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

Category: Usual Suspects

  • OK, that’s enough, Matthew Alexander

    I’ve gone on about a guy who pretends to be someone called Matthew Alexander, that guy who spent three months in Iraq interrogating some pretty dangerous guys and doing a good job of it. However he came back to the States, wrote a book and got himself a job with the ACLU and with the Soros Foundation. Ever since, he’s parlayed that three months into an incessant bleating about closing Guantanamo. This week, he’s going to be in DC like the drama queen he is, pleading for the closing of Guantanamo. For what? For his cheesy little ego.

    I ran across this video at Vote Vets in which some other cheesy hippie tries to tell us that Alexander has been there and has all of this life threatening experience;

    Yeah, well, I’m sick of it all. His name isn’t Matthew Alexander, it’s Anthony Matthew Camerino, he’s an Air Force OSI Major scheduled for promotion to Lieutenant Colonel in June. He has no friends other than his new ones at the Soros Foundation and the ACLU. At this point, I really don’t care about his useless life because he damn sure doesn’t care about mine or my family if he’s going to beat this incessant tattoo about Guantanamo…so fuck him.

    Camerino has never been to Guantanamo – so what does he know?

    I’d like to thank Keith Olbermann for leading me to his real name.

    By the way, you Army OSIs should know that he’s scheduled to augment you guys this year. Duct tape your anuses shut.

  • “Are the voters crazy?”

    This is what you have to believe to be a Democrat today. It’s a ten minute clip but you have to watch the whole thing to soak up all of the insanity. Howard Dean explains to Chris Matthews how yesterday’s special election results means Massachusetts voters want more healthcare;

    Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

    To his credit, like the rest of America, Matthews ain’t buyin’ that line of crap.

    Ripped off from Ace of Spades.

  • ACLU files FOIA for Predator drone missions

    For some reason, the ACLU has decided that it’s their business to approve our tactics against terrorists and have insinuated themselves into our war policy by filing a Freedom of Information Act request in regards to our drone program;

    The ACLU believes that the use and proliferation of this tactic must be the subject of public scrutiny and debate. But the government has released essentially no information about the legal basis of and limits on the drone program, or its scope and consequences. The public has been kept in the dark and is therefore unable to assess the wisdom or legality of the strikes. Commentators on all sides agree that these are not questions that should be decided solely by technocrats behind closed doors.

    In order to fill this void, the ACLU is asking the government to release basic information about its use of drones to execute targeted killings. In particular, we are seeking information about the legal basis for the drone program, including who may be targeted and the geographical limits on where drone strikes may occur. We are also asking for information about the scope and consequences of drone strikes, including a breakdown of the number of people killed, including the civilian casualty toll and the number of people killed who were fighters of the Afghan Taliban, al Qaeda in Afghanistan, or who had some other affiliation or status.

    Yes, that’s what we need…the generals at ACLU dictating policy to the military. No, I don’t see anything wrong with first year law students pouring over our military operations applying their extensive knowledge of law to military policy.

  • The perception of Obama comes back to reality

    JammieWearingFool reads the New York Times so we don’t have to, and the NYT tells us that there’s a perception out there that President Obama is a wimp on National Security. Really? I hadn’t noticed.

    It’s not just coming from Republicans (for example, Dick Cheney’s accusation that Mr. Obama is trying to pretend that the country isn’t at war). Now barbs are coming from the center too. This week’s Foreign Policy magazine has a provocative cover: Mr. Obama next to Jimmy Carter with — gasp — an “equals” sign in the middle. New York Times/CBS polling shows that public approval of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy dropped 9 points to 50 percent between last April and November. Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on the Daily Beast blog two weeks ago that Mr. Obama needs to toughen up with his adversaries. “He puts far too much store on being the smartest guy in the room,” Mr. Gelb wrote. “He’d do well to remember that Jimmy Carter also rang all the I.Q. bells.”

    The Washington Post reports that Obama is failing in the perception of his domestic agenda as well;

    In winning the White House, Barack Obama’s team earned a reputation for skill and discipline in dominating the communications wars with opponents. In office, virtually the same team has struggled, spending much of the past year defending the administration’s actions on the two biggest domestic issues — the economy and health care.

    Translation (I ran the paragraph through Babelfish’s Media to English); campaigning is easier than actually accomplishing stuff.

