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Hamas: Mastermind of Shalit's abduction among 4 killed in Gaza
Today's Headlines
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Page 1: WoT Operations
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Page 4: Opinion
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Afghanistan
NATO says air strike kills senior Taleban fighter
KABUL - US warplanes killed a senior Taleban commander in an air strike in the violence-racked southern Afghan province of Uruzgan on Tuesday, NATO said.

The alliance said in a statement up to 16 Taleban, including the commander, were killed in the overnight attack in Uruzgan. “The aircraft engaged a known mid-level Taleban commander in the vicinity of Bagh-Khosak in the Khod Valley with three 500 pound bombs, killing him and 10 to 15 additional Taleban militants,” the alliance said in a statement.
Posted by: Steve White || 10/18/2006 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Hey! Missed her! ;-)
Posted by: twobyfour || 10/18/2006 1:03 Comments || Top||

#2  Wimmen? Chillen? Fluffy bunnies? Baby ducks?

Whadabout them? Huh?
Posted by: Bobby || 10/18/2006 6:33 Comments || Top||

#3  10-15 = the # of noses found didn't match the # of ears found
Posted by: Frank G || 10/18/2006 8:08 Comments || Top||


NATO Commander: Coalition Dropped the Ball in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON — The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan failed to follow through as it should have after ousting the government in 2001, said the NATO commander in the country.
For an Ally with only 10,000 troops in the field in Afganistan and Iraq, they sure know all the answers.
The mistake — adopting "a peacetime approach" too early — set the stage for this year's deadly Taliban resurgence, British Gen. David Richards told Pentagon reporters Tuesday.
You Brits did such a good job in Basra!
He said the international community has six months to correct the problem before losing Afghan support. "The Taliban were defeated. .... And it looked all pretty hunky-dory," Richard said of the environment at the end of 2001. "We thought it was all done ... and didn't treat it as aggressively as ... with the benefit of hindsight, we should have done."

Progress made on security, rebuilding and good government didn't meet Afghan expectations, and this year the "Taliban exploited ... this sense of frustration amongst the people," Richards said in a televised conference from Afghanistan.
Not a word about the Afghan people lifting some of the load on rebuilding and goverance ...
Insurgent bombings, ambushes and rocket attacks surged this year. Since the Taliban was overthrown, many of Afghanistan's former rulers are thought to have found sanctuary across the border in Pakistan.

Five years later, NATO forces, along with Afghan Army and police forces, are planning a series of operations throughout the country this winter to do road building and other reconstruction projects in more secure areas and bolster security to prepare for reconstruction in the less secure areas, Richards said. If there is not measurable improvement in six months, he said, Afghans may choose "the rotten future offered by the Taliban" rather than the hopeful future that the coalition offered but didn't deliver.
Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC || 10/18/2006 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  No guerrilla group has ever been beaten where they had both financing and a secure harbor for resupply and training. We are not fighting Taliban in Afghanistan; we are fighting Pakistan' surrogates. Musharaf delivers an occasional Arab to maintain the US aid channel, while implementing his pre-911 "Pakistan in depth" policy.
Posted by: Snease Shaiting3550 || 10/18/2006 0:32 Comments || Top||

#2  Simple case of penis envy
Posted by: Captain America || 10/18/2006 0:49 Comments || Top||

#3  That graphic is a pretty obtuse joke even by the Burg's standards (and yes, I can read a Java object model).
Posted by: phil_b || 10/18/2006 0:58 Comments || Top||

#4  Geez, I hate cowardly second-guessers.

What a pretentious counterfeit and arrogant narcissistic poseur cock-of-the-walk ponce.

We should send a message to the Talibunnies that an attack on this poofta's quarters would not be opposed.

Fucking John Kerry bitch.
Posted by: .com || 10/18/2006 1:11 Comments || Top||

#5  HHHHMMMMMM, LIMITED ATTACK ON AMERICA in the name of OWG, VERSUS TOTAL ATTACK OF ANNIHILATION-DESTRUCTION; IRAQ = SPAIN, etal = ENTIRE WORLD, as the Radics say. Obviously its a local quandry that isn't a WORLD WAR.
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 10/18/2006 1:30 Comments || Top||

#6 
No guerrilla group has ever been beaten where they had both financing and a secure harbor for resupply and training.


The FLN had both in Algeria and was beaten by the French parss whose officers had been at Dien Bien Phu and learned their lessons. Between those leassons were: political action , make people know that supporting the FLN had a price (the FLN didn't heistate to masscre whole willages so people were feeling it was safer to anger the French than the FLN), protecting the populations, ideological action (they favoured educating woman as a a counter aginst the proto-islamist ideology of the FLN), they also asked for political reforms.
Posted by: JFM || 10/18/2006 4:09 Comments || Top||

#7  I would suggest that the General vent his spleen in the direction of the Pakistani ISI, the creators and enablers of the Taliban.
Posted by: doc || 10/18/2006 7:05 Comments || Top||

#8  Golly, .com, what would you say if you felt free to fully express yourself? ;-)
Posted by: trailing wife || 10/18/2006 7:51 Comments || Top||

#9  Progress made on security, rebuilding and good government didn't meet Afghan expectations
So the Afgans prefer the Taliban's progress on rebuilding and good government? Ingrates. If it weren't for the AQ types, I'd say let the Talibs have the place and good riddance.
Posted by: Spot || 10/18/2006 8:20 Comments || Top||

#10  tw - This has been going on for years (decades - e.g. Montgomery the Grate), now, first one soft power asstard, then another. For all the imagined professionalism, this is just about as unprofessional as it can get.

Just imagine the squealing and harrumphing if the US military commanders openly and publicly returned the favor?

Obviously, since none of this shit is ever retracted or apologized for in the same manner in which it is issued, it is an attitude shared across the UK Command and in MoD. Personally, I would challenge the fucker to a duel, and kill his aide, too, but that's just me.

Enough, already.
Posted by: .com || 10/18/2006 9:07 Comments || Top||

#11  I am looking forward to a time when the USA can deal with its own problems. If you are so wonderful and all knowing you don't need to be of nato you can do everything yourselves which would suit the rest of the world just fine if all else fails you have Israel and to finish off we the British have 8000 troops in iraq 5000 in Afghanistan 15000 in Northern Ireland and another 2000 spread around the world engaged in other operations not bad for a country with a standing army of 98000 and a population a fifth the size of yours. The USA is happy to give out the talk about other countries but cannot take it when it is sent their way, after you are all so clever you voted bush into power!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: UK || 10/18/2006 9:24 Comments || Top||

#12  Seems the UK has a paucity of punctuation marks, in addition to a surfeit of Monty-type officers
Posted by: Pappy || 10/18/2006 9:32 Comments || Top||

#13  [Note to self: try to be nice. It's non compos mentis - and probably 12 or 13 yrs old...]

"I am looking forward to a time when the USA can deal with its own problems."

Ahhh, so the Talib and WoT have nothing to do with you or anyone else, just the US. I see.

The rest of that confabulation of rank idiocy isn't worth parsing - you've identified yourself adequately in the first sentence.

Yeah, Bush is extra evil and we bash everyone regularly. Except we don't. It's the Kool Aid swilling fucktards like you who created the BusHitler BDS bullshit and have spewed unsubstantiated bile for the last 5 years.

You want out of NATO? You wanna be left alone in your Paki Paradise?

Fuck, that'd be okay with me. One less disaster to worry about cleaning up, later. First we'll cherry-pick the Good Guys and get 'em out before you go under, though. They don't deserve to go down with the likes of you.

Don't forget to always take the tube, dood.
Posted by: .com || 10/18/2006 9:34 Comments || Top||

#14  But, UK, if we had voted for Gore or Kerry, you would have thought that we were all retarded.
Posted by: wxjames || 10/18/2006 9:34 Comments || Top||

#15  The mistake — adopting "a peacetime approach" too early — set the stage for this year's deadly Taliban resurgence, British Gen. David Richards told Pentagon reporters Tuesday.

This year's Taliban resurgence came from Pakland with paid Pakland bodies. Now the only way to truely and effectively address that is to mount kill and destroy operations into the Taliban base areas in Pakland. Just like when you Brits had a similar problem with Afghans raiding into the British colony of India around a hundred years ago. So, are you proposing to to just that? Heh?
Posted by: Procopius2k || 10/18/2006 10:07 Comments || Top||

#16  What the British General meant to convey is that the destruction of the Taliban regime was incomplete and operations should have continued (deep) into Pakistan. There can be no Afghan peace as long as Pakistan fuels the Taliban.
Posted by: Kalle (kafir forever) || 10/18/2006 10:17 Comments || Top||

#17  15000 in Northern Ireland

QUAGMIRE!!!@
Posted by: Rob Crawford || 10/18/2006 10:48 Comments || Top||

#18  1. Im not clear on what the number of UK troops in IRAQ has to do with whether this general knows what hes talking about wrt Afghanistan

2. Clearly the Afghans themselves werent going to fix up governance. What little abilities they had in that area were trashed in 23 years of Soviet occupation, civil war, and Taliban rule. It was clearly the job of the outside world (not just the US) to help them get on their feet.

3. Are most afghans so disappointed as to suppor the Taliban? No I dont think so - not the non-Pashtuns, and not the small minority of secularists and religious moderates in Kabul. But for the average conservative rural Pashtun, who may not have loved the Taliban, but who never felt oppressed by them (cause they didnt ban anything HE wanted to do), and who distrusted both the non-Pashtuns of the northern alliance, and the well connected royalist types around Kharzai, the lack of progress is probably sufficient to push him off the fence to the Taliban corner. Which is enough people on the Taliban side to make a big mess. Almost certainly not enough for the Taliban to march into Kabul again. But quite enough for some of the ex-NA warlords to decide that this democracy thingie isnt working, and to oust Kharzai and install their own regime. That is if the coalition lets them get away with it. Whether THAT would be a good long term solution, could be debated.
Posted by: liberalhawk || 10/18/2006 10:54 Comments || Top||

#19  Um, my original issue with this twat is that he didn't show the professionalism to discuss this within NATO - make his points there and deal with it - that he decided to be, yet another, grandstanding asshole shitbrain flapping gums to the MSM.

IIUC, he gives up the command in Feb. I hope he is cashiered.
Posted by: .com || 10/18/2006 10:58 Comments || Top||

#20  "...you don't need to be of nato you can do everything yourselves..."

You mean you would really really let us out of our agreements? Please? We would like to stop giving europe a free ride...
Posted by: flash91 || 10/18/2006 11:51 Comments || Top||

#21  "Personally, I would challenge the fucker to a duel, and kill his aide, too, but that's just me."

-LOL, ditto bro'. That's my kind of language - give him the old Arron Burr.

