Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
From the guy who's 2006 roast of President Bush was widely panned as deeply disrespectful to both the man and the institution:
I stand by this man. I stand by this man, because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things, things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound with the most powerfully staged photo-ops in the world.
Star treatment for a convicted computer hacker and discredited communist. Nope. Our mainstream "entertainers" cavorting with anti-Americans. No surprise at all.
Josh Stieber was not on the mission over Baghdad that day. By then he had already begun questioning the actions he was being asked to carry out in Iraq; he had refused an order from his commanding officers a few days earlier -- "a command that I didn't feel right in following," as he told Glenn Greenwald on Friday -- and he was kept behind. Otherwise, he said, "I would have been in that video."
AlterNet's Liliana Segura spoke with Stieber over the phone on Sunday night about his reaction to the video, the response from the Pentagon, and why the Iraq Veterans Against the War member has devoted himself to speaking out.
WikiLeaks claims this picture was the second to the last photo taken by Reuters cameraman Namir Noor-Eldeen. And Reuters published it "28 months ago," with this caption:
RNPS PICTURES OF THE YEAR - One of the last pictures taken by Reuters Iraqi photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen before he was killed on July 12, 2007 shows two old women dressed in black walking towards a window pierced by a bullet in the al-Amin al-Thaniyah neighbourhood of Baghdad. U.S. soldiers took Noor-Eldeen's two digital cameras from the scene after he was killed. The military returned them to Reuters on Sunday.
Check Jawa Report for the rundown. There's a lot wrong here, and especially the fact that the streets were completely empty of civilians and children during the time of the Apache firefight. Not only that, the Pentagon published some of the final Reuters pictures that day, but none featuring adjacent humvees. Different scenarios can be hypothesized. Recall this image from the Pentagon's investigation:
WikiLeaks whole delegitimation campaign's supposed to be about getting at the truth. Not funny, but that's a lie. Whatever explains the discrepancies between the various published photos, the fact remains that -- as we've seen over and over again -- context kills the "Collateral Murder" smear campaign.
The real threat to national security is not, as some military intelligence officials charge, WikiLeaks or even individual whistle-blowers. These actors risk their livelihoods to give the democratic public the truth it needs to arrive at sane policy, however unlikely. The real threats to American security are the wars themselves; may we never live to see our benevolence reciprocated.
As the behavior in this WikiLeak illustrates, America’s futile nation building project, responsible now for the lives of 100,000 civilians, will do little more than ignite outright hatred among the families bereaved by American arms.
I somehow sense it's not "truth" the editors are after, but another chance to put down America's "evil, racist neo-imperial war-machine," blah, blah ...
Perhaps it is a case of both. Boston talk show host Michael Graham found a contest of Sarah Palin 'signs' to commemorate her appearance at a Boston Tea Party event on April 14.
Then LCR points us to the Weekly Dig, with this "winning" submission at left. And the editors note:
Known only as "g80", the winner of our Palin protest sign contest delivers the perfect balance of humor, striking protest design and good old fashioned WTF appeal. Keep your ears open for details on Palin's Boston visit on 4/14.
"Perfect balance"?
Yeah. Right.
As I've said many times: Nothing, and I do mean nothing, matches the extreme hate and secular demonology on the left.
