Sunday - June 19, 2005
If Gitmo Is A Gulag, What Is This?
Just a reminder .... here is how prisoners (captured enemy combatants) are treated at Gitmo ....
.... the food served to the terrorist detainees and terrorist suspects held at GITMO is better in many cases than the food being served to our troops in the Armed Services. Congressional decree prevents the military from serving MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat – vacuum packed sealed food bags served to U.S. troops) to detainees because it would be considered “abuse.”
Instead, in the past week the anti-American terrorists and terrorist suspects held at GITMO have been served:
*Orange Glazed Chicken
*Rice Pilaf
*Steamed Peas & Mushrooms
*Fruit RoupeeIn addition, on Ramadan the terrorists held at GITMO are served lamb, dates and honey as part of their religious observance.
GITMO detainees also are provided prayer mats and prayer oils and are allowed to pray five times per day – something that even U.S. schoolchildren are forbidden from doing.
Now, let’s take a look at what our troops are finding in Iraq, according to the New York Times ....
KARABILA, Iraq, Sunday, June 19 - Marines on an operation to eliminate insurgents that began Friday broke through the outside wall of a building in this small rural village to find a torture center equipped with electric wires, a noose, handcuffs, a 574-page jihad manual - and four beaten and shackled Iraqis.
The American military has found torture houses after invading towns heavily populated by insurgents - like Falluja, where the anti-insurgent assault last fall uncovered almost 20 such sites. But rarely have they come across victims who have lived to tell the tale.
The men said they told the marines, from Company K, Third Marines, Second Division, that they had been tortured with shocks and flogged with a strip of rubber for more than two weeks, unseen behind the windows of black glass. One of them, Ahmed Isa Fathil, 19, a former member of the new Iraqi Army, said he had been held and tortured there for 22 days. All the while, he said, his face was almost entirely taped over and his hands were cuffed.
In an interview with an embedded reporter just hours after he was freed, he said he had never seen the faces of his captors, who occasionally whispered at him, “We will kill you.” He said they did not question him, and he did not know what they wanted. Nor did he ever expect to be released.
“They kill somebody every day,” said Mr. Fathil, whose hands were so swollen he could not open a can of Coke offered to him by a marine. “They’ve killed a lot of people.”
From the house on Saturday, there could be heard sounds of fighting from the large-scale offensive to eliminate strongholds of insurgents, many of whom stream across Iraq’s porous border with Syria. [Page 10.]
As the marines walked through the house - a squat one-story building of sand-colored brick - the broken black window glass crunched under their boots. Light poured in, revealing walls and ceiling shredded by shrapnel from the blast they had set off to break in through a wall. Latex gloves were strewn on the floor. A kerosene lantern lay on its side, shattered.
The manual recovered - a fat, well-thumbed Arabic paperback - listed itself as the 2005 First Edition of “The Principles of Jihadist Philosophy,” by Abdel Rahman al-Ali. Its chapters included “How to Select the Best Hostage,” and “The Legitimacy of Cutting the Infidels’ Heads.”
Also recovered were several fake passports, a black hood, the painkiller Percoset, handcuffs and an explosives how-to-guide. Three cars loaded with explosives were parked in a garage outside the house. The marines blew them up.
This is Mr. Fathil’s account of his ordeal.
He was having a lunch of lettuce and cucumbers in the kitchen of his home in the small desert village of Rabot with his mother and brother. An Opel sedan pulled up. Two men in masks carrying machine guns got out, seized him, and, leaving his mother sobbing, put him in the trunk of their car.
The drove to the house here. They taped his face, put cotton in his ears, and began to beat him.
The only possible explanation for the seizure he could think of was his time in the new Iraqi Army. Unemployed and illiterate, Mr. Fathil signed up after the American occupation began.
But nine months ago, when continuing working meant risking the wrath of the Jihadists, he quit. In all, 10 friends from his unit have been killed, he said. So have his uncle and his uncle’s son, though neither ever worked as soldiers.
The men tended to talk in whispers, he said, telling him five times a day, in low voices in his ear, to pray, and offering him sand, instead of water, to wash himself. Just once, he asked if he could see his mother, and one of them said to him, “You won’t leave until you are dead.”
Mr. Fathil did not know there were other hostages. He found out only after the captors left and he was able to remove the tape from his eyes.