I'm interested as to why Gen Richards did not mention Paki-land's involvement in helping to "re-surge" the taliwhackers.

Overall, I call shennanigans on this General. I've had plenty of buddies who just came back from Kabul, etc. They all say things are going way better then expected and the majority of afghans favor coaltion troops etc. It's more about warlord territorial pissings and pieces of the pie then really wanting the islamonazis back in power. BTW-they also tell me that Karzai is a fairly corrupt politician and many in the coalition do not like him.
Posted by: Broadhead6 || 10/18/2006 11:58 Comments || Top||

#22  I changed "dog" to "aide" at the last second. I like dogs, lol.

Thanks for the personal notes, BH6 - I have been very frustrated about Afghanistan because the drumbeat MSM memery has been relentless. I should've known that the number were were seeing trumped the meme.

Regards Karzai, he has been such a "darling" of every news source, and it was hard to dispute - what with his legendary escapade (singular) with that SF team, that my doubts about him and how he has dealt with the warlords, drugs, corruption, the guy who was to be executed for apostasy, the whole fucking nine yards we've been fed for the last 2 or 3 years (*takes deep breath* lol) have been held at bay. I don't like his ass either - glad to know that shit stinks to someone else, lol.
Posted by: .com || 10/18/2006 12:05 Comments || Top||

#23  Hamid Karzai was the only-option, compromise choice when whatsisname was murdered by those clever Al Qaeda guys carrying genuine Belgian journalist documents just before we went into Afghanistan. He looks simply smashing in that traditional cape & chapeau costume, he speaks lovely English thanks to his Stateside (didn't he spend a goodly portion of his adolescence in the US?) education, and he grew up watching his uncles and father handing out favours to hangers on. As far as I can tell, he did nothing to earn the position he was given except appear at all the right cocktail parties, and he's been dancing madly on the brink ever since. Perhaps I'm reading him wrong, but he's always felt to me like a Kofi Annan having to deal with reality... the gentleman belongs at the UN doing good works for the benighted world, not stuck out where he has to charm people who cook over dried-dung fires.
Posted by: trailing wife || 10/18/2006 13:05 Comments || Top||

#24  TW/.com - good points. One of my peers did six months working all over the eastern country side of Afghanistan. He was a liaison bringing in the locals to make deals w/the new gov't. He had an interpreter, rode all over the place w/some body guards in a toyota 4-runner, and slept in American safe houses all over kabul etc. Pretty interesting deployment from his stories - one of the taliwhackers even tried to set an IED for him but it detonated early - hahaha.

(Basically his job was setting up bribes for support from the local tribes so they'd shun the taliwhackers - age old persian tribal custom as he tells it.) Anyways, most of the info I get on Karzai is from him & unfortunately it ain't good.
Posted by: Broadhead6 || 10/18/2006 13:20 Comments || Top||

#25  if you hadn't been training and arming binny's boys we wouldn't have had this mess in the first place
Posted by: UK || 10/18/2006 13:48 Comments || Top||

#26  Oooh, it speaks squeaks again, lol.
Posted by: .com || 10/18/2006 13:52 Comments || Top||

#27  Trailing

Hamid lived in Fremont CA. I've eaten at his relatives Afghan Restaurant. Food is good, but, floors and windows are dirty.

He had another relative killed by the Taliban while trying to enter Afghanistan during the 2001 bombing. I think he would have been a stronger leader.

Hamid was wounded by friendly fire during the assault on Kandahar. You may remember the incident where the Special Ops guys accidentally sent their own coordinates to a B52 dropping JDAMs.

On another note, sometime last year, there was a British General that said we were going about the war in Iraq all wrong. It seems our friends are quick to join the hostile British press. The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst sometimes seems to be the British Army equivalent of Berkeley.

A little history lesson: If it weren’t for the asinine way the British and French carved up the Middle East after the fall of the Ottoman Empire maybe we wouldn't be in such a deep mess. Of course at the time they had an Empire mentality. The fact that Iraq is made up of Sunni, Shia and Kurds is their doing. They learned long ago the way to manage a large Empire with few troops is to play warring factions against each other. You'll maybe remember Kipling's "The Man Who Would Be King".

The Kurds were odd man out. They ended being the largest ethnic group in the area without a country. The Brits and French scattered them between Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq. Saddam did his ethnic cleansing thing and inserted Arabs into traditionally Kurdish majority cities like Mosul and Kirkuk. As my English wife reminds me the Brits have a lot to answer for what they did in the Middle East.
Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC || 10/18/2006 13:54 Comments || Top||

#28  i tell you why i am pissed off
out of ten years military service i have spent seven on operations , lost one wife to divorce becuase I was never at home. I am back form Iraq for six weeks now, in four weeks we deploy to afghanistan again for the third time , I am sick of the light approach pull all the troops out blanket bomb the whole region.
Posted by: UK || 10/18/2006 13:56 Comments || Top||

#29  I do not believe a single word of it, UK. Not one. You'd have to tell me the color of the boathouse at Hereford before I'd even deign to respond again. You demonstrated gross stupidity the other day and I see no reason to give you any credence or buy your claim.
Posted by: .com || 10/18/2006 13:59 Comments || Top||

#30  there is no boat house in hereford
Posted by: UK || 10/18/2006 14:02 Comments || Top||

#31  UK, if you're not trolling, I wish you courage, and I understand your feelings about all that.
Posted by: anonymous5089 || 10/18/2006 14:04 Comments || Top||

#32  UK
Look inward. Britain’s Socialistic approach to staying a world power short changes the Military. That's why you've spent so much time away. Under Clinton the US started to adopt the same policies. We seem to trail behind Britain 20-25 years and make the same dumb mistakes.
Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC || 10/18/2006 14:04 Comments || Top||

#33  finally two people with brains
Posted by: UK || 10/18/2006 14:06 Comments || Top||

#34  1. Youre thinking of Shah Massoud, TW.

2. I dont think there was anyone better available than Kharzai in 2001. I think the progress Afghan did make from 2001 to 2004 was beyond what could reasonably have been expected. Remember when folks were saying that hed never control anything outside of Kabul, that wed fade out of the country like the Soviets, etc, etc. Lets keep things in perspective. Hes done a very good job of keeping the NA warlords in line. Kabul itself has done well economically. But hes been particularly poor in the admin of the Pashtun areas, esp these last two years. Sometimes even a good guy wears out his welcome, sometimes its just time for fresh blood.
Posted by: liberalhawk || 10/18/2006 14:11 Comments || Top||

#35  Thank you, GolfBravoUSMC. It's always a pleasure to read your posts. As for the problems of the Middle East (and Africa, and to some extent Asia) being partially due to how countries were carved out of territories by the British and French colonialists... nowadays that is all laid at America's door by the ignorant of the world.

UK, have you considered blaming your Labour government, which insists on loading on missions without increasing troop levels? Iraq has only been in play since 2003, Afghanistan since 2002. Pennies to pounds you've done a tour or two in Yugoslavia, perhaps somewhere in Asia or sub-Saharan Africa for the UN? I agree the schedule you present is unacceptable, but proper staffing is your real issue (I won't even think about what Labour's done to your logistics -- to handicap willing soldiers so is a crime in the eyes of this little suburban housewife).
Posted by: trailing wife || 10/18/2006 14:11 Comments || Top||

#36  "UK, have you considered blaming your Labour government, which insists on loading on missions without increasing troop levels"

will someone please point me to where, prior to 9/11, the bush admin increased US troop levels? I believe it wasnt till 2004 that the admin agreed to increase the end strength of the US army.

Oh, and the Brit intervention in Sierra Leone saved a lot of lives (for those to whom that matters).
Posted by: liberalhawk || 10/18/2006 14:15 Comments || Top||

#37  "The Brits and French scattered them between Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq. "

to be fair, the brits and french had no control whatsoever over Turkey at that point, which was in full militant secular nationalism under Attaturk. They had some, but limited influence, over Persia. really they just divided those they controlled between Iraq and Syria. A landlocked Kurdish state would have been as problematic then as it is now.
Posted by: liberalhawk || 10/18/2006 14:18 Comments || Top||

#38  will someone please point me to where, prior to 9/11, the bush admin increased US troop levels? I believe it wasnt till 2004 that the admin agreed to increase the end strength of the US army.

Quite true, liberalhawk, and I didn't say that. Our guys are suffering, too, although at least they have enough bullets, and they get useful body armour and helmets instead of those stylish berets. Secretary Rumsfeld pointed out that you go to war with the forces you've got, but he isincreasing numbers as fast as the guys can be properly trained, and moving people out from Germany and South Korea, where they were forced to sit around while their fellows went off to be shot at.

(And thanks for the details on Shah Massoud and Sierra Leone. I know I can count on you to remember such things for me!)

UK, mind your manners. In this thread alone we have Broadhead6 who not long ago came back from a second tour in Iraq with his Marines, GolfBravoUSMC who is obviously a Marine, .com who did things in VietNam, Pappy is Navy... and some of the others have done things I don't know about. ;-) You might want to mention something to establish your bona fides to people who can judge the real from the fakes.
Posted by: trailing wife || 10/18/2006 14:36 Comments || Top||

#39  Oh, and UK, we remember John Major. Love him or hate him, George Bush is at least effective where he thinks it really matters.
Posted by: trailing wife || 10/18/2006 14:38 Comments || Top||

#40  liberalhawk
You’re correct; in the 8 months prior to 9/11 the Bush Administration did not add a single Division. They were too busy trying to cancel High Tech Boondoggles like the Stealth Comanche helicopter.

Problematic Land-Locked Countries:
Switzerland
Austria
Czech Republic
Slovenia
Hungary
Botswana
Kazakhstan
Paraguay
Liechtenstein
Uzbekistan (Surrounded by 5 other land-locked countries)
Etc. etc.

Thanks for the reminder re: Turkey and the Kurds. Iran, maybe, maybe not.
Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC || 10/18/2006 14:43 Comments || Top||

#41  Boathouse? I don't like your attitude, .com.
Posted by: Spence || 10/18/2006 14:49 Comments || Top||

#42  Oh, and the Brit intervention in Sierra Leone saved a lot of lives (for those to whom that matters).

True, and they even had a great rescue op that teached the sierra leonese drug-krazed boy-soldiers a lesson (How the hi-tech army fell back [Free Republic])
Posted by: anonymous5089 || 10/18/2006 14:51 Comments || Top||

#43  Gee, I'm sorry, Spence old boy.

So far in this thread, the only thing that UK has posted that rings true is that there is no boathouse at Hereford.

Other than that, I still see a giant turd posted up at #11 and nothing to justify believing UK is anything other than a poseur who decided he needed some armor (armour, lol) to cover his ass.
Posted by: .com || 10/18/2006 14:53 Comments || Top||

#44  Thanks trailing

Former Marine. Not as lean, not as mean, but always a Marine.