LACMA's on Wilshire in L.A.'s Miracle Mile district. I just love it there. As I'm walking into the museum, a look at the main entrance:
As shown, there are actually two exhibits running simultaneously. I'm way more interested in American art, so I visited "American Stories" first. I last visited LACMA in 2006, when the sensational Gustav Klimpt exhibit was running (and generating all kinds of speculationabout the future of the museum). A lot has changed, including a complete redesign of the entire facility. Here I'm walking into the "American Stories" exhibit:
No pictures allowed inside the exhibits, but I snapped one more as I'm entering:
My favorite piece of art, Winslow Homer's "The Cotton Pickers, 1876," is on permanent collection at LACMA. The curators moved the piece to a central vantage point for the "American Stories" collection. (I was pleased by that. I bought a "Cotton Pickers" poster in 2006 and I just had it framed last week. I'm mounting it in my office at work, and will update on that when I get it done.) I took notes of the paintings for reference, 35 detailed scribblings in all, so I can post on them later. A lot of photographs of these are in the public domain, so posting is hassle-free. Below, I'm leaving the old side of the museum (the Ahmanson building, etc.), crossing the courtyard where a booth, out of view at left, is set up for ticket sales ($25 to see both exhibits, which was exhorbitant, IMHO). I'm facing Wilshire Boulevard:
Again, no photography permitted, but if you look at the screencap above you can see a glimpse of the exhibit, from the entry on the second floor. Notice the lightness in the white-painted walls, which is a bright contrast to the darker feeling at the "American Stories" exhibit. The curators obviously wanted a smashing show, the least of which to justify the huge ticket prices. I eschewed notetaking this time, mostly from fatigue, but also so as to reflect and wonder more at the paintings. An awesome learning experience, LACMA had short film clips of Auguste Renoir running in a theater alcove. Some of the works on display can be seen at this video:
Walking back outside now, down the stairs. Kind of postmod feel to the place, while retaining the steel-girders of the industrial age. Striking contrasts:
The view facing east on Wilshire. I'm walking back to my car:
Driving east now, to get a bite to eat, here's the Wiltern Theater (at the intersection of Wilshire and Western). The Psychedelic Furs are playing in June, plus Jakob Dylan next month:
Cutting north when I get to Figueroa, then east again on Cesar Chavez, I make my way through Chinatown over to Philippe's, a Los Angeles institution since before the Great Depression. My dad used to take me to eat here when I was a small child. I never forget:
As usual, I had the beef dip sandwich -- but thinking about it now, I should've also ordered potato salad or cole slaw. Maybe next time (and notice that I just started reading Jason Mattera's, "Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation"):
A cup of coffee's still just nine cents:
Customers ordering:
I love the ambience. Takes you back to another time. This photo says "Phillipe's as it appeared about 1935 -- sandwiches were ten cents":
My favorite. Kinda hard to read but the caption says "a locomotive dropped in for a sandwich in 1948":
And, linking once more, in an evasive, bloviating essay, LAT calls for an investigation, "Bringing War Home":
Videos such as these are extremely valuable for the public to see. We must understand what is being done in our name when the United States is at war. But we also must know that pictures may not tell the full story. WikiLeaks, which is more an advocacy group than a journalism site, titled the video "Collateral Murder." The military had investigated this case and absolved the soldiers of any wrongdoing; for three years, Reuters was denied a copy of the video. It does not answer all our questions, but it certainly raises enough of them to warrant further investigation. Now that we have a close-up look at the ugliness of battle, we have a right to know what it means. The key is not just what happens in the video, but what happened before, and what happens after.
The signature of modern leftist rhetoric is the deployment of terminology that simply cannot fail to command assent. As Orwell himself recognized, even slavery could be sold if labeled "freedom." In this vein, who could ever conscientiously oppose the pursuit of "social justice," -- i.e., a just society?
To understand "social justice," we must contrast it with the earlier view of justice against which it was conceived -- one that arose as a revolt against political absolutism. With a government (e.g., a monarchy) that is granted absolute power, it is impossible to speak of any injustice on its part. If it can do anything, it can't do anything "wrong." Justice as a political/legal term can begin only when limitations are placed upon the sovereign, i.e., when men define what is unjust for government to do. The historical realization traces from the Roman senate to Magna Carta to the U.S. Constitution to the 19th century. It was now a matter of "justice" that government not arrest citizens arbitrarily, sanction their bondage by others, persecute them for their religion or speech, seize their property, or prevent their travel.
"The history of all existing society," he and Engels declared, "is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf ... oppressor and oppressed, stood in sharp opposition to each other." They were quite right to note the political castes and resulting clashes of the pre-liberal era. The expositors of liberalism (Spencer, Maine) saw their ethic, by establishing the political equality of all (e.g., the abolition of slavery, serfdom, and inequality of rights), as moving mankind from a "society of status" to a "society of contract." Alas, Marx the Prophet could not accept that the classless millenium had arrived before he did. Thus, he revealed to a benighted humanity that liberalism was in fact merely another stage of History's class struggle -- "capitalism" -- with its own combatants: the "proletariat" and the "bourgeoisie." The former were manual laborers, the latter professionals and business owners. Marx's "classes" were not political castes but occupations.