The routine in the house was regular. Because of the windows, it was always dark inside. Mr. Fathil said he was fed once a day, and allowed to use a bathroom as necessary in the back of the house.
When marines burst in, one of the captives was lying under a stairwell, badly beaten. At first, they thought he was dead.
The others were emaciated and battered. Mr. Fathil had fared the best. The other three were taken by medical helicopter to Balad, a base near Baghdad with a hospital.
But he still had been hurt badly. Marks from beatings criss-crossed his back, and deep pocks, apparently from electric shock burns, were gouged in his skin.
The shocks, he said, felt “like my soul is being ripped out of my body.” But when he would start to scream, and his body would pull up from the shock, they would begin to beat him, he said.
Mr. Fathil has been at the Marine base south of Qaim since his release, on Saturday around noon. His mother still does not know he is alive.
When she was mentioned, he bowed and lowered his head, and began to cry softly, wiping his face with the jumpsuit given him by the marines.
He asked a reporter for help to move to another town, because it was too dangerous for his family to remain in their house. He begged not to have a photograph taken, even of the scars on his back. The captors took pictures of that, he said.
His town has always been a good place, he said, but the militants have made it hell.
“These few are destroying it,” he said, his face streaked with tears. “Everybody they take, they kill. It’s on a daily basis pretty much.”
Posted by The Skipper
on 06/19/2005 at 10:13 AM
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Permalink • Uncle Bin Laden Wants YOU!
It seems the US Army is not the only outfit in Iraq that can’t meet its recruiting targets ....
Insurgents trawl Europe for recruits
Islamic militant networks are on a recruiting drive across Europe for potential suicide bombers in Iraq, according to US and European police and security sources.
The claim comes amid evidence that the high number of recent attacks is forcing terrorist leaders into a drive for new volunteers.
Analysis of recent patterns of activity, based on tracing the identities of suicide bombers killed in Iraq, indicates that Europe is experiencing the sharpest growth in the recruitment of suicide bombers in comparison with North Africa, the Middle East and Asia, although those areas still supply the largest numbers of jihadis.
Evidence of the rise in recruitment in Europe has emerged as concern grows that sympathy for the conflict is spreading to mainstream Islamic communities that have thus far rejected violence. There are fears of an ‘Afghanistan effect’ in a new generation of young men, inspiring them to fight the Americans in Iraq in the same way that a previous generation flocked to fight the Russians.
In the past six months, old and dormant networks - including some that had been concerned with violence in north Africa, others with the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and others in criminality - have been reactivated across Europe.
Some intelligence sources believe that there are now up to 21 networks active in Europe, some of them linked to more than 60 groups in the Mahgreb area of north Africa, involved in training and recruitment of volunteers, many for suicide bombing missions in Iraq.
Posted by The Skipper
on 06/19/2005 at 09:46 AM
Filed Under: • Terrorists •
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Permalink • Today Is ….
Tab (Thomas Boldt), The Calgary Sun, Alberta, Canada
Posted by The Skipper
on 06/19/2005 at 06:46 AM
Filed Under: • Humor •
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Permalink • TURKEY AND DRESSING, JUNE 19-20, 1944
May Day 1944. The complexion of the Pacific War had done a complete about-face since May Day 1942, when the US Navy had only a thin line of ships to stand between the Imperial Navy of Japan and the American homeland, and news from the Western Pacific was increasingly dark. Bataan had fallen, and Corregidor was about to go. Worse yet, those in the know were aware that the Japanese had designs on deeper thrusts into the South and Central Pacific. And there was precious damned little to use against them.
Yet stopped they were. The ball had changed hands at Coral Sea and Midway, and after the frightful attrition of the seven-month Guadalcanal campaign (in which each side lost 24 major warships), there was little likelihood that the ball would change hands again.
1942 had seen both sides whittled down to a pair of fleet carriers. 1943, therefore, saw none of the epic carrier duels, such as Coral Sea and Midway, that characterized the first year of the war. Neither side would hazard their slender carrier strength in such a manner. Both sides were striving to make good their losses in carriers and pilots, and in this, the US Navy had the distinct advantage foreseen by such Imperial Navy leaders as Admiral Yamamoto from the outset.