I spent 10 1/2 years in the Corps and was looking at tour three in Vietnam when I decided it was not worth risking my allergic reaction to flying bullets. If the Politicians had ever tried to win the damn thing it might have been different for my career. Like UK, it cost me a marriage.
Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC || 10/18/2006 14:55 Comments || Top||

#45  The Brits did indeed create the mess in Iraq and did so intentionally to keep the Kurds from coalescing control over oil resources.

Gertrude Bell was a key player in this and in other badly drawn boundaries.
Posted by: lotp || 10/18/2006 14:56 Comments || Top||

#46  will someone please point me to where, prior to 9/11, the bush admin increased US troop levels? I believe it wasnt till 2004 that the admin agreed to increase the end strength of the US army.

TW, you shouldn't have apologized. Jeebus, I'm non-mil, but even I can follow a timeline, LH. Let's see the Military's Fiscal Year (Budget year) ran from Oct.1, 2000 - Sept. 30, 2001. Clinton was in office for that budgetary year. 9/11 happened right BEFORE a new fiscal year started, and, thus, the military's budget could have ALREADY been passed by then (I'm not sure). But, also, you have the trouble with that little thing called the Constitution, where the President CAN'T single-handedly just shower money on the military.

All of this shows that Bush's first effect (through increasing the budget) at the EARLIEST would've been 10/1/2001. That doesn't even address the logistics of recruiting, training up and possibly deploying ADDITIONAL troops. Get out of your blame Bush mode for that. No one in their right mind thinks Bush could've increased the military (at all, much less by several divisions) BEFORE 9/11.
Posted by: BA || 10/18/2006 14:57 Comments || Top||

#47  lotp - Another doomed romantic, lol. I was disabused of that silliness in S.A. - seems she never got over hers... and that sad personal flaw did, indeed, leave the entire world with a messy legacy. Mine only cost me a little lost sleep. I see Iraq as little different from any other inane Yugoslavia-style confabulation.

Isn't this is where Aris used to take over the thread and pontificate at extreme length on the granularity of independence movements and the superiority of slate politics? Lol.
Posted by: .com || 10/18/2006 15:08 Comments || Top||

#48  ...
"I ambushed you with a f***in coffee cup!!"
Posted by: eLarson || 10/18/2006 15:10 Comments || Top||

#49  The USA is happy to give out the talk about other countries but cannot take it when it is sent their way, after you are all so clever you voted bush into power!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, all things considered, voting Bush in as President appears, on the face of things, to have been a smart decision by this country's voters IMO.

Now, about this country's talking the talk and walking the walk,

The Revolutionary War
The Barbary Pirates
The Phillipine Insurrection
The Spanish-American War
The Mexican-American War
WW1
WW2
Korea
Vietnam
Gulf War I
Gulf War II
Afghanistan

and about ten thousand other little "hotspots" around the world in the last 2-1/2 centuries.

Yes, we do talk the talk and we do walk the walk. We get a little pissed off when we hear about how stupid, backwards, and ungrateful we are by citizens of countries whom, without our assistance, would have been speaking German or Japanese currently.

Tell me, UK, what would you have us do? Get out of NATO? Fine. Suits me. France tends to block anything we want NATO to do these days anyway and they're not even a real member. Pull out of Germany? Please! Pulling the corps out of Germany would save us billions and free up troops to use elsewhere. Pull out of the UK? I would hope that Britain and Britons would see us more as friends and would not force us to do that. It would be a loss to two people's with common ancestry, common backgrounds, and common purposes. How about cut & run in Iraq and Afghanistan? That would suit a lot of our voters over here who are by tradition and outlook isolationist - but it would not serve our national interests (nor yours) nor the interests of freedom and democracy around the world.

So, what do you want us to do?

Yes, the USA does leave a rather large footprint when it stomps around the world, but that rather large footprint has always had good intentions behind it. The problem, to me, is that all too often we don't stomp hard enough IMO.

And don't try to feed us any bs about "If you haven't been in uniform, you don't have a right to comment" because I do have a right - it says so right in our Constitution (and I believe it says so in a couple of Britain's historical documents as well). Not to mention that I've earned that right despite having never been in uniform by serving alongside members of the military (or former members on occasion).

Just my humble commentary and comments. Please pardon my questions above if they have previously been answered.



Posted by: FOTSGreg || 10/18/2006 15:16 Comments || Top||

#50  Per #28, I'm marveling (read: boggle, then choke) at the three tours in Afghanistan and (at least) one in Iraq. Think about that, for a moment. Unless a UK tour is quite short, relative to the US, then ol' UK has been a spearpoint for 4 of the last 5 years. Apply your BS meter to that and see what reading you get.

Pfeh. Enough of this. Toodles, UK. HANL.
Posted by: .com || 10/18/2006 15:26 Comments || Top||

#51  To LH's increase troop strength comment, post 9/11 would have been an ideal time to increase the size of the Army by 1-2 divisions and increase Marines troop strength as well. Missed opportunity, along with making an actual declaration of war and cutting some non-essential government services/spending. We should have put the country onto a war footing, not told them to go out and shop. Please note that I am a fan of the president, but feel that this needed opportunity won't come again until thousands more American civilians are dead.

The UK on this post does not seem like the regular guy posting under that nym...or have I been missing something?
Posted by: remoteman || 10/18/2006 15:36 Comments || Top||

#52  It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

Cid Caesar:

If it weren’t for Lend-Lease Britain would have sunk into the ocean.

Terri Thomas:

Bosoms!!! Bosoms!!!! If the American women quit wearing Bras your Economy would collapse!
Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC || 10/18/2006 15:42 Comments || Top||

#53  Okay, I'm having a vision here.
Posted by: wxjames || 10/18/2006 16:27 Comments || Top||

#54  "The problem, to me, is that all too often we don't stomp hard enough IMO."

Which seems to me to be what the NATO commander is saying.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles in Blairistan || 10/18/2006 17:14 Comments || Top||

#55  Pebbles

Quite to the contrary. The NATO commanders made it abundantly clear before taking over command of Afgahnistan that they were not going to go crashing around like the heavy handed Americans!
Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC || 10/18/2006 17:23 Comments || Top||

#56  ol' UK has been a spearpoint for 4 of the last 5 years.

I recognize thisn from about 6 months back. He's constantly at war. I'd be angry too if I never had a break to get to the nearest Internet Cafe and fire off an angry missive to Rantburg. Good news is he (I assume he) is building up tons of combat experience to use against the local Bad Boyz. No guns allowed, maybe cricket bats.
Posted by: Shipman || 10/18/2006 17:55 Comments || Top||

#57  He did know the Ballad of the ISI tho, points for that.

Fighting Fuckwits from the Sky,
allahs men who jump and cry.

Men who mean just what they say,
they will change it again today.
Posted by: Shipman || 10/18/2006 18:06 Comments || Top||

#58  Gotta cut ol' UK some slack, soon his country will be ruled by the mooks, and he will be wearing a pink burka.
Posted by: Captain America || 10/18/2006 19:27 Comments || Top||

#59  Is that what they call dry humour, Shipman?
Posted by: trailing wife || 10/18/2006 21:18 Comments || Top||

#60  For what it's worth late at night, the only countries that fought with us in Viet Nam were Australia and South Korea. Through the years, I have had occasion to work with the militaries of many countries and I firmly believe the only ones we can count on to stand by us when the shit hits the fan are the Aussies and, if it is not politically inconvenient, the Brits.
Posted by: RWV || 10/18/2006 23:01 Comments || Top||

#61  I've been deployed 6 of the last 5 years....top that, UK!
Posted by: Frank G || 10/18/2006 23:31 Comments || Top||

#62  the only countries that fought with us in Viet Nam were Australia and South Korea

Sorry, RWV, but dead wrong. You left out both the Kiwis and the Thais, not to mention the real help we got from the Hmong and several other indiginous natives of Vietnam, Laos, and northern Cambodia. I also think a couple of platoons of Filipinos were there for a bit. What really chaffed my butt was the British merchant ships that regularly pulled into Haiphong harbor to unload. There were others, too. Our failure to mine the coastal waters of North Vietnam is one of many failures I have catalogued in my notes on that phucked up war.

As for our British General, how long has he been in country? Does he really know what's going on? Does he get real intelligence, or some of the crap we got prior to invading Iraq? Yeah, much of the "resurgence" in the Taliban offensive is being staged by Chechens, Uzbeks, and most of all, Pakistani Pashtuns. A little napalm on a few crossing points at the right time would put a stop to that.

UK, I served 26 years in our Air Force, 16 overseas, including a tour in merrie olde England. I'm one of less than one percent of enlisted AF members who has combat time. Yeah, I smell bullsh$$, too.

It won't be hard for anyone to find my views about building up the strength of our armed forces - I've been quite vocal about them. No need for a rehash.
Posted by: Old Patriot || 10/18/2006 23:52 Comments || Top||


20 Taliban killed as NATO kicks off "Operation Eagle" in Afghanistan
(KUNA) -- As many as 20 Taliban fighters have been killed in a clash with Afghan and NATO forces in the southeastern parts of Afghanistan as the alliance announced a countrywide anti-insurgent operation on Tuesday. NATO commander Lt Gen David Richards told a news conference in Kabul that they were launching a new countrywide operation. He said the operation would be jointly conducted with the Afghan military to keep the militants under pressure.

Although the general did not give details, the operation is aimed to strike a decisive blow at the Taliban during the coming winter season. The operation has been codenamed as "Operation Eagle." The NATO commander said the purpose of the operation was to encourage the much needed reconstruction and development across Afghanistan.

“The military said upon damage assessment, they had discovered that from 15 to 20 Taliban had been killed in the clash...”
Meanwhile, a military press release issued in Kabul, said Taliban attacked an ISAF security post in Bermel district of Paktika province. One Afghan policeman was killed and two ISAF soldiers suffered injuries in the attack. The ISAF and Afghan forces jointly retaliated. The ground forces were supported by attack helicopters which targeted the positions of the militants. The military said upon damage assessment, they had discovered that from 15 to 20 Taliban had been killed in the clash that continued for several hours. Taliban so far did not issue any statement on the ISAF claim.
Posted by: Fred || 10/18/2006 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Fifteen to twenty Talibunnies killed? The NATO officials probably were still putting together the body parts of the Paki-fighters.

Modern Firepower!
Posted by: Lancasters Over Dresden || 10/18/2006 3:52 Comments || Top||


40 Taliban Pushing Up Poppies
TROOPS in Afghanistan killed around 40 Taliban rebels in two encounters overnight, including a major battle near the Pakistan border in which Pakistanis and Chechens were among the dead, officials said. The nearly five-hour battle was in Paktia province that borders Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal district where the government signed a truce with pro-Taliban militants last month.