Today the terms have broadened to mean essentially income brackets. If Smith can make a nice living from his writing, he's a bourgeois; if Jones is reciting poetry for coins in a subway terminal, he's a proletarian. But the freedoms of speech and enterprise that they share equally are "nothing but lies and falsehoods so long as" their differences in affluence and influence persist (Luxemburg). The unbroken line from The Communist Manifesto to its contemporary adherents is that economic inequality is the monstrous injustice of the capitalist system, which must be replaced by an ideal of "social justice" -- a "classless" society created by the elimination of all differences in wealth and "power."
A true warrior is willing to look his adversary in the eyes. What we see here is techno-chickens#!t terrorism, and makes us no better than "AQ" ...
I didn't read all that much of the thread. It's too long. But over and over again this last week, throughout my coverage, I've seen folks decry the "evil' Americans and the "heartless murderers." But when the totality of evidence is considered, we know, of course, that U.S. forces engaged AIF in firefights all morning; that ground contingents were nearby and in direct communication with the Apache gunship; that the AWT captain received the go ahead each time before opening fire; that the unmarked van had been transporting insurgents throughout the day; that the children were placed in harm's way as human shields; and that the Americans evaculated them immediately for medical treatment.
And leftists have been up in the air that U.S. forces "celebrated" their "kills." And damn straight right! An RPG will take down the birds, so vividly recounted in "Black Hawk Down":
But for an especially revealing leftist take on the debate, recall the post at Crooked Timber. And check this out from CT's Henry Farrell, a poltical scientist at GWU, who banned "The Americanist," who's well-informed. Checking the thread, Americanist isn't at all abusive, but here's this from Henry:
theAmericanist – speaking of growing up, I think it is time for a time-out. You’re banned from commenting on threads here for the next 72 hours (i.e. until 2pm ET Tuesday), and I expect you to be calmer and more considerate to your fellow commenters when you come back. Any efforts to post in the interim will be considered grounds for a permanent ban.
I don't see an intervening comment, but here's Henry nevertheless, at 10:02pm PST:
TheAmericanist – we have pretty straightforward rules here – and pretty straightforward solutions for those who deliberately flout them. You are now permanently banned from Crooked Timber. Any further posts from you will be deleted on sight. Goodbye.
Actually, the thread's not all that ugly. Scroll back up to comment #66 and The Americanist calls Henry's kids "assholes." Shoot, that's nothing. And Americanist's just mocking 'em at #97.
But, uh oh, at #108 he tells one of the commenters to "grow the fuck up." Except that's not what got him banned. Americanist got banned for having a decent argument about winning the war, an argument THAT'S COMPLETELY ALIEN to Crooked Timber's mindless haters. Fact is, Henry can't have folks upsetting the narrative, and it's not like Henry doesn't know how it all works. He's an expert on blog readership, partisanship and deliberation -- except he's not so great himself on the deliberation part.
Between errands, I caught most of "Cast Away" earlier this afternoon. I remember when the film came out some of the reviews were tepid. But it's one of my odd favorites, and not so much for the island survival sequences. It's the promise of love that's lost between Chuck and Kelley. I've mentioned this before, but when I seriously injured myself in 1981, I lost the love of my life, Kathleen. When I was healthy again it was too late, and then of course, perhaps I shouldn't have gone out that night in the first place, and well ... Oh, I'm sure readers have a story of love's lost promise with which they can relate ...
And exit question: What ever happened to Helen Hunt? I just love her ... Programming Note: I'm going to watch "Quantum of Solace" at 6:00pm (on Showtime), but I'll have some more blogging later tonight.
All across America are good, decent folks who meet their obligations each and every day. They work hard. They support their families. They try to make an honest living the best they can. And this weekend, many are sitting down to pay the taxes they owe – not because it’s fun, but because it’s a fundamental responsibility of our citizenship. President Barack Obama, April 10, 2010
After I post this, I'm heading over to the bank to deposit this 15 large (well 5 large, and $1000 in twenties). That's because my wife and I settled a credit card debt last year, and -- little did I know, my bad -- but the write down is taxable income according to the IRS. So, since my payroll withholding didn't cover it, we owe this year (and more than $1500, by the way).
I mention this since, yeah, it's tax time, but the Democrats and radical leftists are being dishonest in their claims about how the administration "cut taxes." Obama didn't cut taxes, actually. He handed out one-time (but renewable) tax rebates. See, "Obama Didn't Cut Taxes." Plus, at WSJ, "Obama's 95% Illusion: It depends on what the meaning of 'tax cut' is."