After Midway, the Japanese had cut back on battleship construction in order to build more carriers, but they were up against not only the vast American lead in production capacity. They were up against an American building campaign that had started two years before. No fewer than 33 fast carriers of two classes (Essex-class fleet carriers and
Independence-class light carriers) were on their way. These carriers would begin to join the Pacific Fleet in 1943. The Japanese were hopelessly outclassed. In fact, only one of their
new generation of fleet carriers (HJMS Taiho) would be ready for action by the summer of 1944.
They were just as badly behind in the training of new pilots. The carrier duels of 1942 had decimated Japan’s original stockpile of carrier airmen. A second crop of carrier airmen went the way of their forerunners in the attrition of the Rabaul campaign. Replacements, slow in coming at best, were hardly up to the standard of their predecessors, due to the inadequacy of Japan’s training programs. This was a problem compounded by chronic shortages of fuel and aircraft, and a problem never solved throughout the war. And these replacements had to fly aircraft now largely inferior to their American counterparts, such as the Grumman F6F Hellcat fighter, in distinct reversal of the situation prevailing at war’s outset.
While Japan strove to rebuild her forces, she also strove to conserve her forces, still in quest of the “One Big Battle” that had dominated Imperial Navy strategic thought before the war, and thereafter (resulting in, among other things, Midway). But the Imperial Navy now had to function without Yamamoto’s guidance; in April 1943, while flying on an inspection tour, his plane was bushwhacked over Bougainville in the Solomon Islands, and he plunged to his death in the Bougainville jungle.
And the Allies were coming. Throughout 1943 and 1944, they were pushing their way up the island chains of the South Pacific; securing New Guinea and removing the threat of attack on Australia; and eventually isolating and bypassing the crucial forward Japanese base of Rabaul, on their way to the Philippines. And in the Central Pacific, the US Navy’s new fast carriers were tuning up their battle skills and doctrines in one operation after another. Tarawa and the Gilberts fell in late 1943, followed by Kwajalein, Eniwetok and other Marshall Islands. The famed (and largely illusory) “Gibraltar of the Pacific,” Truk, was plastered in February 1944, and would eventually be bypassed and left to wither on the vine, like Rabaul. The Imperial Navy, meanwhile, retreated to East Indies bases such as Tawitawi, near its major source of oil.
While Japanese soldiers fought and died fanatically on islands of the Empire’s outer defense perimeter, the Imperial Navy braced itself for the time when the inner perimeter of islands would come under attack, notably the Marianas, the last major obstacle facing the Americans in the Central Pacific. Possession of these islands (including Saipan, Guam and Tinian) would not only give the Americans the key to the front door of the Empire. It would also give them bases from which their new B-29 bombers could carry the war to the Japanese homeland. The Japanese were well aware of this; to them, the Marianas were practically part of the homeland; it would hit them like the loss of Hawaii would have hit the United States in 1942. The Yankees had to be stopped in the Marianas. No ifs, ands or buts about it.
And by May Day, 1944, the Japanese knew the Americans were coming to the Marianas, in the shape of the Fifth Fleet, under the command of Admiral Spruance, the canny and prudent victor of Midway. The US Navy called this “Operation Forager.”
It is ironic that pre-war Japanese doctrine envisioned a “One Big Battle” in the vicinity of the Marianas, where an all-powerful Imperial Navy would crush an enemy whittled down by a war of attrition. The attrition, after all, had gone the other way, and the Imperial Navy was distinctly the weaker force at the time it had to face its “One Big Battle” near the Marianas.
Admiral Spruance’s Fifth Fleet had Vice-Admiral Mitscher at the head of a carrier task force including 15 fast carriers, some 900 aircraft, seven fast battleships, 21 cruisers, and 67 destroyers (the Fifth Fleet’s invasion forces not included). To face this armada, the calm and capable Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa (who had replaced Nagumo as commander of the Imperial Navy Carrier Strike Force in late 1943), had only nine fast carriers with some 450 planes, five battleships, 12 cruisers, and 27 destroyers. Moreover, Ozawa’s pilots were largely green and untested, and he would have to rely as much as possible on land-based air from neighboring islands.
Whatever misgivings he might have had, however, Ozawa did not flinch. Upon word that the US Navy was on its way, Ozawa committed his forces to battle under a plan known as “Operation A-Go.”