The fight started when Afghan troops came under attack in the province's Barmal area on the border, the defence ministry said. "The result - 24 enemy were killed, their bodies were left at the site and we have carried them to our base," ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi said. "Among the dead there are Pakistan nationals, Chechens and people from other countries, as well as Afghans," he said. Eight people were arrested alive, including three Pakistanis.

A military commander reported overnight that six Taliban and a soldier had been killed in a battle in Barmal. It could not be immediately confirmed if it was the same incident.

There is concern in insurgency-hit Afghanistan that the peace deal in North Waziristan has resulted in more militants crossing into the country to carry out attacks. The US-led coalition said last month it had seen a 300 per cent increase in incidents in the area since a truce in North Waziristan was reached weeks before the September accord. The accord saw the Pakistani forces scale down their presence in the area with the tribal leaders pledging to stop infiltration.
And we're seeing how well that's worked.
Police reported, meanwhile, that four Taliban were killed in an attack Monday in Grishk district in the southern province of Helmand. And in the neighbouring province of Kandahar, the birthplace and core of Taliban activities, a truck driver supplying fuel for foreign troops was killed and his vehicle was set ablaze by militants yesterday, police said. The incident in Kandahar's border town of Spin Boldak was the latest such attack targeting civilians helping the foreign troops who have been based here to help secure Afghanistan since the 2001 toppling of the Taliban government.

Also in Kandahar a district governor survived an assassination attempt overnight, police official Esmatullah Alizai said. The district chief of Mia Nishin escaped unharmed when unknown assailants opened fire on his vehicle, wounding two of his bodyguards, Mr Alizai said.
Posted by: Anonymoose || 10/18/2006 00:00 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:


Britain
British anti-terror laws under fire as two terror suspects escape
LONDON - Britain’s anti-terrorism legislation came under renewed fire Tuesday as a row over two international terrorist suspects who have gone on the run intensified. Opposition parties and pressure groups said that the escape of the pair, reportedly a Briton of Pakistani descent and an Iraqi, highlighted that the control orders to which they were subject were dangerous and unfair.

Control orders are a loose kind of house arrest which usually compel suspects to report regularly to police and place them under a curfew, although critics say suspects should instead be charged and face a trial.

But Home Office minister Tony McNulty hinted Monday that the government may go in a different direction and diverge from the European Convention on Human Rights to tighten up the regime using existing legislation. “We’ve got scope... to look at derogating orders that actually step away from the European Convention on Human Rights. That remains an option and we keep these things under review,” he told BBC television.
Good luck with that Tony, you're in Labour, remember?
And, with a note of irritation in his voice, Prime Minister Tony Blair reminded reporters at his monthly press conference that the government had tried to bring in tougher anti-terrorism powers but was defeated on the issue. “We were prevented by opposition in parliament and then by the courts in ensuring that that was done,” he said.
Join the club, ask Dubya how it feels.
“Control orders were never going to be as effective as detention but of course, we’ve got to make sure that if someone breaches their control order, they’re properly sought after.”

The Home Office has not made public any details of the escapes, but the BBC reported on its website that one of the fugitives was a British man of Pakistani descent suspected of wanting to go to Iraq and fight against the United States and British-led coalition there. He is 25 and escaped from the mental health unit of a hospital in south-west London in the last few weeks, Britain’s Press Association (PA) reported.

The other man is Iraqi and is thought to have been missing for some months, the BBC online said.
Wanna bet he's in either Anbar or Peshawar?
Home affairs spokesman for the main opposition Conservative party David Davis called for a review into the situation, while his Liberal Democrat counterpart Nick Clegg said that the government should be getting more control order suspects into court.

“As we have always made clear, the danger of control orders is that they short-circuit due process and keep suspects in a state of limbo,” Clegg said.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of civil liberties campaign group Liberty, said the two escapes confirmed that control orders were ”unsafe and fundamentally unfair”. “If someone is truly a dangerous terror suspect, why would you leave them at large?

“On the other hand, it is completely cruel and unfair to label someone a terrorist and to subject them to a range of punishments for years on end without ever charging them or putting them on trial,” she said.
Does this mean you'll allow expeditious trials and have these thugs locked up?
Control orders were introduced last year to replace emergency laws brought in after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States which allowed the government to lock up foreign nationals suspected of involvement in international terrorism without charge or trial. When Britain’s upper parliamentary chamber, the House of Lords, ruled those measures illegal, the government brought in control orders.

Human rights legislation prevented the men from being deported because they faced being sent to countries where they could be tortured or treated badly.
No such sympathy for the bombing victims as far as we can tell ...
In June, a senior judge quashed control orders made against six men, saying they were incompatible with article five of the European Convention on Human Rights, but the government has appealed this ruling.
Posted by: Steve White || 10/18/2006 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  We have the civil liberties mob to thank for this. Shama Chakrabati of 'Liberty' should be placed in The Tower for fighting internment of terrs. She would rather have MI5/MI6 reveal their methods in a court of law and lose the fight on terrorism than round up a handful of scumbags... And the Law Lords allow this buttfunking of the British people. Stop the country I want to get off.
Posted by: Howard UK || 10/18/2006 3:26 Comments || Top||

#2  Human rights legislation prevented the men from being deported because they faced being sent to countries where they could be tortured or treated badly.

F 'Em. If the country on their passport won't take them, give them a raft and matches, give them a sail if they can't get offshore.

Way too much is spent on these homeless terrorists, aim high next time, I say screw this law enforcement as the holy grail solution. They shot "old Yella" they can push unwanted refugee terrorist in the ocean, I wouldn't lose a wink.

.02


Posted by: Dunno || 10/18/2006 5:08 Comments || Top||

#3  Howard UK,
Brits have made a terrible miscalculation letting all those Muzzies in to gain slave labor. Now they go about undermining your laws and culture. Do you foresee a changing in attitude among Brits to stop this nonsense ?
We suffer from this same stupidity here allowing all these illegals in to serve as slave labor. They are destroying everything we have built in culture also..the hospitals, schools. Refuse to assimilate. Refuse to use our language. Now that some are getting into legislatures they are undermining that with their communist philosophy. Some resistance is building here, but not enough fast enough I'm afraid. Same there ?
Posted by: SpecOp35 || 10/18/2006 11:42 Comments || Top||

#4  Gee whiz, ya mean the Honor System doesn't work with terrorist greaseballs?
Posted by: mojo || 10/18/2006 14:43 Comments || Top||

#5  SpecOp35,

British Society is relatively successfully integrated - a handful of assholes neeed to be 'sorted out' to maintain order. Unfortunately, too much PC bullshit that comes with a multicultural Britain provides an obstacle to dealing with them appropriately. The current debate in the media on the veil etc. will help us lose the shyness and take action - I fear it will take more atrocities to stir the populace from their slumber. The danger is the extreme right will also take courage from this blossoming debate.
Posted by: Howard UK || 10/18/2006 15:53 Comments || Top||

#6  One of the more dangerous features of a democracy {even a democratic republic} is that if the professional political classes in the major parties refuse to do their jobs and protect the public, then a psuedo-populist will arise who will. Often, that individual is a classic fascist/national socialist type, who will scare the pros into action. Unfortunately, with the left/liberal bend of most European major parties, that action will likely be to suppress the psuedo-populists and his/her supporters quite vigorously, and leave the troublemaking group that provide the initial spark alone - in this case, the Islamists. That tends to create a self-feeding loop that eventually results in : 1) the psuedo-populist's party seizing control of the government, or 2) the implementation of a police state to "control the masses' negative urges". Either scenario is possible in Europe right now, although with the EU's anti-democratic bend, the leftist police state seems to have the stronger backing of the politicos.
Posted by: Shieldwolf || 10/18/2006 20:17 Comments || Top||

#7  The extreme right? In Britain? Is that what we'd call Republicans over here?
Posted by: Nimble Spemble || 10/18/2006 20:21 Comments || Top||


China-Japan-Koreas
de Borchgrave: Dr. Strangelove's nukes
Posted by: .com || 10/18/2006 15:47 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Iran, soon to become the 10th nuclear power, is unlikely to jettison 20 years of secret efforts for a package of Western carrots. So either we learn to live with a North Korean and Iranian bomb -- or we turn to preemptive air strikes to retard both programs by five to ten years.

I'll take "Preemptive Air Strikes" for $1,000, Alex.
Posted by: Zenster || 10/18/2006 17:12 Comments || Top||

#2  The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to a South Korean executive who met for over two hours late last year with Kim Jong-il, convinced the little dictator that only a crash program to test a nuclear device would deter the United States from invading a charter member of president Bush's "axis of evil."

Maybe he should've consulted with Muamar Qadaffi.
Posted by: Bobby || 10/18/2006 17:57 Comments || Top||

#3  Maybe NoKo should have been bombed in 2003
Posted by: Kalle || 10/18/2006 18:37 Comments || Top||

#4  Personally, I don't think that air strikes will be a good long-term solution, unless you include space based weapons. That is why I advocate partitioning Iran to prevent their reconstituting their nuke program after we annihilate it.

The sooner we put a system like "The rods from god" into orbit, the sooner we can just order these countries to cut it out. Either nations go fully IAEA compliant, or they risk having their nuclear facilities obliterated.

There is no defense to such weapons as the RsFG, and no argument that they want to go nuke "for peaceful purposes only". If that is the case, they MUST be IAEA compliant.

You'll note that the US has NOT pointed out that all Iran would have to do is to fully allow all IAEA inspections and limitations, and they could make as much nuclear material for "peaceful purposes" as they wanted, like Brazil.
Posted by: Anonymoose || 10/18/2006 19:44 Comments || Top||

#5  If we can't "Rod from God" them, just mini-nuke them. That's it. Then tell them if they try it again they will completely vaporized.

Posted by: Creresh Snaque5213 || 10/18/2006 19:49 Comments || Top||

#6  Norks should have been bombed in 1994, but Clinton didn't have the cajones.
Posted by: Nimble Spemble || 10/18/2006 20:14 Comments || Top||

#7  In 94, Clinton was actually sabotaged by Jimmy Carter.

Although its doubtful that Clinton would actually have used military force, Carter's deal with the NORKs narrowed the US options to almost nothing.
Posted by: mhw || 10/18/2006 20:23 Comments || Top||

#8  Just after I wrote that rods from god comment, a friend showed me an article on "deep digger", the bunker buster that plows past the 3 missile lengths limit by firing cannon in its nose cone.

That would seem to do it.

However, it is still to our advantage to partition Iran to prevent them from rebuilding their nuke program. Otherwise, all they have to do is wait until another weakling democrat president comes around.
Posted by: Anonymoose || 10/18/2006 20:52 Comments || Top||

#9  #7: "Carter's deal with the NORKs narrowed the US options to almost nothing."

