If anyone asked me, ‘Does the government threaten Iranians abroad or their families at home,’ I would say, ‘Not at all,’” says Nasrin Sotoudeh, a prominent lawyer inside Iran. “But now the cases are too many to count. Every day I get phone calls and visits from people who are being harassed and threatened” because of relatives’ activities abroad.

    But these are the guys we’re supposed to negotiate with. Time and again, they’ve flaunted international law, made threats against their neighbors, been found guilty of aiding terrorists worldwide. They gun down their own citizens on the street and now they spy on them when they’re outside the country.

    But George Bush is evil

  • Surge news

    So, happily, we can put behind us the tragedy of a rich golfer crashing his Cadillac into a fire hydrant and the deep mystery of how two attention whores sneaked into the White House when no Republicans cuoould get an invitation. Can we please discuss our national security? Please?

    How about we talk about General…er..Senator Barbara Boxer who thinks that the sides are too lop sided against the Taliban according to an AP report in the Miami Herald;

    “I support the President’s mission and exit strategy for Afghanistan, but I do not support adding more troops because there are now 200,000 American, NATO and Afghan forces fighting roughly 20,000 Taliban and less than 100 al Qaida,” Boxer said.

    Yeah, she’d like to be more like a Mexican standoff, I suppose.

    Much of the President’s plan includes additional forces from our allies – however the shine seems to have worn off of Obama’s overseas image according to the Washington Times;

    Conspicuously absent from recent pledges have been Germany and France, whose governments’ domestic political challenges complicate any war decisions. Still, diplomats said, both countries could boost their military presence after an international conference on Afghanistan in London in late January.

    How about giving another speech to moon-eyed Germans – it worked once.

    Biden and the Washington Post try to make the case that the president is using the plan that Biden presented earlier in the year;

    Biden sought, and ultimately got, a narrowed mission that shifted the focus of U.S. efforts away from aims such as extending the reach of the Afghan government to more remote regions of the country and fostering representative democracy. Now the focus is on reversing the Taliban’s momentum and transferring responsibility for security to Afghan forces as quickly as possible.

    Funny, but I didn’t hear the President mention ninja robots. It’s not like no one except Biden realized that the focus had to be in areas occupied the actual enemy – that’s kinda not new strategy, Joe.

    The Washington Post took the time ask a couple of hippies in Evanston, IL what they thought of the President’s decision;

    “When the speech was over, I turned to John and said, ‘What a terrible speech.’ Nothing in it made me happy,” Scarry said. “I asked myself: ‘He is a brilliant man — what is he thinking?’ ”

    But as Scarry pondered, he spotted a method in Obama’s strategy of sending more troops while setting a date to begin a U.S. withdrawal. The president grounded his policy in a collegial and moral approach to the world, he thought, and that struck him as sensible.

    “The initial reaction was, ‘We’re right, and he’s wrong.’ But feeling right is beside the point,” said Scarry, a Harvard graduate. “He had to find a position that people can unify around. I asked myself, ‘Can I endorse this position to unify us?’ My answer is yes.”

    What else would you expect from the “I love me some Obama” crowd?

  • Biden scraps robot ninja plan

    Joe Biden took time out of his busy day to blow smoke up my ass this evening in his personal email (Paid for by Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National Committee — 430 South Capitol Street SE, Washington, D.C. 20003. This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.);

    Jonn —

    Last night, President Obama laid out his plan to defend our national interest by refocusing our efforts on three clear goals: defeating al Qaeda, stabilizing Pakistan, and breaking the Taliban’s momentum in Afghanistan.

    To achieve these goals, the President has authorized the rapid deployment of 30,000 more troops in Afghanistan, with a firm commitment to begin bringing our troops home in 2011.

    It’s a clean break from the failed Afghanistan policy of the Bush administration, and a new, focused strategy that can succeed.

    Our new strategy ends the era of blank checks for Afghanistan’s leaders, facilitates a responsible transition to Afghan security forces, and begins bringing our troops home in 2011.

    Now, I don’t why, but when I first read the email, I thought the “defeating al Qaeda” line read “defending al Qaeda” – must be because I knew it was from Biden. But then I saw the “rapid deployment” line. First of all, it took 94 days for Obama to come to a conclusion – and the deployment won’t be complete until May. There’s nothing “rapid” in that scenario.

    It’s not a “clean break” from Bush policy – it’s an expansion of the Bush policy. Biden advocated a “clean break” from Bush policy and a clean break with reality with his plan to use ninja robots in Afghanistan. I hope Biden, or Obama, for that matter, aren’t expecting a repeat of the Iraq surge in Afghanistan and banking on the same time line for success. They may be surprised.

    I may be completely wrong, but if the intent of this surge is to protect the Afghan population, it seems to me that the units should be in place through out the winter (when the Taliban and al Qaeda are limited in their operations by the weather) and able to mingle with the population (like beat cops) with little danger of having to fight so the people can see how nonthreatening and human our troops are before the troops face the enemy in their midst.

    But I’m not as smart as Joe Biden according to Joe Biden.