Fusilier Damien Hields used his grenade machinegun to destroy seven Taliban positions before his ambushers realised he was their main threat. After peppering his vehicle with bullets, they hit the 24-year-old soldier. He had to be dragged off for treatment by his driver after he tried to continue fighting.
“It turned out the bullet had smashed a rib and gone out of me again without touching any internal organs which was very lucky. It was just a flesh wound really.”
That is the Fighting Brit of fame and legend right there.
Category: Terror War
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British Soldier Awarded Military Cross. Fought off 150 Taliban
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Self-inflicted, willful ignorance on the Left
On Little Green Footballs, there’s a link to a Daily Kos diary entry (you’ll have to go to LGF to see the article – I don’t want those peawits over here) that seeks to defend the way women are treated in the Islamic world by essentially claiming they have it the same under all religions;
…there’s little support for the notion that women living in “traditional” Islamic cultures enjoy a lower social status than those in orthodox Christian, Jewish or Hindu communities, to name a few examples. Think of the perfectly backwards Eastern Orthodox Church, the largest Christian communion in the world. Or consider the country where women may be brutalized more terribly than in any other, the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is 70 percent Christian and 10 percent Muslim. Or go to Utah, where tens of thousands of Mormon fundamentalists believe that women are literally the property of their fathers or husbands.
Well, when I read that, it made me fairly angry that someone could be so ignorant as to disregard everything we’ve learned over the past few years – learned because the scales fell from our eyes.
I read this on Invincible Armor (in reference to this CNN article);
Crimes against women in Iraq’s south have included killings and amputations.
Police chief: “Two women were killed in front of their kids”.
Not wearing headscarves, other violations of “Islamic teachings” bring crimes.
Woman tells CNN “fear is always there,” but “we don’t know who to be afraid of”.
Yeah, I’ve heard the same complaints from Mormon women (insert eye roll here).
How about these honor killing victims – women and teenage girls – from Atlas Shrugs. When was the last time a father and brother killed teenage daughters and sisters for breaking the tenets of Christianity?
Does anyone think these missing/murdered models (link to Fausta’s Blog) were kidnapped by Buddhist extremists? Are there Eastern Orthodox Christians publicly stoning their women and hanging homosexuals from construction cranes?
How willingly ignorant can these people be to blame these atrocities on a few “extremists” and equate the barbarity inflicted on Islamic women with the treatment of women in more civil and modern cultures? It’s this blatant, self-inflicted ignorance that has gotten us to this place in time.
All of the statistical analysis mumbo-jumbo like “I’ve seen no empirical data to suggest that an Islamic majority itself correlates with the subordination of women better than other co-variables like…blah, blah, blah…” is boob bait for the bubbas (to borrow a phrase from Pat Moynihan). In the comment section of the Kos piece, all of the mental midgets fall in line with the typical “separation of church and state”, “all extremists are dangerous” blather often reserved for their empty-head, rattle-nodding to make each other feel smarter than they could ever hope.
These same Leftists who excuse the inexcusable in Islam in this day and age, are the same people who judge our own history outside of the context of it’s own time. There’s no other phrase for it than self-inflicted, willful ignorance.
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Woman in Afghan action earns Silver Star
Photo from Associated Press
Spc. Monica Lin Brown from Lake Jackson Texas of 82nd Airborne Division stands guard at a forwarded operating base in Khost, Afghanistan, Saturday, March 8, 2008.
Army Specialist, Texan, and member of the mighty 82d Airborne Division Monica Brown will be the first woman to be awarded the Silver Star in Afghanistan for her heroic actions in combat (AP/Yahoo link);
A 19-year-old medic from Texas will become the first woman in Afghanistan and only the second female soldier since World War II to receive the Silver Star, the nation’s third-highest medal for valor.
Army Spc. Monica Lin Brown saved the lives of fellow soldiers after a roadside bomb tore through a convoy of Humvees in the eastern Paktia province in April 2007, the military said.
After the explosion, which wounded five soldiers in her unit, Brown ran through insurgent gunfire and used her body to shield wounded comrades as mortars fell less than 100 yards away, the military said.
“I did not really think about anything except for getting the guys to a safer location and getting them taken care of and getting them out of there,” Brown told The Associated Press on Saturday at a U.S. base in the eastern province of Khost.