Sorry, mhw - can't agree there. IIRC, Weasel Cahtah went there on his own, not as an official US representative. Clintoon could have told the NorKs (and the world, including Jimmuh) that that asshole's promises were just that - his promises - and our government wasn't bound by them.

So of course he didn't.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 10/18/2006 21:24 Comments || Top||

#10  Coulda bombed while Jimmah was in Pyongyang. That would stop the freelancing.
Posted by: Nimble Spemble || 10/18/2006 21:30 Comments || Top||

#11  And killed .... er... taken care of - two birds with one stone....so to speak.
Posted by: Bobby || 10/18/2006 21:50 Comments || Top||

#12  I bet ex-president/World's Worst Negotiator Mr. Dhimmi Carter is having a hard time sleeping these days. Iran's textbook version of the Napoleanic Complex is probably calling him day and night begging him to come negotiate an end to Iran's nuclear program.

I quote Dhimmi Carter "I was convinced of this, because for almost three years, Kim Il Sung sent me a steady stream of invitations and personal entreaties to come to Pyongyang to let him explain the North Korean position..."

I've never heard anything less surprising in my life.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kim/interviews/carter.html
Posted by: Lanny Ddub || 10/18/2006 23:45 Comments || Top||


Home Front: WoT
Mujahideen Gather Information on Anchorage International Airport
On October 17, 2006, an Islamist website posted a message titled "You Can Spy on the Enemies' Airports Directly by Controlling the Cameras' Direction." The message contains a link to a screen showing what it claims to be a live view of various areas within Anchorage International Airport via several cameras (http://209.193.48.89/view/index.shtml ). The message gives directions for how to control the cameras and promises to provide links in the future for other airports as well.

These are screenshots from the five sources: North View, South Terminal, Lake Hood, Cargo Area View, and Quad Stream.
Posted by: DanNY || 10/18/2006 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  To those of us who fly in and out ANC...not very reassuring. Eh, Alaska Paul?
Posted by: anymouse || 10/18/2006 1:51 Comments || Top||

#2  And now put the Lynne Stewart sentencing in its proper context. Even worse, put the scumbag lawyers who shopped around for an ACLU or Democrat-appointed, Leftist judge in its proper context.

A Leftist judge who slapped the treasonous bitch with a 28-month sentence when she could have received the rope a thirty-year sentence.
Posted by: Lancasters Over Dresden || 10/18/2006 4:01 Comments || Top||

#3  Actually: "she *should* have received the rope a thirty-year sentence."
Posted by: Lancasters Over Dresden || 10/18/2006 4:02 Comments || Top||


India-Pakistan
Seven injured as guerrillas attack hospital in Indian-administered Kashmir
(KUNA) -- Atleast seven people were injured, including three Indian Border Security Force (BSF) personnel and four civilians, when separatist guerrillas lobbed a hand grenade Tuesday inside a hospital at Baramulla in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. The grenade attack led to panic in the hospital where a large number of patients were waiting Tuesday, news agency Indo-Asian News Service reported.

In another incident, guerrillas killed a driver of Kashmir zone Inspector General of Police (IGP) in Srinagar, summer capital of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, Tuesday, the news agency said. Srinagar police and Indian paramilitary troops immediately surrounded the area and conducted a search operation.
Posted by: Fred || 10/18/2006 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Brave Lions of Islam...
Posted by: john || 10/18/2006 13:52 Comments || Top||


Three injured by blast on vendor's cart
LAHORE: A man and two teenagers were injured on Tuesday in an explosion in a vendor’s cart at Jia Musa, Shahdara. The cart was parked in front of the telephone exchange on Shahdara-Sheikhupura Road when it exploded at around 10:40pm, injuring Nabeel Sabir, 13, Raheel Amjad, 15, and an unidentified man. Amir Zulfiqar Khan, Lahore DIG (Operations), the explosion was caused by firecrackers hidden in the cart. The DIG called an emergency security meeting later on Tuesday night and ordered heightened security measures, particularly as Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz is visiting the city. Special police teams conducted raids across the city and villages on its outskirts, arresting several suspects, sources said.
Posted by: Fred || 10/18/2006 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  that's what happens when you don't change the hotdog water
Posted by: Frank G || 10/18/2006 15:43 Comments || Top||


Missile fired at Peshawar
A Russian-made missile fired from Khyber Agency hit the city late on Monday night, causing no casualties or damage, police said. The missile fell in fields in the Landi Akhund Ahmad area.
Posted by: Fred || 10/18/2006 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  One left over from that last attempt to assassinate Perv that finally ignited and launched?
Posted by: SteveS || 10/18/2006 14:06 Comments || Top||


Iraq
U.S. military says 10 troops killed in Iraq
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. military announced on Wednesday the deaths of 10 U.S. troops in Iraq on Tuesday, an unusually bloody day for American soldiers battling sectarian violence and a Sunni Arab insurgency.

At least 68 U.S. troops have been killed in October -- a pace, that if continues, would make it the deadliest month for U.S. forces since January 2005. At least 2,777 have died since the invasion in 2003. After falling to 43 in July, the U.S. toll rose to 65 in August and to 71 in September. U.S. commanders, who have declared the fight for Baghdad the war's main effort, have conducted major security sweeps in the capital since August, massing neighborhoods with troops to flush out militants.

Some 15,000 U.S. troops in Baghdad are focusing efforts in the sprawling capital on curbing death squads and other armed groups. U.S. commanders have attributed the rising death toll to more aggressive patrolling in Baghdad, the epicenter of sectarian violence that kills 100 people a day.

In the worst violence on Tuesday, four soldiers were killed when their vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said in a statement. Roadside bombs are the deadliest weapon for U.S. troops in Iraq. Three were killed and one wounded while conducting operations in Diyala province, north of Baghdad.
Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC || 10/18/2006 11:27 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Baghdad, the epicenter of sectarian violence that kills 100 people a day.

So is that just in Baghdad? Or all over the country?

100 a day is what was supposed to be the death toll in July - some 3,000. August was half that, until somebody decided August was just as bad as July, at which point, July became 1,500 also. (I made that observation at the "Burg at that time - whenever that was).

I don't remember September's toll, but I believe it was more like 1,000? Anybody? Tables? Charts? Spreadsheets? Consistent basis?

Ramadan, of course, will be higher, due to the celebrations - everyone understood that.

Now we are down to 100 every three or four days - even during Ramadan(see here, but it's still getting 'worse'?

Either Reuters can't do math, it doesn't fit there meme, or both, but it part of the constant drumbeat by the media that makes me sick.

I'm tellin' ya - the war is almost over; we're at the 'Tet Offensive' stage. After the election, it'll just sort of fade away, especially if another blonde goes missing in Aruba.
Posted by: Bobby || 10/18/2006 16:01 Comments || Top||

#2  Iraqi Security Forces and Civilian Deaths

Oct-06 981
Sep-06 3539
Aug-06 2966
Jul-06 1280
Jun-06 870
May-06 1119
Apr-06 1010
Mar-06 1092
Feb-06 846
Jan-06 779
Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC || 10/18/2006 17:03 Comments || Top||

#3  OK, so my memory of MSM bs is a bit off.

[snark] You just had to cite http://icasualties.org/oif/, didn't you, GolfBrovoUSMC?

And beside, yesterday Nimble Spemble got me all cheered up!

Didn't think I'd check up onya, didja? [/snark]

But the October rate is presently half the September rate - and it's Ramadan
Posted by: Bobby || 10/18/2006 17:47 Comments || Top||

#4  Yes to the casualties. http://icasualties.org/oif/ is right on the money with US causalties. I'd trust their Iraqi numbers before I would Lancet's or the Moonbats.

Yes the rate in October is down. I agree they just don't practice that Olde Tyme Religion of Peace during Ramadan like the days of old.

Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC || 10/18/2006 19:46 Comments || Top||

#5  OOPS!

Screwed up the Ramadan pic link.

Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC || 10/18/2006 19:51 Comments || Top||

#6  ALL THE BULLSHIT ASIDE.

GOD BLESS THESE SOLDIERS AND THEIR FAMILIES.

FUCK THE MSM AND THEIR DESIRE FOR RATINGS AND POLITICS.
Posted by: 49 Pan || 10/18/2006 20:42 Comments || Top||

#7  Amen.
Posted by: Nimble Spemble || 10/18/2006 20:43 Comments || Top||

#8  Amen.

Remember to vote early, and vote often.
Posted by: Bobby || 10/18/2006 21:32 Comments || Top||


Iraq PM demands US free Sadr aide
Iraqi prime minister Nouri Maliki has ordered the release of a senior figure in the organisation headed by radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr. The man, Sheikh Mazin Saedi, had been detained by American troops in the Iraqi capital Baghdad on Tuesday.

Some 5,000 Shia protesters marched in Baghdad on Wednesday calling for his release, the Associated Press reported.

The United States military declined to identify individuals it had recently detained. But it said it had captured "the alleged leader of a murder and kidnapping cell" in east Baghdad. It said the cell leader was suspected of having directed kidnappings, killings and torture of Sunnis and Shias, and of having connections to attacks on Iraqi and coalition forces.

The announcement of Mr Saedi's release came shortly after Mr Maliki held talks in the city of Najaf with Moqtada Sadr and the most senior Shia cleric in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Mr Sadr's office said the detained man was a local leader of his political organisation.

The Iraqi prime minister has repeatedly pledged to take action against militias - but he has criticised American raids targeting suspected militia members, saying they could damage national reconciliation efforts.

Moqtada Sadr has in recent years become part of the political process, despite initially opposing it and leading two localised uprisings against US-led forces. His movement is part of the largest bloc in parliament, the United Iraqi Alliance, alongside the two largest Shia parties. It has strong support among poor Shias, particularly in eastern Baghdad.

Despite repeated accusations that the Mehdi Army, the militia linked to his party, has been involved in death squads carrying out attacks on Sunnis, Mr Sadr has several times called for calm amid rising sectarian tensions. Analysts say it is likely that he does not have full control of the loose network of militias and armed groups linked to the Mehdi militia.

The development comes ahead of a meeting of Iraqi Sunni and Shia leaders in the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, which aims to quell the spiralling sectarian violence in Iraq. Held under the auspices of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the gathering of clerics from the two branches of Islam will begin on Friday. It is expected to back a statement condemning Muslim attacks on other Muslims, supporting the unity of Iraq and calling for the protection of Islamic holy sites.
Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC || 10/18/2006 11:09 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  WE should announce we'll free him when he stops talking. Right now he won't shut up with all sorts of little details about Sadr and his plans and arranging for a new bank accounts and housing in Europe but that should wrap up soon. Don't you worry. He'll be walking the streets and gabbing with the old gang in no time.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 10/18/2006 12:44 Comments || Top||

#2  WE should tell the Sadr aide that we ill not take him into custody next time. We'll send him to Allah with a bellyfull of bacon.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 10/18/2006 12:45 Comments || Top||

#3  Interrogate Execute then turn over the body saying that he was killed in the raid but we took the body and claimed we captured him to see who would come to his aid.