    Stuff like giving us a tax credit which ended after six months instead of a permanent tax cut and standing around with their collective finger in their collective nose wondering why the economy doesn’t get better. Standing on the edge of a huge tax increase because they won’t extend the Bush tax cuts and wonder why businesses won’t invest in jobs.

    An erratic health care plan that changes every time someone talks about it. A Congressional Budget Office that knuckles under to Democrat threats and produces faulty numbers. A homeland security director that issues two opposing evaluations of our security within twelve hours.

    A known terrorist who clams up as soon as he’s read his Miranda rights. Another known participant in the worst terrorist attack in our history gets most of the evidence against him tossed out of court. All because the administration thinks terrorism has a legal solution.

    Obama’s centerpiece of his national security plan was to close Guantanamo – where’s that going? He tried to return some detainees to Yemen, until the blogs and the media convince him that it’s a bad plan and does a 180 degree shift of that policy.

    For Pete’s sake, nearly a year into his presidency, over eight years since 9-11, he announces that we’re at war with al-Qaeda.

    But Axelrod said the best antidote to all the criticisms aimed at the White House and to declining poll numbers will be a genuine turnaround in the economy.

    “People are unsettled and unhappy about that, and they should be,” he said. “The politics will follow the progress, and as we climb out of this terrible hole that we’ve been in, the politics will respond.”

    You’d be more convincing if you took your finger out of your nose, Dave.

  • Don’t worry about Marc Hall, Pt. II

    A local DC TV station, WJLA, did a report on Marc Hall, the latest IVAW celebrity who was stop-lossed and threatened to kill all of the “E-7s and and above”. Here’s the video which includes his bonehead lawyer, James Klimaski, defending Hall’s threat as art;

    I guess it’s just his tough luck that he wrote violent lyrics, sent the CD to the Pentagon and his local leadership and it all happened just after a Fort Hood soldier slaughtered his fellow soldiers. Too bad, Marc, just a matter of timing, I guess.

    Thanks to Jerry920 for the link.

  • The Left and their irrational babbling

    Now, I’m no expert on national security planning, but I’m pretty sure I’m smarter than Crooks and Liars’ John Amato and FireDogLake’s Eli based on today’s readings. Amato is upset that Cokie Roberts said what has been known about Democrats since the Korean War – when it comes to national defense, Democrats are idiots;

    ROBERTS: Well, it’s always politically difficult for Democrats when they are dealing with an issue like terrorism. It remained the Republican’s only winning issue through most of President Bush’s second term, and it’s a particular problem for a Democrat who hasn’t served in the military. But the policy problem is that it takes up a great deal of the administration’s time, and will from here on out – particularly when the Senate Intelligence Committee starts hearings in a couple of weeks.

    Here you have it. So sayeth Cokie, queen of the gasbags. All Democrats are weak, weak, weak on national security. It’s fine with Cokie and the Villagers that most of the Bush and Cheney team refused to serve in the military when they had the chance, but during the Bush years the Villagers never questioned Republicans over their military experience or commitment to national security. Yet, it’s just Jim Dandy to question a Dem’s military creds.

    Nevermind the fact that Bush was a fighter pilot in the National Guard and that Cheney was too old to be drafted for combat service in Vietnam. But no one ever questioned the Bush administration’s military experience or commitment? Really?

    Did I dream the 2004 election campaign? The whole misinterpretation of Bush’s DD214 and his performance evaluations which were read and commented upon by obviously illiterate baboons every night? The flocks of Democrats who tried to tell us that John Kerry’s Vietnam service trumped Bush TXNG service? The same dorks who placed such a high value on Cheney’s pre-Vietnam draft deferments who won’t even mention Biden’s deferments during Vietnam?

    So Eli from FDL explains to us how Obama can become a national defense expert;

    …what really makes someone a Serious Qualified Expert on national security is a little voice in their head screaming “AAAAAHHHH!!! The scary brown people are coming to kill us we have to kill them first OMG OMG OMG!!!” 24 hours a day, and the ability to bedwet on command.

    If Obama can develop an appropriately irrational fear and hatred of Muslims, then no one will care that he’s never served in the military. I suggest that he pretend that all Muslims are, alternately, health industry CEOs and progressive bloggers – that should make him a respected national security expert in no time.

    An irrational fear of Muslims? Really? The scary brown people? How naive and immature. Just days after an attempt on the lives of hundreds of folks peacefully flying into Detroit from Amsterdam, and countless others beneath their flight path. Weeks after one of those “brown people” shot scores of his comrades at Fort Hood. Months after a Muslim shot two Army privates catching a smoke break in Little Rock.