I can’t tell you how proud I am that young, unselfish people like this woman are risking their lives for our country.
Yet I’m sickened that cowards, liars and losers will assemble in Silver Spring, Maryland to besmirch the reputation of Specialist Brown this week.
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Saturday night must-reads
I’ve got two cats sleeping on my lap and so all you get is links tonight;
First, stop by and take at look at the Gathering of Eagles who were rewarded for braving the weather to support the military recruiters in Times Square by a visit from Pamela Gellar from Atlas Shrugs.
If Baldilocks says he’s dead, then he’s dead as far as I’m concerned.
Big Dog defends John McCain in the Boeing contract kerfuffle.
The American Pundit catches the media lying about McCain’s position on waterboarding.
Bloodthirsty Liberal examines Arab techniques of border control.
Gaius at Blue Crab Boulevard writes on the absurdity of Hillary’s statement that she ended the hundreds of years of Britain’s war with the Irish.
Jammie Wearing Fool writes about an idiot judge who disagrees with the war against terror, so she keeps a foster kid from enlisting. I’d always thought judges were supposed to lay aside their own bias when they rule – I must be wrong.
The Liberty Pundit ties in yesterday’s job report to the only legislation the Democrats passed last year – the minimum wage.
Gateway Pundit rounds up news on the death of the latest FARC leader found in pieces several miles apart.
Bob Parks at Outside the Wire dissects the Obama sucker factor and reports that Obama doesn’t have a plan to withdraw from Iraq. Bob Owens at Confederate Yankee explains what that means. Meanwhile, Flopping Aces writes that Hillary’s military advisor says she won’t pull troops out of Iraq. I’m beginning to see a pattern here.
Wild Thing explains in detail the history of the Weather Underground buddies of Barak Obama.
Crotchety Old Bastard compares Michele Obama’s speeches to Che Guevara’s “New Man” speech.
Pam at Right Voices reports on a stunning archaeological find.
The Hatemonger’s Quarterly has the exclusive report on several fictional TV characters and who they support in the Presidential campaign.
Moonbattery‘s Van Helsing warns that environmentalists are coming for your X-Box.
Jay at Stop the ACLU explains why he’s voting for John McCain.
GI Jane at The Foxhole tears up the Washington Post for their self-flagellating over their treatment of Muslims.
Weasel Zippers writes on the Hamas admission that they’re supported by Iran – and I feign surprise.
Dean Barnett at The Weekly Standard Blog writes that the New York Times will take a swipe at Barak’s Iraq policy tomorrow.
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Terrorist act precedes Spanish elections again
Nora, The Spanish Pundit, reports that two days prior to the Spanish general election, ETA (Basque) terrorists murdered a former councilman;
AS you probably know, there will be general elections on Sunday. Today someone has killed a ex-councilman, 42 year-old, Isaías Carrasco, this morning at 12.45 pm Spanish time. He was a “very easy target as he did not have any kind of public representation now”. The bastards have killed him in front of his wife and his daughter who have shouted “Murderers” to the shooters. The Basque department of Interior has not confirmed ETA’s responsibility yet, but it looks like it is the responsible.
He has received two shots in the neck and another one in the head. The murderer, who was wearing a beard but with no mask on it. The Interior Department of the Basque Government confirmed his death but it is said to be on “clinical death”, according to the Basque Health Service.
You may remember that before the last general election, March 11, 2004, a terrorist attack on the Madrid train system left over 2,000 casualties (CNN link) and influenced Spanish voters to install an appeasement government headed by Jose Zapatero, a socialist. So I wonder if the murder of a former government official in front of his family is enough to swing the Spanish voters back the other way.
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Tortuous debate
The President is about to veto a measure passed by Congress (AP link) that forbids the practice of “waterboarding” to extract information from a difficult terror suspect who might have time sensitive information – information which might save American lives. The truth is; only three high profile terrorists have been water boarded by the US government. It’s not common practice, so why should there even be a law forbidding it?
More protesters of the practice have been waterboarded by each other than terrorists (as portrayed above). If it really were as dangerous as they’d have us believe, why are they able to do it to each other without fear of deadly results?