Posted by: C-Low || 10/18/2006 12:53 Comments || Top||

#4  Our reply should be that we'll trade him for Sadr.
Posted by: Zenster || 10/18/2006 14:27 Comments || Top||

#5  This is not a good omen.
Posted by: Captain America || 10/18/2006 19:38 Comments || Top||

#6  On a sereous note Captian is right this is a real real real bad omen IF TRUE.

Posted by: C-Low || 10/18/2006 21:09 Comments || Top||

#7  I'd give Maliki an opportunity to do a press conference in Ramadi or Fallujah saying this...without security
Posted by: Frank G || 10/18/2006 23:26 Comments || Top||


Tense Calm Prevails as Iraqi Forces Seal Off River Town
BAGHDAD, Oct. 17 -- Police and black-clad Shiite militiamen toting machine guns sealed off the predominantly Shiite city of Balad on Tuesday, guarding against attacks by Sunni insurgents flooding into towns just north of Baghdad, vowing revenge for four days of violence in which dozens of Sunnis were killed.

Calm largely returned to Balad by Tuesday, with Iraqi army troops forcing Shiite militia fighters out of police cars that the militiamen had commandeered for the attacks, said residents reached by telephone in the cut-off town. American troops patrolled the city and guarded one end of a Tigris River bridge that links Balad with Duluiyah, a Sunni farm town also at the epicenter of the outburst of sectarian conflict.

On the Duluiyah end of the bridge, angry Sunni insurgents gathered in force, clutching their PKC machine guns and rocket launchers, standing their tense watch. Abu Achmed, a fighter in the Islamic Army, a Sunni insurgent movement, held a machine gun but wished for more.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC || 10/18/2006 01:48 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  I gotta tell you I read these stories and just don't feel much pitty for the Sunni. Back in 04-05 when we were really trying to calm things down and the Shia/Kurds were weak and willing to come to a mutual agreement. Instead the Sunni chose WAR and they harbored and helped the Insurgency as they slaughtered the Shia/Kurd along with many US forces. Now the tables have been turned and retribution is at hand. After Falluja, Ramadi, Samarra, Quam, Rat lines, Anbar ect... I just dont feel the sorrow. Life has consequences the Sunni gambled all and they lost.
Posted by: C-Low || 10/18/2006 9:45 Comments || Top||

#2  On the Duluiyah end of the bridge, angry Sunni insurgents gathered in force

Why weren't they hit with artillery or cluster bombs?
Posted by: Rob Crawford || 10/18/2006 10:46 Comments || Top||

#3  war begets peace and until the bloodletting has run its course(both sides drop from exaustion),there's nt much that can be done in the near term other than across the board international cooperation that includes lots of troops...which ain't going to happen....it took Lebanon 15 yrs for the bloodshed to stop and then we had to leave the Syrians in charge
Posted by: jkh || 10/18/2006 13:50 Comments || Top||

#4  Some good points jkh. It could be the Iraqis are moving faster towards exhaustion tho. I've heard bandied about that 3 percent of the population is the magic number.

Posted by: Shipman || 10/18/2006 18:11 Comments || Top||


Shootings, bombings, kill at least 32 across Iraq
US troops on Tuesday patrolled a city north of Baghdad where a surge in sectarian fighting has killed close to 100 people, while bombings and shootings across Iraq killed at least 32 others. The fighting in Balad, a town near a major US air base an hour's drive north of the capital, began Friday with the slaying of 17 Shi'ite Muslim workers. Revenge-seeking Shi'ite death squads then killed 74 Sunnis, causing people to flee across the Tigris River to the nearby Sunni-dominated city of Duluiyah.
Posted by: Fred || 10/18/2006 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  So it's 100? or 100 plus the 32? Staring Friday, but does that include Friday? What about Tuesday, is that included?

It sounds like increasing quagmirification to me!

Either that or it's 20 a day, a vast improvement over July's 100+ per day.
Posted by: Bobby || 10/18/2006 6:32 Comments || Top||

#2  I don't give a rat's ass if it's a thousand per day. If they exterminate each other, that makes controlling the place easier. What bothers me is that US troops keep getting reinjected back into these shitholes and are not allowed to shoot the dogs as required. Thus, our people keep getting ambushed and hit by IED's. There is no sense to this. Get back and let them have their free-for-all. When Sunni sect is greatly depleted, it will shrink back or disappear. This entire area should have been under strict martial law for years. There is no reasoning with these f**kwits.
Posted by: SpecOp35 || 10/18/2006 11:54 Comments || Top||

#3  SpecOp, I hate to read about your US boys getting killed when they are hell bent on mutual slaughter. Yep, let them first sate themselves according to their proclivity.
Posted by: Duh! || 10/18/2006 15:11 Comments || Top||


Senior Iraqi military officer killed by masked gunmen in Mosul
(KUNA) -- A senior Iraqi army officer was assassinated by masked gunmen in Mosul city, north Iraq, said a security source on Tuesday. The source added that officer died in Al-Thawra neighborhood east of the city.

In Kirkuk, a road-side bomb exploded near a Multi-National Force (MNF) vehicle in Tiseen neighborhood which but caused minor damages to the patrol car. Meanwhile, the Iraqi interior forces in addition to the military and MNF troops conducted operations in Khadra neighborhood in Kikruk. The forces arrested during the mission, six insurgents and confiscated three vehicles as well as several weapons. Another operation in an area south of the city resulted in the arrest of five suspects.
Posted by: Fred || 10/18/2006 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


MNF arrests director of Al-Sadr's office in Baghdad
(KUNA) -- The Multi-National Force on Tuesday arrested Director of Al-Sadr's Office Mazen Al-Saedi in Shulah area in western Baghdad, a spokesman for Al-Sadr's office said. The spokesman told Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) that an MNF force raided a Shiite mosque in western Baghdad earlier this morning and arrested Al-Shaedi along with six other people, noting that they were taken to an unknown destination.

The MNF did not confirm the incident and they did not issue any statement on any raid in western Baghdad. Leader of the Shiite Sadr Current, Muqtada Al-Sadr ordered his supporters to prevent displacement in Iraq. In a statement, Al-Sadr called for preventing the forced displacement of Shiite and Sunni people but with peaceful and political means in coordination with the political committee.

He called for exerting more efforts to bring back those displaced to their homes and coordinate with the concerned authorities. Al-Sadr said he will disown any of his loyalists who attack the Iraqi people and called on those who offended the Iraqi people to benefit from Ramadan as a chance for repentance. He was referring to circulating news that members of the Mehdi militia have been attacking Iraqi people.
Posted by: Fred || 10/18/2006 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  English grammar and composition grade: D-.

If somebody picked up one of Tater's Tots, he must've been behind the snatch?
Posted by: Bobby || 10/18/2006 6:36 Comments || Top||


MNF, Iraqi troops besiege suspected bomb-making lab
(KUNA) -- A joint Multi-National Force (MNF) and Iraqi army unit continued to besiege, Tuesday, a residential complex that houses a bomb-making factory that belongs to a suspected militant arrested Monday. An interior ministry source told KUNA, a special unit raided one of the apartments in the complex, yesterday, and arrested an unnamed Palestinian doctor suspected of making improvised explosive devices. Laboratory supplies were found in the doctor's eighth-floor apartment. The apartment was sealed off for investigations.

In other news, the Iraqi police's Al-Rafidain Brigades completed a raid operation in Al-Dora early this morning. Sixty one suspected militants were arrested and a bomb-making plant holding fifteen ready explosive devices was uncovered.
Posted by: Fred || 10/18/2006 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  subheading should have been

"MHF arrest Paleo bomb maker"
Posted by: mhw || 10/18/2006 10:37 Comments || Top||


Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Hamas: Mastermind of Shalit's abduction among 4 killed in Gaza
One of the masterminds behind the abduction of Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit was among four militants killed by IDF troops in the Gaza Strip on Wedmesday, Hamas sources told the Palestinian news agency Ramatan.

Palestinian witnesses said troops killed at least four militants in separate incidents in the Gaza Strip before dawn Wednesday. IDF sources confirmed the deaths of two militants in southern Gaza. The army pushed further into the southern Strip along the Philadelphi Route on Tuesday for the first time since since the disengagement over a year ago. IDF sources said Wednesday that the army has plans to expand the operation. An IDF spokesman confirmed that troops killed two men as they approached army positions in Rafah, on Gaza's border with Egypt, an IDF spokesman said.
Posted by: Fred || 10/18/2006 11:38 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  One can only hope that Shalit's family will take a measure of consolation in this. Good hunting, IDF!
Posted by: Zenster || 10/18/2006 11:57 Comments || Top||

#2  Read: We got one of yours, you got one of ours. We have to kill 3 more Israelis to make things even.

Does soldier Shalit have even the slimmest prayer of getting out alive now (if he ever did)?

May God keep you safe, Mr. Shalit.
Posted by: Jules || 10/18/2006 12:01 Comments || Top||

#3  Taking Israelis brings consequences.
Posted by: Iblis || 10/18/2006 14:24 Comments || Top||

#4  After the Lebanon fiasco, it appears that consequences are a mixed bag at best. But yes, kidnapping Shalit should have consequences and at least they got the scumbag.
Posted by: Jules || 10/18/2006 14:28 Comments || Top||

#5 
Redacted by moderator. Comments may be redacted for trolling, violation of standards of good manners, or plain stupidity. Please correct the condition that applies and try again. Contents may be viewed in the sinktrap. Further violations may result in banning.
Posted by: wxjames || 10/18/2006 14:51 Comments || Top||

#6  Sorry to yank ya there wxjames, but yuck! That was just a little too gross....
Posted by: Scooter McGruder || 10/18/2006 19:51 Comments || Top||

#7  And I just demonstrated to my own satisfaction that what Scooter McGruder sinktraps should remain unexamined by sensitive souls. Now I need a cup of chamomile tea to settle my innards.
Posted by: trailing wife || 10/18/2006 21:25 Comments || Top||

#8  Reason to press on. Squeeze the paleos until their blood and piss mix in their skulls.
Posted by: wxjames || 10/18/2006 14:51 Comments || Top||


Two Palestinians killed by Israeli army
Two Palestinians, including a militant from the radical Islamic Jihad group, have been killed by the Israeli army in the northern West Bank, security and medical officials said.