On June 6, 1944 (D-Day in Normandy), the US Navy fast carriers had sortied from recently-captured Majuro atoll in the Marshalls, in advance of the landing forces that were to hit Saipan on June 15. Lurking American submarines were tracking Imperial Navy movements (and USS Harder, among others, was taking potshots as chance offered; Harder single-handedly sank several Japanese destroyers off Tawitawi). The submarine reports led Spruance to calculate that the fleets would confront each other on June 18 or 19.
If Mitscher had his way, the fast carrier task force would have plunged westward to meet Ozawa head-on after the invasion forces went in. The wily Spruance, however, would have none of it. Always conscious of his assignment to protect the invasion forces, always wary of an end run if he went too far out on a limb, he held the fast carriers on leash in the Philippine Sea, less than two hundred miles southwest of Saipan. On the morning of June 19, Mitscher, champing at the bit, was given the assignment of plastering Guam and neutralizing the land-based air there, but an hour and a half later (1030 hours local time), radar nailed the first wave of Ozawa’s attacking carrier planes 150 miles out and closing.
A swarm of Hellcat fighters met these intruders, stacked up in two waves; of a first wave of some 69 planes, only 24 survived. None of these planes reached Mitscher’s carriers, although one did plant a bomb on fast battleship USS South Dakota, killing 27 and wounding 23 of her crewmen. Ozawa’s second wave fared even worse than the first, losing nearly 100 of 128 planes.
Ozawa launched two more strikes, which went the way of the first two. No American carrier was touched; in all, the Japanese lost nearly 350 aircraft, and the Americans, only 30.
“Hell!” growled an American pilot over his radio. “This is like an old-time turkey shoot!” His comment was made immortal in the name given this airborne brawl above the Philippine Sea, the “Marianas Turkey Shoot.”
Nor were aircraft Ozawa’s only losses; the Yankee submarines that had been plaguing him since Tawitawi now cost him HJMS Taiho, newest and largest of his carriers, and HJMS Shokaku, veteran of the Pearl Harbor and Coral Sea campaigns, among others. On the evening of June 19, he withdrew to refuel, and on the next day, he began his retreat.
Judging the invasion forces to be safe now from interdiction by Ozawa’s forces, Spruance gave Mitscher leave to pursue, and at sunset on June 20, he launched a massive strike from extreme range (300 miles), realizing that many planes would have to nurse themselves home on near-empty fuel tanks, and that many pilots would be attempting their first night carrier landings. But the pilots carried out their mission briskly; Hellcats downed over 60 of Ozawa’s remaining Zero fighters, while Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo planes sank carrier HJMS Hiyo and badly damaged three other carriers. As the American planes trickled back to their carriers, Mitscher made history by illuminating his entire task force, defying the risk of enemy submarines. Flight decks were brightly lit, cruisers fired starshell, and the ubiquitous “tin cans” scuttled around, fishing out 52 pilots of 101 who had to ditch at sea, out of fuel.
The Battle of the Philippine Sea, the “Marianas Turkey Shoot,” was over. The backbone of Japanese naval aviation was broken. Never again would the Imperial Navy’s carriers pose a significant threat to Allied operations in the Pacific. In Tokyo, the notorious Tojo cabinet fell. The Marianas were mostly secured by August, and soon thereafter, work began on converting them into massive aerodromes for a swarm of B-29 bombers that would take the war to Japan itself, beginning in autumn.
Posted by Tannenberg
on 06/19/2005 at 06:33 AM
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Permalink • Saturday - June 18, 2005
Photo Du Jour
“F/A-22 Raptor Over Fort Monroe”
U.S. Air Force photo
-by-
Tech. Sgt. Ben Bloker
Posted by The Skipper
on 06/18/2005 at 02:12 PM
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Permalink • Illegal Aliens And Health Insurance
Here are some hard numbers for your mental digestion ....
19 Million: the estimated number of uninsured people in America
11 Million: the estimated number of illegal aliens
California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois: states with the highest number of illegal aliens
California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois: states with the highest concentration of uninsured
$340 Million: amount Los Angeles County spent last year to treat the uninsured
$850 Million: amount Texas spent last year to treat the uninsured
$400 Million: amount Arizona spent last year to treat the uninsured
11.2%: increase in health care premiums in 2004
$922: amount an average family of four had to pay in premium increases in 2004
Sources:
National Coalition On Health Care
US Census Bureau Survey Of Income And Participation
WebMD Health Care Costs.