Vetoing the ill-considered ban alone is a strong enough message without even practicing the method. It tells terrorists that we’re serious about saving American lives – that we’ll do anything to prevent their dastardly plots from hatching. If this were to become law, we’re sending the message that we value the lives of terrorists above that of their potential victims. No one has died from the practice (despite what the Left would like you to believe), no one has been injured and valuable information has been extracted and probably saved lives.
I think it’s vacuous of the Left to be outraged at waterboarding but protective of late-term abortion, which is much more barbarous.
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Border incident between Colombians and Venezuela
Noticias24 reports a border incident between Colombian civilians and the Venezuelan Army. My rough Spanish-as-a-second-language translation follows;
In a confused incident, a unit of the DISIP (Venezuelan Security forces) has crossed the frontier and has penetrated into Colombian territory in Paraguachón. The inhabitants have surrounded the patrol and they have not allowed that the Venezuelan officials to recover the patrol.
Apparently, the unit of the DISIP was recovering a vehicle. The group of citizens of Paraguachón has exchanged insults against the DISIP of Venezuela and, with their aggressive attitude, units of the National Guard have crossed the border to help them and to protect them.
After minutes of tension, the situation returned to the calm but the vehicle of the DISIP still is in Colombian territory surrounded by the inhabitants of the locality. Colombian police units have approached the place.
Well, when you move a bunch of pissed off people towards each other with just an invisible barrier between them, something is bound to happen.
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Another FARCer in pieces
Photo from Reuter’s
Manuel Marulanda (R), a top commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), welcomes Venezuelan Foreign Minister Luis Alfonzo Davila (L) as the FARC’s Ivan Rios (C) observes in Los Pozos, Caqueta province in this March 8, 2001 file photo.
Kate at A Colombo-Americana’s Perspective reports another FARC tango rests in pieces, thanks to the Colombian Army;
In the department of Caldas, Iván Ríos, a member of the FARC’s Secretariat was killed today. For those of you who don’t remember, he famously paraded around with Chávez and Colombian senator Piedad Córdoba last fall at Miraflores.
The Spanish language Noticias24 article. From Reuter’s AlertNet;
Rios, a member of the seven-member secretariat of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, died in combat with soldiers in the northwest coffee-producing part of the country.
From the Associated Press;
Colombian security forces carrying out an arrest warrant Friday for a top rebel leader killed a man in a shootout, and were trying to confirm his identity, an official in the chief prosecutor’s office said Friday.
The raid targeted Ivan Rios, a member of the FARC guerrillas’ ruling junta. If the body is identified as his, it would be the second member of the ruling secretariat of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to be killed in a week.
That would be a huge blow to Latin America’s oldest and strongest insurgency, shaken by the death Saturday of spokesman Raul Reyes in a cross-border raid in Ecuador that has set off an international diplomatic crisis.
It may be that Colombia’s cross-border gambit paid off. And this is happening while Uribe tears up the Correa government in Santo Domingo (Bloomberg link);
Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe tore into his Ecuadorean counterpart Rafael Correa during a regional summit, accusing the socialist leader of receiving campaign money from Colombian guerrillas.
Uribe, speaking to 15 Latin American presidents during the Rio Group summit in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, said Ecuador isn’t an ally in the fight against terrorism and acknowledged he didn’t inform Correa in advance of a military operation in Ecuadorean territory last week that killed top rebel leader Raul Reyes.
“I didn’t inform him of the operation because we have not received cooperation from his government in the fight against terrorism,” Uribe told the leaders.
An unconventional war calls for unconventional methods. Since when do the criminals get to violate all of the rules while we just bleed. But Uribe was just warming up;
Uribe, who has been mostly silent since the Organization of American States criticized his military’s violation of Ecuador’s sovereignty this week, saved no criticism of his neighbors’ alleged collaboration with the FARC rebel group.
He said four laptop computers seized during the cross- border raid contained documents pointing to FARC financing of Correa’s 2006 presidential campaign. This week, Uribe alleged the same files show Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has been funding the FARC. Correa and Chavez have denied allegations they help the group.
“One letter from Marulanda to Raul Reyes transferring $50,000 to help Correa win the second round in his election,” said Uribe, referring to septuagenarian FARC commander Manuel Marulanda.
That’s going to leave a mark.