Mohammed Zakarneh, 18, was killed during an army operation in Qabatya village, west of the city of Jenin, and the house where he had taken refuge was partially destroyed by army bulldozers, they said. An army spokesman said Israeli troops fired on militants who were setting up explosive devices. "Forces identified two armed men and opened fire on them. One of them was hit," he said.

A few hours later, 24-year-old Hani Kmeil was also shot and killed by Israeli troops in Qabatya. Palestinian security sources said he was fatally wounded while throwing stones at soldiers. An army spokeswoman said a second Palestinian was killed after forces used rubber bullets to disperse "heavy riots" that later broke out in Qabatya. According to intelligence, the dead man had been "wanted" by the military. A third Palestinian, 16-year-old Ezzedine Smadi, initially taken for dead, was in fact "very seriously wounded," medical and security sources told AFP.
Posted by: Fred || 10/18/2006 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Don't take rocks to a gunfight. Bugwits.
Posted by: Deacon Blues || 10/18/2006 7:34 Comments || Top||


Four Palestinians killed in IDF ops
Four Palestinians were killed in ongoing IDF operations in the West Bank on Tuesday. In the afternoon, the IDF shot and killed an Al Aksa Martyrs' Brigades operative and his cousin, according to Palestinian doctors and security officials. Palestinian sources said that the soldiers involved in the shooting were part of an IDF undercover force. The army reported that a special unit had fired on two gunmen in a car after they refused to halt when ordered. One of the gunmen, Adel Abu Reish, was a high-ranking Fatah operative that had carried out shooting attacks and planted bombs in the area, the army said.

Earlier in the afternoon, IDF forces discovered a 12-meter-deep smuggling tunnel under the Philadelphi route between Egypt and the southern Gaza Strip. Two pits, most likely the initial stages of future tunnels, were also found during the operation. The IDF has found 15 smuggling tunnels since the end of June, when the army intensified activity in the Gaza Strip following the kidnapping of Cpl. Gilad Shalit. Tunnels of this nature have been used for smuggling weapons and terrorists, as well as illegal immigrants. Tunnels were also used to conduct underground bombings against IDF bases in Rafah and the Erez Crossing.

Earlier Tuesday afternoon, IDF soldiers fired at two Palestinians who were throwing stones at the troops, killing one and seriously wounding the other, Palestinian sources said. The dead was identified as Hani Khalil Kmeil, 20, who was shot in the chest, and the wounded as Mohammed Kmeil, 16, who was shot in the neck.

Earlier Tuesday, IDF troops were fired upon by two Palestinian operatives while conducting a routine patrol. The troops returned fire, killing one of the men, the IDF said. The man, a member of Islamic Jihad, was identified as Mohammed Zakarneh, 18. No IDF casualties were reported as a result of the incident.

Also on Tuesday morning, a terrorist who infiltrated the Mitzpe Yitzhar outpost and tried to set fire to one of the homes was caught by a local security patrol after a brief chase. The man was detained by security forces for interrogation. Yitzhar spokesman Yigal Amitai said that the infiltration had occurred due to the olive harvest. "It's no wonder that with the large numbers of soldiers and police working to 'protect the poor Palestinians,' a terrorist [managed] to infiltrate Mitzpe Yitzhar and try to hurt people and cause damage." Amitai called the infiltration a "warning," and said that the IDF must "come to its senses" before it was too late.

The infiltration came on the heels of a number of violent incidents between Palestinians and the IDF. Palestinians hurled rocks at Israeli citizens in two seperate incidents over the course of the day, lightly wounding three people in Bethlehem and Jenin.
Posted by: Fred || 10/18/2006 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Terror Networks
How Qaeda Warned Its Operatives on Using Cell Phones
When an aspiring Al Qaeda terrorist is buying a cell phone, it's best that he purchase the chip inside the device under a phony name or from a black market vendor that does not sell the accompanying documentation. If he has any reason to believe his phone has been tapped, he should sell it immediately to a stranger.

This is the kind of advice contained in "Myth of Delusion," a 151-page manuscript making the rounds on password-protected jihadi Web sites. The book recently caught the attention of American intelligence analysts, who estimate that it was released sometime this summer.

An English translation obtained by The New York Sun and whose authenticity was confirmed by a senior intelligence official gives an insight into what America's Islamist enemies believe they know about the CIA and the National Security Agency. It also underscores the paranoid mind at the heart of the international jihad movement, devoting paragraphs to how South Korean intelligence influences America's national security through a newspaper controlled by the Unification Church, the Washington Times.

The author of the book is a little-known terrorist named Mohammed al-Hakaymah, a member of a violent group that recently splintered off from an Egyptian Islamist organization, Gama'a al-Islamiyya, when it signed a cease-fire agreement with Cairo. Mr. Hakaymah gained some notoriety on August 5, when Osama bin Laden's Egyptian-born deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, mentioned his name in an announcement that Al Qaeda was merging with the splinter group.

An independent analyst affiliated with the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation, Chris Zambelis, said yesterday that the book is similar to a military manual published by a Syrian named Abu Musab al-Suri, which was based largely on open sources and information released by the Pentagon.

"You see this kind of thing a lot. On the radical Islamic forums, you have people put up U.S.military manuals advising followers about American military tactics. In terms of an actual manual for intelligence, though, this is the most extensive and comprehensive I have seen," Mr. Zambelis said.

Intelligence community analysts are aware of the book, but it is seen as more of a strategic document and contains no tactical threat information, a senior intelligence analyst who spoke to the Sun on condition of anonymity said.

In the scope of its sources and its attempt to write a history of the CIA and other intelligence agencies, Mr. Hakaymah's book is different from other jihadist tracts on American intelligence. While he makes no mention of the December 2005 New YorkTimes article that first disclosed that the National Security Agency was tapping phone numbers found in cell phones captured from suspected Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan, he does devote a chapter to electronic surveillance.

In it, Mr. Hakaymah writes that any electronic communication between operatives can be monitored using key words such as "Mullah Omar," the name of the Taliban leader, or even voice printing.

Two pages are devoted to the Echelon surveillance system, which Britain and America developed in the 1990s. Mr. Hakaymah warns future terrorists not to repeat the mistake of the Kurdish terrorist leader Abdullah Öcalan, who was captured in Nairobi, Kenya, after making a cell phone call to northern Iraq.

"The surveillance may be for a certain number or for detecting a certain voice fingerprint for a wanted person," Mr. Hakaymah writes. "When a person's number is detected, the recorded calls can be retrieved whether it was incoming or outgoing on that number."

The book also gives a detailed description of how the CIA recruits spies, based on information widely available in fiction and nonfiction books about espionage. But in this section, the author conflates the training of spies and officers, writing that recruited spies are trained in the West Virginia CIA facility known as the Farm, when in fact only officers receive training there. Yesterday, the senior intelligence official summed up the book as "an assessment of American intelligence, a mixture of a couple of things. There is some element of training from things they gather from open sources. ... But this is also clearly propaganda."

The propaganda element appears to be aimed at certain Islamists who have rejected Al Qaeda's view that America, or what the group's leaders call "the far enemy," is too powerful and too efficient to challenge.

One of the purposes of the book is to show that America's intelligence agencies "make mistakes and are not infallible," a professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University, Mary Habeck, said. The author is saying, "We don't have to fear them like we always fear them. That is why it is called the ‘Myth of Delusion.' One of bin Laden's purposes, he says, in authorizing 9/11 was to break the media blockade, to show the invincibility of the United States as a media myth," Ms. Habeck added.

In his preface, Mr. Hakaymah writes that the book will "use the published reports, news, and research, which expose the extent of the failure of the American intelligence services inside and outside the United States."

To that end, he speculates that a high-level spy may have tipped off Al Qaeda's September 11 hijackers or that elements of the American intelligence apparatus had prior knowledge of the plot. He writes that the November 2001 killing of a CIA officer, Michael Spann, in Afghanistan represented an enormous victory for Al Qaeda because the agency had to admit his death publicly.

But the book also shows a paranoid and conspiratorial worldview that mimics many of the more radical critiques of American intelligence. The RAND Corporation, the Hoover Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies were founded, Mr. Hakaymah writes, by a cabal of "financial and industrial groups of Texas, including the giant weapons manufacturers together with the intelligence community headed by the CIA."

Mr. Hakaymah also devotes several pages to the pending case against a former Pentagon analyst, Lawrence Franklin, who pleaded guilty last fall to mishandling classified documents but was initially reported in the press to be a spy for Israel.
Posted by: .com || 10/18/2006 10:43 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Hello - can you hear me now?
Posted by: Raj || 10/18/2006 10:59 Comments || Top||

#2  Lol, Raj. :->
Posted by: .com || 10/18/2006 11:04 Comments || Top||

#3  It's another example of blairs law.

i.e. Koran motivated terrorists sounding like truthiness spouting leftoid moonbats.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles in Blairistan || 10/18/2006 11:27 Comments || Top||

#4  Don't they know the CIA has already figured out all their possible dodges? The only really safe way is to not use them at all.

Fiber optic can't be monitored. Yet. I'm pretty sure.
Posted by: Bobby || 10/18/2006 11:30 Comments || Top||

#5  Now we know why these Muzzie f**kups were buying large numbers of cellphones and taking the chips out. Recall the incidents throughout upper midwest. Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio. They had just read this piece of crap and were accumulating chips to be sold overseas. And we heard the sob stories that the poor fellows were just trying to make a buck. I imagine these SOB's have been completely freed?
Posted by: SpecOp35 || 10/18/2006 12:02 Comments || Top||

#6  Now we know why these Muzzie f**kups were buying large numbers of cellphones and taking the chips out.

That was pretty obvious back when the arrests were being made. The spinelessness of our justice system in how unwilling they are to begin designating these sort of activities as covert espionage is undermining our ability to combat terrorism. You can take solace in the likelihood that those cell phone purchasers are probably being tracked by the NSA even now.

It also underscores the paranoid mind at the heart of the international jihad movement, devoting paragraphs to how South Korean intelligence influences America's national security through a newspaper controlled by the Unification Church, the Washington Times.

Remember, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. The Bush administration funnels hundreds of thousands (if not MILLIONS) of taxpayer dollars into some of convicted tax-dodging felon Sun Myung Moon's quasi-religious/political fronts.
Moon's largesse is additionally suspect because Moon has never publicly accounted for his mysterious source of wealth. Much of the money apparently comes from shadowy Asian industrialists, some with links to organized crime and fascist political circles. But Moon has refused to open his books, even in the late 1970s when a congressional investigation identified his church as a front for the South Korean CIA, which was then engaged in a secret political influence-buying scheme known as "Korea-gate."

Better than Jesus?

[Jerry] Falwell also might have been shy about disclosing his alliance with Moon because the Korean's theology upsets many Christians. Moon asserts that Satan corrupted mankind by sexually seducing Eve in the Garden of Eden and that only through sexual purification can mankind be saved. In line with that doctrine, Moon says Jesus failed in his mission to save mankind because he did not procreate.