Posted by The Skipper
on 06/18/2005 at 11:06 AM
Filed Under: • Health-Medicine • Illegal-Aliens and Immigration •
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Permalink • Bambo: First Blood
The deer in Southern Illinois are mad as hell and they’re not going to take it any more ....
Seven people have been threatened or attacked by deer on Southern Illinois University’s main campus over the past two weeks, prompting the school to post warnings about the animal aggressiveness they blame on fawning season and construction.
“This is something that is uncommon for us to deal with,” Todd Sigler, the university’s public safety chief, told reporters Wednesday, a day after one person was threatened and two others were sent to a hospital after a doe charged them.
A deer also attacked a person Monday, and two of three people injured by a doe June 7 required hospital care, Sigler said.
All the encounters, which happened near Thompson Woods, could be tied to a female deer’s natural protectiveness during fawning season, which typically peaks in June. Clayton Nielsen, a scientist with the campus’ Cooperative Wildlife Research Laboratory, said the area deer population likely is rising and that construction and development perhaps have pushed the animals into campus.
Posted by The Skipper
on 06/18/2005 at 09:38 AM
Filed Under: • Animals •
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Permalink • Extreme Makeover
Don’ mess wid da girls down at da Blalock Beauty College, sucka ....
SHREVEPORT - It was a beauty school knock-out.
An armed robber brandishing a revolver and some tough talk entered Blalock’s Beauty College demanding money Tuesday afternoon.
He left crying, bleeding and under arrest, after Dianne Mitchell (pictured at left), her students and employees attacked the suspect, beating him into submission.
Mitchell tripped the robber as he tried to leave and cried aloud “get that sucker” as the group of about 20, nearly all women, some wielding curling irons, bludgeoned him until police arrived.
“You can tell the world don’t mess with the women here,” said the 53-year-old who manages the Shreveport beauty school in the 5400 block of Mansfield Road.
Jared Gipson, 24, of Shreveport was charged with armed robbery, Shreveport police said. He will be booked into the City Jail once he is released from the hospital.
“He received several lacerations to the head and was taken to LSU Hospital in Shreveport,” spokeswoman Kacee Hargrave said. “Nobody else was seriously injured besides the suspect.”
After collecting any money the people had on them, the robber pushed one of the employees, Abram Bishop, into the back of the room.
“I thought ‘Oh my God, he’s going to shoot him,’” Mitchell said.
But instead the robber ran toward the front door to escape.
That’s when Mitchell raised her leg.
It was enough to trip the robber, who dropped the gun and tumbled into a wall.
Bishop jumped on the man’s back, driving him into the ground. Seizing the opportunity, Mitchell rallied her students.
“We moved some furniture after that,” she yelped with joy as she retold the tale.
Arming themselves with curling irons, chairs, a wooden table leg and clenched fists, the women attacked.
Blood and urine splattered from the victim; stains adorned the white paints worn by many of the beauty school students.
Crying in pain, the robber tried to crawl away from the students, Mitchell said.
“I grabbed his legs and wouldn’t let him go. I pulled him back. He wasn’t going to get up out of here and tell everyone he robbed us. When he came in here, he knocked down a beehive and sent the bees flying all over.”
Sharon Blalock, owner of the school, said she couldn’t be prouder of her students and employees. “They just whooped the hell out of him.”
Posted by Drew458
on 06/18/2005 at 08:04 AM
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Permalink • On This Day In History
1812 - US War With Britain Begins
The day after the Senate followed the House of Representatives in voting to declare war against Great Britain, President James Madison signs the declaration into law--and the War of 1812 begins. The American war declaration, opposed by a sizable minority in Congress, had been called in response to the British economic blockade of France, the induction of American seaman into the British Royal Navy against their will, and the British support of hostile Indian tribes along the Great Lakes frontier. A faction of Congress known as the “War Hawks” had been advocating war with Britain for several years and had not hidden their hopes that a U.S. invasion of Canada might result in significant territorial land gains for the United States.
In the months after President Madison proclaimed the state of war to be in effect, American forces launched a three-point invasion of Canada, all of which were decisively unsuccessful. In 1814, with Napoleon Bonaparte’s French Empire collapsing, the British were able to allocate more military resources to the American war, and Washington, D.C., fell to the British in August. In Washington, British troops burned the White House, the Capitol, and other buildings in retaliation for the earlier burning of government buildings in Canada by U.S. soldiers.