President Barack Obama's "Making Work Pay" tax credit is a major piece of the fiscal stimulus plan currently being debated in Congress. The new credit is being touted as a tax cut, but in reality it is just more spending through the tax code. Moreover, since it is also "refundable," it would send money directly to low-income taxpayers who pay no income taxes.
This Making Work Pay credit does nothing to create jobs. A better approach would be growth-promoting tax cuts that increase taxpayers' incentives to work, save, invest, and take on risk. The best way to do that is to lower rates on individual income, capital gains, and corporate taxes and to eliminate the death tax.
Most of every dollar you give to Washington will be spent on things that harm freedom and jeopardize our future and prosperity. But every dollar you give to the Tax Day Money Bomb will help call America back to her destiny—lower taxes, limited government, broader prosperity.
Actually, it's kinda hard to tell if this lady's doing a ghetto send up, only because what she mocks is so common. There's a thread at MAINfo, and the consenus is that she's a comedienne. Either way, it's almost too good, "Your Higher Taxes pay for My Healthcare."
The photo-essay covers the protest and counterprotest at San Francisco's Roxie Theater. Check the link at Zombie and at Pajamas Media.
But what really caught my attention is this photo of neighborhood graffiti. Zombie explains:
Right around the corner from the Roxie, just steps from the protest, I noticed this casual bit of anti-Semitic graffiti on the window of a check-cashing business — unnoticed by all the protesters and counter-protesters. Someone had written the word “Jewish” on a roll of money pointing to the word “tax,” which is apparently either a reference to the old “Jews are money-grubbing” stereotype; or is a reference to the “Jewish Tax or “Kosher Tax,” an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that has been voiced at earlier SF anti-Israel protests; or, more simply, is a way of identifying Jewish-owned businesses for the next Kristallnacht.
You can get your fill of anti-Semitic hatred right downtown, in San Francisco's Mission Distict (map). I wonder if any of these folks have worked up a Horst Wessel version of "I Left My Heart ..."
The president of Poland was killed in a plane crash on Saturday in western Russia, setting off a new cycle of grievances between Russia and Poland on a day that was supposed to serve the cause of reconciliation between them. President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and some of his top security officials were among the 96 people killed in the crash. As the fuselage of the Soviet-made Tupelov airplane (operated by a Polish airliner) still smoldered in forest near the city of Smolensk, the grim irony of their deaths became clear to the stunned Polish nation: Their president had been on his way to Russia to commemorate the massacre of tens of thousands of Poles, who had been executed on the order of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in 1940 in those same forests in the region of Smolensk.
Blame for the crash has fallen on the pilot, who reportedly ignored warnings from air traffic control and tried to land on Saturday morning in dense fog, snagging the tail of his plane on a tree about a mile from the airport. "The pilot was advised to fly to Moscow or Minsk because of heavy fog, but he still decided to land. No one should have been landing in that fog," an air traffic control official told Reuters, indicating that recklessness may be behind the tragedy. Russian law enforcement officials said they had opened an investigation, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called to express his condolences to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who reportedly wept upon hearing of the catastrophe on Saturday.
In foreign policy, we’ve got the makings of the Obama Doctrine: coddling our enemies while alienating allies.
The administration eased sanctions on Cuba and sided with Chavez against Honduran democracy. They won’t bring up human rights with China because, quote, 'we know what they are going to say.' They offer tepid sanctions on North Korea and 'gold stars and cookies' for the Sudanese President. They send letters to Iranian mullahs but can barely muster a word of support for the Green Movement seeking freedom and women’s rights in Iran!
And President Obama, with all that vast nuclear expertise he acquired as a community organizer, a part-time senator, and a candidate for president, has accomplished nothing to date with Iran or North Korea.
Meanwhile, this administration alienates our friends. They treated Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai poorly and acted surprised when he reacted in kind. And they escalated a minor zoning decision into a major breach with Israel, our closest ally in the Middle East.
Folks, someone needs to remind the President: Jerusalem is not a settlement. Israel is our friend. And the critical nuclear concerns of our time are North Korea, who has nuclear weapons, and Iran, who wants them.
So, 'yes we can' kowtow to our enemies and publicly criticize our allies.
Yes, we can. But someone ought to tell the President and the Left that just because we can doesn’t mean we should.