Moon sees himself as a second messiah who will not make the same mistake. He has engaged in sex with a variety of women over the decades. The total number of his offspring is a point of debate inside the Unification Church.

Moon's rhetoric has turned stridently anti-American, another problem for the Religious Right and its strongly patriotic positions. On May 1, 1997, Moon told a group of followers that "the country that represents Satan's harvest is America." [ Unification News, June 1997] In other sermons, he has vowed that his victorious movement will "digest" any American who tries to maintain his or her individuality. He especially has criticized American women who must "negate yourself 100 percent" to be a receptacle for the male seed. [For details of Moon's speeches, see The Consortium, July 28, 1997]

Still, despite his controversial remarks, Moon continues to buy friends on the American right -- as well as among African-American religious figures -- by spreading around vast sums of money. The totals are estimated in the billions of dollars, with much of it targeted on political infrastructure: direct-mail operations, video services for campaign ads, professional operatives and right-wing media outlets.

Through The Washington Times and its affiliated publications -- Insight magazine and The World & I -- Moon has not only showcased conservative opinions, but he has created seemingly legitimate conduits to funnel money to individuals and companies he seeks to influence.

Just in case you do not think this self-proclaimed "Messiah" is not a genuine threat to Christianity, try this on for size:
That same year [2003] some Christian ministers began joining Rev. Moon's 'take down the cross' campaign theme which was started in the belief that the cross was a symbol of religious intolerance to many non-Christians, especially Jews and Muslims.

Consider that former Moon political operative David Caprara has played a key role in distributing some $61,000,000 from Bush's White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

For example, front groups for controversial South Korean evangelist Sun Myung Moon have benefited. Moon founded the Unification Church and preaches that he is the messiah sent to complete the failed mission of Jesus. He has a slew of organizations, publishes the right-wing Washington Times and has maintained cordial relations with both Bush presidencies.

In 2005, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services via its Com­munity-Based Abstinence Educa­tion Pro­­gram awarded a three-year im­plementation grant of $800,000 to a Moon front group called Free Teens USA. Free Teens is an org­anization that promotes abstinence until marriage, and its Web site includes lurid statements of teen­agers and adults on the terrible consequences of engaging in sex.

The organization is headed by Rich­ard Panzer, an alumnus of Moon’s Unifi­cation Theological Seminary and head of the American Constitution Com­mittee, a political organization affiliated with Moon.

It is the second time Free Teens has won a grant from the Health & Human Services Department. Writing for Salon.com, John Gorenfeld noted that Free Teens won a $475,280 allocation in 2003.

The San Francisco Chronicle has noted that David Caprara, a longtime political operative in Moon front groups, was the director of the faith-based office for the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS). The CNCS operates AmeriCorps, which as the Chronicle reported, doled out $61 million to faith-based groups in 2003.

Late last year, the CNCS awarded an $80,000 grant to another group with Moon connections called Service for Peace. The group’s public records reveal that Michael Balcomb, a long-time Moon operative, is its executive director. The records also show that Service for Peace is affiliated with the Collegiate Associ­ation for the Research of Principles, a Moon group for college students.

The faith-based grants to Moon fronts are not the only ones that suggest the administration agenda is deeply mired in politics. And the politics surrounding the faith-based initiative is apparently part of the reason Bush has been unable to prod Congress into action. As it stands now, a future president, with the stroke of the pen, can reverse the faith-based initiative.

In late March, The Washington Post reported, “Under the auspices of its religion-based initiatives and other federal programs, the administration has funneled at least $157 million in grants to organizations run by political and ideological allies….”


Posted by: Zenster || 10/18/2006 13:19 Comments || Top||

#7  American judges need to be giving copies of "THE WALSH REPORT" that was declassified in the main a few years ago in its homeland of OZ.

google "Walsh Report".

OZ cellphones are GSM based. In the report you hear about drug dealers and pimps with pockets full of GSM idenity chips. They only make one call on each chip. This sort of tech applies to Cingular and other GSM type services in the US.
GSM is designed by an EU Std. bodie so blame them. In the US and Japan and Korea CDMA is the prime cellular system. CDMA does not permit this id-personality shit so if you want to tap/watch a phone you can.
Posted by: 3dc || 10/18/2006 14:10 Comments || Top||

#8  Moon's largesse is additionally suspect because Moon has never publicly accounted for his mysterious source of wealth. Much of the money apparently comes from shadowy Asian industrialists, some with links to organized crime and fascist political circles. But Moon has refused to open his books, even in the late 1970s when a congressional investigation identified his church as a front for the South Korean CIA, which was then engaged in a secret political influence-buying scheme known as "Korea-gate."

Wow!!! Lots of information on the Rev. Moon that really causes me to wonder why he purchased a submarine. I ran across that bit of info researching something else and thought it an odd purchase for a church. I assumed their source of funds was drug running, but a CIA front for doing so? Conspiracy theorists will be up in arms, the vast right-wing pitted against the vast left-wing!
Posted by: Danielle || 10/18/2006 14:43 Comments || Top||

#9  Wow!!! Lots of information on the Rev. Moon that really causes me to wonder why he purchased a submarine.

Sounds like someone's trying to immanentize the eschaton. Fnord!
Posted by: xbalanke || 10/18/2006 15:05 Comments || Top||

#10  Lots of information on the Rev. Moon that really causes me to wonder why he purchased a submarine. I ran across that bit of info researching something else and thought it an odd purchase for a church. I assumed their source of funds was drug running, but a CIA front for doing so?

A submarine? Well, I'll be jiggered:

Moon himself has announced an ambitious plan for a worldwide transportation and propaganda system. To his followers, he has boasted about plans for building a network of small airstrips throughout South America and other parts of the world, supposedly for tourism. In one speech on Jan. 2, 1996, he even announced a scheme for deploying submarines to evade coastal patrols.

"There are so many restrictions due to national boundaries worldwide," Moon lamented during the speech, which the Unification Church posted on its Internet site. "If you have a submarine, you don't have to be bound in that way."

(As bizarre as Moon's submarine project might sound, a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Japan, dated Feb. 18, 1994, cited press reports that a Moon-connected Japanese company, Toen Shoji, had bought 40 Russian submarines. The subs were supposedly bound for North Korea where they were to be dismantled and melted down as scrap.)

I have grave doubts America's CIA is involved but that leaves plenty of room for South Korea's CIA (as the article mentions). I'm also confident that Moon also has plenty of North Korean contacts left over from his early days.
The Rev. Sun Myung Moon's business empire, which includes the conservative Washington Times, paid millions of dollars to North Korea's communist leaders in the early 1990s when the hard-line government needed foreign currency to finance its weapons programs, according to U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency documents.

The payments included a $3 million “birthday present” to current communist leader Kim Jong Il and offshore payments amounting to “several tens of million dollars” to the previous communist dictator, Kim Il Sung, the partially declassified documents said.
Posted by: Zenster || 10/18/2006 15:49 Comments || Top||

#11  3DC there's a NAM code on the phone as well.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles in Blairistan || 10/18/2006 17:18 Comments || Top||

#12  Fiber optic can't be monitored. Yet. I'm pretty sure.

Are you REALLY sure?
Posted by: CIA Fiber Optic Monitoring Div. || 10/18/2006 17:56 Comments || Top||

#13  The Moonie Sub is used to monitor fibre optik cable. First test was in the Isle of Langerxxxxxxxx

fnord/deuce
Posted by: Shipman || 10/18/2006 18:15 Comments || Top||

#14  Fiber optic can't be monitored. Yet. I'm pretty sure.

So long as the cladding's intact, I'll buy that. The moment the cladding's gone, though, it leaks a little. Bend it into a curve and it leaks even more.
Posted by: Rob Crawford || 10/18/2006 19:02 Comments || Top||

#15  Fiber optic can't be monitored. Yet. I'm pretty sure.

All you do is splice into it and install a detector. Viola! You now have F/O monitoring. Only a line that is continuously in one or both of send/receive modes will detect an intrusion. As RC inferred, splicing in a detector compromises the cladding. Obviously, secure F/O lines are continuously monitored for any interruption of signal. Current technology probably does not exist to intercept optical signals directly through the cladding. New generations of subquantum devices may change that.
Posted by: Zenster || 10/18/2006 20:02 Comments || Top||

#16  And when they do, you can bet the USS James E. Carter will be steaming right out to put the snooper box on ever F/O line underwater.
Posted by: Nimble Spemble || 10/18/2006 20:17 Comments || Top||

#17  How old is Moon, anyway?
Posted by: Korora || 10/18/2006 20:36 Comments || Top||

#18  Zen - Does splicing still require a microscope?

And another splice would cause line losses and you WOULDN'T hear a pin drop.
Posted by: Bobby || 10/18/2006 21:40 Comments || Top||

#19  You can detect a splice, provided the line doesn't have very many in the first place, with reflections. It's much easier in copper, but it can be done in fiber.
Posted by: Jackal || 10/18/2006 21:44 Comments || Top||

#20  Moon is 86.
Posted by: Darrell || 10/18/2006 21:49 Comments || Top||


Good morning.
Posted by: Fred || 10/18/2006 00:00 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  fluffy kitten.
Posted by: RD || 10/18/2006 0:54 Comments || Top||

#2  Mom? 8-}
Posted by: .com || 10/18/2006 0:55 Comments || Top||

#3  I hope you were breast-fed.
Posted by: Howard UK || 10/18/2006 3:27 Comments || Top||

#4  Maybe those anti fur people have a good idea after all.
Posted by: AlanC || 10/18/2006 8:22 Comments || Top||

#5  somehow, the dames back then just seemed to exude class. God Bless America.
Posted by: Broadhead6 || 10/18/2006 12:01 Comments || Top||

#6  Tomorrow's babe won't exude class, I promise.
Posted by: Fred || 10/18/2006 23:53 Comments || Top||

#7  Well, then she can't be my Mom. Bring 'er on! :-)
Posted by: .com || 10/18/2006 23:58 Comments || Top||

#8  Miss Malone sure looks close, lol. Really close...
Posted by: .com || 10/18/2006 23:59 Comments || Top||



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Wed 2006-10-18
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Tue 2006-10-17
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Mon 2006-10-16
  Truck bomb kills 100+ in Sri Lanka
Sun 2006-10-15
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Sat 2006-10-14
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Fri 2006-10-13
  Suspect pleads guilty to terrorist plot in US, Britain
Thu 2006-10-12
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Wed 2006-10-11
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Tue 2006-10-10
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Mon 2006-10-09
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Sun 2006-10-08
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Sat 2006-10-07
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Fri 2006-10-06
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Thu 2006-10-05
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Wed 2006-10-04
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