In September, the tide of the war turned when Thomas Macdonough’s American naval force won a decisive victory at the Battle of Plattsburg Bay on Lake Champlain. The invading British army was forced to retreat back into Canada. The American victory on Lake Champlain led to the conclusion of U.S.-British peace negotiations in Belgium, and on December 24, 1814, the Treaty of Ghent was signed, formally ending the War of 1812. By the terms of the agreement, all conquered territory was to be returned, and a commission would be established to settle the boundary of the United States and Canada.
British forces assailing the Gulf Coast were not informed of the treaty in time, and on January 8, 1815, the U.S. forces under Andrew Jackson achieved the greatest American victory of the war at the Battle of New Orleans. The American public heard of Jackson’s victory and the Treaty of Ghent at approximately the same time, fostering a greater sentiment of self-confidence and shared identity throughout the young republic.
1815 - Napolean Defeated At Waterloo
At Waterloo in Belgium, Napoleon Bonaparte suffers defeat at the hands of the Duke of Wellington, bringing an end to the Napoleonic era of European history.
Exiled to the island of Elba in the Mediterranean, he escaped to France in early 1815 and set up a new regime. As allied troops mustered on the French frontiers, he raised a new Grand Army and marched into Belgium. He intended to defeat the allied armies one by one before they could launch a united attack.
On June 16, 1815, he defeated the Prussians under Gebhard Leberecht von Blýcher at Ligny, and sent 33,000 men, or about one-third of his total force, in pursuit of the retreating Prussians. On June 18, Napoleon led his remaining 72,000 troops against the Duke of Wellington’s 68,000-man allied army, which had taken up a strong position 12 miles south of Brussels near the village of Waterloo. In a fatal blunder, Napoleon waited until mid-day to give the command to attack in order to let the ground dry. The delay in fighting gave Blýcher’s troops, who had eluded their pursuers, time to march to Waterloo and join the battle by the late afternoon.
In repeated attacks, Napoleon failed to break the center of the allied center. Meanwhile, the Prussians gradually arrived and put pressure on Napoleon’s eastern flank. At 6 p.m., the French under Marshal Michel Ney managed to capture a farmhouse in the allied center and began decimating Wellington’s troops with artillery. Napoleon, however, was preoccupied with the 30,000 Prussians attacking his flank and did not release troops to aid Ney’s attack until after 7 p.m. By that time, Wellington had reorganized his defenses, and the French attack was repulsed. Fifteen minutes later, the allied army launched a general advance, and the Prussians attacked in the east, throwing the French troops into panic and then a disorganized retreat. The Prussians pursued the remnants of the French army, and Napoleon left the field. French casualties in the Battle of Waterloo were 25,000 men killed and wounded and 9,000 captured, while the allies lost about 23,000.
Napoleon returned to Paris and on June 22 abdicated in favor of his son. He decided to leave France before counterrevolutionary forces could rally against him, and on July 15 he surrendered to British protection at the port of Rochefort. He hoped to travel to the United States, but the British instead sent him to Saint Helena, a remote island in the Atlantic off the coast of Africa. Napoleon protested but had no choice but to accept the exile. With a group of followers, he lived quietly on St. Helena for six years. In May 1821, he died, mostly likely of stomach cancer. He was only 51 years old. In 1840, his body was returned to Paris, and a magnificent funeral was held. Napoleon’s body was conveyed through the Arc de Triomphe and entombed under the dome of the Invalides.
Posted by The Skipper
on 06/18/2005 at 07:50 AM
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Permalink • Approval Ratings Rise
Gary Varvel, Indiana—The Indianapolis Star-News
Posted by The Skipper
on 06/18/2005 at 07:34 AM
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Permalink • Friday - June 17, 2005
Democrats Have Gone Totally Barking Moonbat Insane
Don’t believe it? Go read this little tidbit that James Taranto at WSJ’s OpinionJournal dug up ....
WASHINGTON - Friday, June 17, 2005 - In the Capitol basement yesterday, long-suffering House Democrats took a trip to the land of make-believe.
They pretended a small conference room was the Judiciary Committee hearing room, draping white linens over folding tables to make them look like witness tables and bringing in cardboard name tags and extra flags to make the whole thing look official.
Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) banged a large wooden gavel and got the other lawmakers to call him “Mr. Chairman.” He liked that so much that he started calling himself “the chairman” and spouted other chairmanly phrases, such as “unanimous consent” and “without objection so ordered.” The dress-up game looked realistic enough on C-SPAN, so two dozen more Democrats came downstairs to play along.
The session was a mock impeachment inquiry over the Iraq war. As luck would have it, all four of the witnesses agreed that President Bush lied to the nation and was guilty of high crimes—and that a British memo on “fixed” intelligence that surfaced last month was the smoking gun equivalent to the Watergate tapes. Conyers was having so much fun that he ignored aides’ entreaties to end the session.
“At the next hearing,” he told his colleagues, “we could use a little subpoena power.” That brought the house down.
Taranto Notes: There’s been a spate of stories lately about President Bush’s poor poll numbers--the importance of which is a mystery to us, given that the next presidential election is almost 3 1/2 years away, and Bush won’t be a candidate in any case. At the same time, the Angry Left seems to be getting less inhibited: witness Howard Dean’s various bouts of logorrhea, Charlie Rangel’s and Dick Durbin’s outrageous Americans-are-Nazis claims, and now this.
We suspect there’s a connection here: The liberal media are persuading liberal pols that President Bush is in trouble with the public. The pols therefore conclude that the public is on their side, and this emboldens them to . . . well, in our opinion, to behave like total jackasses. Although we find this all somewhat vexing, we’re guessing that in the end it will not pay off politically for the Dems.
Posted by The Skipper
on 06/17/2005 at 04:27 PM
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Insanity •
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Permalink • I Love Gitmo
(SACRAMENTO) – The non-profit group that supports our troops and the war against terrorism, Move America Forward (website: http://www.MoveAmericaForward.org), has launched a campaign to rally public support for the Detention Center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The “I LOVE GITMO” campaign will take to the airwaves in the form of paid commercials urging Americans to support the men and women operating the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.
The commercials will target those individuals who have put forth false charges about the operations at the facility so that their constituents can know about their “Blame America First” antics. One example is Illinois Senator, Dick Durbin who said GITMO and those running it had created an environment akin to the “Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime—Pol Pot or others.”
“GITMO is a key arsenal in the fight against terrorism, and Americans must stand behind the heroic men and women of the Armed Forces who serve proudly there,” said Howard Kaloogian, Co-Chair of Move America Forward.
The campaign to support GITMO was launched on Thursday with the release of the “I LOVE GITMO” bumper sticker. Thousands of these bumper stickers have been sold in the first 24 hours they were available online at http://www.MoveAmericaForward.org.
“These terrorists detained are not common criminals; they are enemy combatants in our war against terrorism. They are not entitled to all of the rights that someone arrested in this country gets. Just like we held German and Japanese prisoners of war during World War II, we have to confine enemy combatants so they stop killing Americans serving their country in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Kaloogian added.
On the website Move America Forward notes that the food served to the terrorist detainees and terrorist suspects held at GITMO is better in many cases than the food being served to our troops in the Armed Services. Congressional decree prevents the military from serving MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat – vacuum packed sealed food bags served to U.S. troops) to detainees because it would be considered “abuse.”
Instead, in the past week the anti-American terrorists and terrorist suspects held at GITMO have been served:
*Orange Glazed Chicken
*Rice Pilaf
*Steamed Peas & Mushrooms
*Fruit RoupeeIn addition, on Ramadan the terrorists held at GITMO are served lamb, dates and honey as part of their religious observance.
GITMO detainees also are provided prayer mats and prayer oils and are allowed to pray five times per day – something that even U.S. schoolchildren are forbidden from doing.
Read the rest at MoveAmericaForward’s formal internet announcement at:
http://www.moveamericaforward.com/index.php/MAF/MAFNews
(and order your bumper sticker today!)
Posted by The Skipper
on 06/17/2005 at 04:05 PM
Filed Under: • Terrorists •
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Permalink • Spank The Monkeys
The bill introduced by Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL), HR 2745, left committee yesterday evening and will go before the full House today for a vote. The bill would withhold half of the US’s dues to the Koffing Anus Krooks Klub and demand reforms before funding is resumed. In lieu of just shutting the damned place down and kicking the bastards out, this sounds like a good plan to me ....