Under President Obama's new policy ... however, if the state that has just attacked us with biological or chemical weapons is "in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)," explained Gates, then "the U.S. pledges not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against it."
Imagine the scenario: Hundreds of thousands are lying dead in the streets of Boston after a massive anthrax or nerve gas attack. The president immediately calls in the lawyers to determine whether the attacking state is in compliance with the NPT. If it turns out that the attacker is up to date with its latest IAEA inspections, well, it gets immunity from nuclear retaliation. (Our response is then restricted to bullets, bombs and other conventional munitions.)
However, if the lawyers tell the president that the attacking state is NPT-noncompliant, we are free to blow the bastards to nuclear kingdom come.
This is quite insane. It's like saying that if a terrorist deliberately uses his car to mow down a hundred people waiting at a bus stop, the decision as to whether he gets (a) hanged or (b) 100 hours of community service hinges entirely on whether his car had passed emissions inspections.
McLaren was born in north London on Jan. 22, 1946, and was raised primarily by his grandmother. An art-college dropout, he was impressed by the fierce political energy unleashed by the Paris student uprisings of 1968. He also admired the Situationist International, a revolutionary political group whose provocative sloganeering influenced McLaren's later forays in music and fashion.
McLaren's ears were attuned to the discontented undercurrents, both in popular music and in British society, that gave rise to punk. During the summer of 1977, Queen Elizabeth II's 25th-anniversary Jubilee year, McLaren procured a boat and had the Sex Pistols cruise the Thames River blasting out "God Save the Queen," their caustic riposte to England's national anthem of the same title. The stunt got McLaren arrested but helped fuel the band's growing fame, or infamy.
McLaren was known in the industry for his cunning, self- publicity and a business brain that ran rings around Virgin Group’s Richard Branson. Under his management, the Sex Pistols signed with Virgin Records in 1977.
“I don’t really care if bands can play guitars or not,” McLaren said in a 1984 interview. “I want them to say something. But, above all, I really want them to make money. Lots and lots of it.”
If you look at the Sex Pistols as just another band instead of the face of early punk rock, Never Mind the Bollocks (their only real studio album) is a pretty good album. Songs like Holidays in the Sun, Problems and Bodies are not bad. It’s not the not-so-great musical talent that bothers some punk rock purists, but the whole mystique of importance surrounding this album and the band. What they don’t want to own up to is that McLaren’s creation influenced thousands of punk rockers after them. The Sex Pistols defined the genre of punk for a time and, to an extent, still do. Even though the band was everything punk was not supposed to be – contrived, phony and commercial – McLaren’s grand experiment in exploitation is a lasting legacy in not just the punk genre, but the music industry in general.
While highly critical of the Pentagon, Danger Room emphasizes key information that hasn't been reiterated enough elsewhere:
According to an investigation by the 1st Air Cavalry Brigade (.pdf) , the aircrew “accurately assessed that the criteria to find and terminate the threat to friendly forces were met in accordance with the law of armed conflict and rules of engagement.” The report concluded that the attack helicopters positively identified the threat, established hostile intent, conducted appropriate collateral damage assessment and received clearance to fire.
What’s more, the military indirectly blamed the reporters for being in the company of “armed insurgents” and making no effort to identify themselves as journalists. An investigating officer with the 2nd Brigade Combat Team (BCT), 2nd Infantry Division, concluded that “the cameramen made no effort to visibly display their status as press (.pdf) or media representatives” and added that “their familiar behavior with, and close proximity to, the armed insurgents and their furtive attempts to photograph the Coalition Ground Forces made them appear as hostile combatants to the Apaches that engaged them.” A long telephoto lens, the officer says, could have been mistaken for a rocket-propelled grenade.
Meanwhile, the communist AGITPROP campaign continues, with Marxist revolutionary commentators weighing in from all sides. For example, at CounterPunch, "Dracula's Army: The Veils of Illusion":
In Afghanistan and Iraq the invaders have committed numerous atrocities: shooting unarmed locals at check points, on the street, even while they're tilling fields. We've bombed wedding parties, raided homes at midnight and murdered occupants of all ages, lying about it. We've stormed hospitals in Fallujah, unleashed chemical weapons (phosphorous), left a trail of depleted uranium … We've flattened the offices of Al Jazeera (twice), shoved “suspects” in dungeons, hid inmates from the International Red Cross and tortured prisoners to death …. and it’s still happening, day after day, with Drones wiping out remote villages, shredding their families, assassinating anyone we choose.