    Here’s my advice for those two if they want to be national defense experts; abandon the childish baby crap and act your freakin’ age.

  • Alexander says we’re as bad as the Khmer Rouge

    Our favorite Air Force interrogator, Matthew Alexander, is writing at Vote Vets again. This time he says he’s been to a Khmer Rouge prison in Cambodia – and of course it reminds him of Guantanamo and the way we treated the folks we detained there.

    It is estimated that nearly 3 million people were executed during the Khmer Rouge’s purge of Cambodian society. It’s hard not to walk through the Tuol Sleng prison and read about the atrocities and not think about the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Although Gitmo has never come close to the scale and depth of what happened at Tuol Sleng, there are disturbing similarities.

    One of those “disturbing similarities”;

    The entire operation at Tuol Sleng was tightly controlled by the Khmer Rouge high command (they eventually even executed the torturers, cycling in new ones, fearing that they were contaminated by their proximity to the prisoners). Duch, the infamous Tuol Sleng warden who is currently on trial in Cambodia for crimes against humanity, took his orders directly from Pol Pot.

    Yeah, I remember Cheney ordering the guards at Gitmo murdered. Don’t you? Another “similarity”;

    The second thing that strikes you about Tuol Sleng is that many of its victims were children. Judging from the photos of the victims on display, some of them couldn’t have been older than five. The Khmer Rouge exterminated offspring of opposition members like pests. They were concerned that subversive tendencies would be inherited. At the Guantanamo Bay prison, the U.S. continues to hold minors under the age of eighteen. It is a barbaric practice.

    Yeah, there’s no difference between 5 years old and eighteen. And if I’m not mistaken, there are no more eighteen-year-olds at Guantanamo. Matthews’ experience as an interrogator lasted four months, according to his records and the extent of his experience was as a team leader who conducted few, if any, of the actual interviews. Matthews never went to Guantanamo – all of his stories are secondhand rumors, but that doesn’t stop him from using those stories in his book, or on Vote Vets for that matter;

    There is a sign depicting the rules for prisoners, called the Security Regulations, and rule number six reads: “While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.” That reminded me of the infamous sign at the Baghdad airport prison, allegedly used by Special Forces, which read, “No Blood, No Foul.”

    (Emphasis mine) Allegedly? Really? That’s a faithful telling of the tale?

    I guess it’s no wonder that at the AFOSI convention a few weeks back, when his fellow OSIs found out who Matthew Alexander really was and that this particular major was working for George Soros and the ACLU, he was a bit of an outcast. I wonder who put the word out about him.

  • The depth of Soltz’ intellect

    If ever there was someone who should be stripped of his veteran status, it’s Jon Soltz, the dork who is the public face of VoteVets, and mostly likely the guy who saddled the organization with it’s stupid name. The following is from his latest missive;

    The failed bombing of a Detroit-bound airplane by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab has raised a ton of questions – from what holes there are in airline security, to how he wasn’t picked up before on suspicion of terrorist activity. But, to me and the forces in or heading to Afghanistan, one of the most pressing questions is why we’re sending nearly every Marine and Soldier we have to Afghanistan, when Abdulmutallab and a Somali man arrested for plotting a similar attack last month apparently had no real connection to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

    There you have – the depth of Soltz’ intellect. Because one guy almost bombed Detroit with his underwear, we should abandon the war in Afghanistan. Makes sense to me.

    …given the ability of al-Qaeda to spread and pop up in areas around the globe where we are not present, it simply doesn’t make sense anymore to engage in a long-term counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan, which focuses on beating back insurgents rather than al Qaeda, and securing the country at large.

    Now, I was never a motor officer in a combat situation for over four months, so I don’t have the “big picture” skills necessary to see the war from that vantage point, but I don’t think that we should change our entire strategy against al Qaeda because of one attack. How much of a simpleton must one be to think we should? In fact, if Soltz’ presidential choice (who is not a veteran, by the way) had forced his administration to pay attention to the warning signs, the underwear bomber wouldn’t have gotten through the layers of security.

    Besides, in the grand strategy of Obama, troop deployment numbers don’t matter, because the war against terror is now fought by the Justice Department and the law enforcement agencies. Didn’t Soltz get the message?