The legislation under debate and facing a vote Friday would withhold half of U.S. dues to the U.N.’s general budget if the organization doesn’t meet a list of demands for change. Failure to comply would also result in U.S. refusal to support expanded and new peacekeeping missions.
Before the final vote, legislators discussed the seating of such human rights abusers as Cuba and Sudan on the U.N. Commission on Human Rights and the oil-for-food program that became a source of up to $10 billion in illicit revenue for former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., proposed an amendment under which the United States would use its influence to ensure that any member engaged in acts of genocide or crimes against humanity would lose its U.N. membersship and face arms and trade embargoes.
“Over the years, as we listened to the counsels for patience, the U.N.’s failings have grown,” said House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, R-Ill., sponsor of the measure. “The time has finally come where we must in good conscience say ‘enough.’”
Hyde was joined by lawmakers with a litany of complaints against what they said was the U.N.’s lavish spending, its coddling of rogue regimes, its anti-America, anti-Israel bias and recent scandals such as the mismanagement of the oil-for-food program in Iraq and the sexual misconduct of peacekeepers.
The bill lists 39 reforms sought. They include cutting the public information budget by 20 percent, establishing an independent oversight board and an ethics office, and denying countries that violate human rights from serving on human rights commissions.
The secretary of state would have to certify that 32 of the 39 reforms have been met by September 2007, and all 39 by the next year, to avoid a withdrawal of 50 percent of assessed dues.
U.S.-assessed dues account for about 22 percent of the U.N.’s $2 billion annual general budget.
The financial penalties would not apply to the U.N.’s voluntarily funded programs, which include UNICEF and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
Posted by The Skipper
on 06/17/2005 at 09:57 AM
Filed Under: • United-Nations •
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Permalink • Nazi?
Dear Senator Durbin, is this the kind of person below that you would compare to Nazis or Stalinists? I’m sure you think there was a very good reason why this child’s parents or relatives tied him to a cinder-block and abandoned him to the desert heat .... and I’m sure you can see the evil intent in the US Soldier’s eyes. I’m sure you can see all this and more inside your warped, twisted anti-American mind, can’t you? It’s funny, though. All I see is an American citizen serving his country in the finest tradition .... bringing freedom and hope to someone else in need.
E-Mail Dick-less here:
Or give him a call at: (202) 224-2152 or (312) 353-4952
A U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman treats one of two Iraqi children brought into the Regimental Combat Team 2 Aide Station at Camp Ripper, Al Asad, Iraq, on June 8, 2005. The children were found tied to a cinder block during a house raid in Dhulab, Iraq, by Marines attached to 2nd Marine Division as they conducted counter-insurgency operations with Iraqi Security Forces. DoD photo by Lance Cpl. Shane S. Keller, U.S. Marine Corps.
Every day, children like this are abandoned after their families are murdered by Iraqi insurgents and Taliban terrorists returning to Afghanistan. We capture the people performing these atrocities and send them to a prison camp where they are pampered and live in better conditions than they ever lived in their entire lives. The murderers, that is. Yet certain Democrat Congressmen believe these vicious killers deserve better treatment and should be pampered further or released to return to their countries to continue the murders and outrage against their own people and .... against children like this.
Shame on the Congressmen who would free the murderers to return to kill this child like they killed his parents. Shame on all of them! They bring dishonor upon all of us.
Note From Skipper: Every time I look at this picture I want to cry. This soldier is not holding an Iraqi or a Sunni, Shiite or Kurd. This soldier is trying to give hope to a tiny human being who doesn’t understand what is happening and who deserves a better world than he stands to inherit. If our politicians would only take a real close look at this child and stop their endless haggling and squabbling and put 100% of their efforts into helping our troops and the Iraqi people, this child might just grow up in a peaceful democratic country and live a long, peaceful life. Now, what’s wrong with that idea? I beg our Congress to answer me that.
Posted by The Skipper
on 06/17/2005 at 09:25 AM
Filed Under: • Military •
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:
It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.
- Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
- Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
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- Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere
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Oh, and here's some kind of visitor flag counter thingy. Hey, all the cool blogs have one, so I should too. The Visitors Online thingy up at the top doesn't count anything, but it looks neat. It had better, since I paid actual money for it.
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