Actually, as I've repored here, the norm of non-combatant immunity has been universally internalized in the U.S. armed forces, and civilian casualties have been lower in America's current wars than any wars in U.S. history. But "imperialist atrocities" sell on the hypocritical neo-communist left. See also, at Workers World, "Leaked Pentagon Video Reveals Occupation’s Brutality in Iraq":
It is an absolutely chilling demonstration of cold-blooded murder. A U.S. Apache gunship circles a Baghdad neighborhood looking for “targets” — people to kill. A military video shows the intended targets through superimposed crosshairs: a group of men dressed in civilian clothes, no masks, no apparent weapons, casually sauntering along a street and into a small square.
The film is eerily silent except for staccato radio messages between the helicopter, command headquarters and nearby troops on the ground.
This is so poorly informed it'd be laughable, if it wasn't for the fact that the media's enablers won't debunk this communist bull, and the lies will be passed down the proletarian ranks. And from the International Committee of the Fourth International, "Leaked video shows US military killing of two Iraqi journalists." Plus, at the Committee to Protect Journalists, in a backgrounder, "Technicalities: 10 Questions on WikiLeaks," spread the lie that convicted communist Julian Assange is a "journalist.", And at the leftist London Independent, an absurd commentary from Joan Smith, "Now We See What War Does to Those Who Wage It."
Back stateside, CNN's Mohammed Jamjoom, offers a report on the children injured in the attack:
And the video and illustrated photo are added just for idiot Barret Brown, who like all hardline leftists, denies truth for a manufactured reality. Here he quotes me at my original entry, then responds (highlighted in bold):
I’ve watched the “Collateral Murder” clip above. Seeing the video and listening to the combat audio, the crew in the Apache are engaging an insurgent contingent, and at the distance the transmissions identify the fighters as clearly armed with AK-47s and RPGs.
Except that they’re not clearly armed with RPGs; there were no RPGs. Two of the men, like many Iraqi men living in cities in which violent things happen, are equipped with AK-47s.
No, Barrett, you ignorant prick. Behold:
And god, that's the lefty line du jour, "everyone carried a Kalashnikov." Wake up, Barrett. Even WikiLeaks has moved on. It's not whether there were armed insurgents, but whether the troops observed ROE. And on that point, when ALL the video and circumstances are included, there's no question.
But that doesn't stop the left's useful idiots. At the hard-left Common Dreams, we have the statement from Josh Stieber, who claims he was deployed with Bravo Company 2-16, "whose members were involved in the incident captured in Wikileaks' “Collateral Murder” video":
Josh Stieber, who is a former soldier of the “Collateral Murder” Company, says that the acts of brutality caught on film and recently released via Wikileaks are not isolated instances, but were commonplace during his tour of duty.
Obviously a tool.
In contrast, compare Stieber's statement to the online chat Tuesday with WaPo's David Finkel, who was embedded with the same Army Battalion 2-16 during "the surge" in 2007-2008." Check the link. But on the scope of civilian casualties in Iraq:
What's helpful to understand is that, contrary to some interpretations that this was an attack on some people walking down the street on a nice day, the day was anyting but that. It happened in the midst of a large operation to clear an area where US soldiers had been getting shot at, injured, and killed with increasing frequency. What the Reuters guys walked into was the very worst part, where the morning had been a series of RPG attacks and running gun battles.
And on the troops' adherence to ROE, especially with respect to the "rescue" van:
More context -- you're seeing an edited version of the video. The full video runs much longer. And it doesn't have the benefit of hindsight, in this case zooming in on the van and seeing those two children. The helicopters were perhaps a mile away. And as all of this unfolded, it was unclear to the soldiers involved whether the van was a van of good samaritans or of insurgents showing up to rescue a wounded comrade. I bring these things up not to excuse the soldiers but to emphasize some of the real-time blurriness of those moments.
And on the alleged bestiality and inhumanity of U.S. forces:
I remain in touch with many of the soldiers from that battalion, including one who picked up and held one of the wounded children, and he has been having a difficult time ever since he made the discovery. I won' go into details without his permission, but I can assure you that in his case he is haunted.
And on whether cameramen and insurgents on photography equipment of RPGs:
If you were to see the full video, you would see a person carrying an RPG launcher as he walked down the street as part of the group. Another was armed as well, as I recall. Also, if you had the unfortunate luck to be on site afterwards, you would have seen that one of the dead in the group was lying on top of a launcher. Because of that and some other things, EOD -- the Hurt Locker guys, I guess -- had to come in and secure the site. And again, I'm not trying to excuse what happened. But there was more to it for you to consider than what was in the released video.
I'm editing here for brevity, so readers should go back to the link and get the full context. Clearly, Finkel's not out to excuse the actions of any involved in this firefight. His recollections are extremely damaging to all of the allegations and talking points of the communist media-industrial-complex.
Hopefully this qualifies for some weekend FMJRA action from Sir Smitty!
P.S. I'm going to try to turn Friday's into a babe-blogger free-zone around here. Posting the hotties gets me in more trouble from the lefties than anti-jihad obliterations!
In Afghanistan, and throughout the Middle East, populations long in the path, and in the shadow, of great foreign powers have a good feel for the will and staying power of those who venture into their world. If Iran's bid for nuclear weapons and a larger role in the region goes unchecked, and if Iran is now a power of the Mediterranean (through Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Beirut), the leaders in Kabul, whoever they are, are sure to do their best to secure for themselves an Iranian insurance policy.
From the very beginning of Mr. Obama's stewardship of the Afghan war, there was an odd, unsettling disjunction between the centrality given this war and the reluctance to own it in full, to stay and fight until victory (a word this administration shuns) is ours.
Consider the very announcement of the Obama war strategy last November in Mr. Obama's West Point address. The speech was at once the declaration of a "surge" and the announcement of an exit strategy. Additional troops would be sent, but their withdrawal would begin in the summer of 2011.
The Afghans, and their interested neighbors, were invited to do their own calculations. Some could arrive at a judgment that the war and its frustrations would mock such plans, that military campaigns such as the one in Afghanistan are far easier to launch than to bring to a decent conclusion, that American pride and credibility are destined to leave America entangled in Afghan troubles for many years to come. (By all indications, Mr. Karzai seems to subscribe to this view.)
Others could bet on our war weariness, for Americans have never shown an appetite for the tribal and ethnic wars of South Asia and the Middle East. The shadow of our power lies across that big region, it is true. But we blow in and out of these engagements, generally not staying long enough to assure our friends and frighten our enemies.
Zia ul-Haq, the military dictator who recast Pakistani politics away from that country's secular beginnings and plunged into the jihad and its exertions, once memorably observed that being an ally of the United States was like sitting on the bank of a great river where the ground is lush and fertile, but that every four to eight years the river changes course and the unsuspecting friend of American power finds himself in a barren desert. Mr. Obama has not given the protagonists in the Afghan war the certainty that he is in it for the long haul.
In word and deed, Mr. Obama has given a sense of his priorities. The passion with which he pursued health-care reform could be seen at home and abroad as the drive of a man determined to remake the American social contract. He aims to tilt the balance away from liberty toward equality. The very ambition of his domestic agenda in health care and state intervention in the economy conveys the causes that stir him.
The Tea Party Express rolled into the western Upper Peninsula on Thursday night, calling on voters to give U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak a forced retirement in November.
"After nine terms of Bart Stupak, you must be hungry for some representation," Tea Party Express chairman Mark Williams told a crowd of as many as 200 people outside a VFW hall in Bessemer.
The group organizing the tour even offered Stupak $700,000 to step down.
A young Muslim mother wearing a hjiab was strangled in a freak accident while go-karting with her family in Australia yesterday.
The 26-year-old died when her headscarf became entangled in the wheel of the go-kart and tightened around her neck during a family day out at Port Stephens, 137 miles (220km) north of Sydney in New South Wales.
Police said that the woman, her husband and children had been holidaying on the coast when the accident occurred during a day trip to the karting track.
The woman’s scarf appeared to have been pulled across her throat from one side of the body to the other, and the longer part was wedged near one of the wheel axles of the go-kart, they added.
Witnesses told the Sydney Morning Herald that the woman’s clothing was “wrapped around her neck”.
Sharon Scott, who was waiting to use the track when the accident occurred, said: "The kart hit the wall and stopped and she was just slumped over."
Emergency workers were called to the circuit and the woman, who suffered severe neck and throat injuries, was transferred to a nearby hospital, where she later died
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