#1
PIEGEL ONLINE: The three Germans killed weren't even combat troops, they were army employees in charge of purchasing refrigerators for the troops' kitchen.
Haqqani: It is not important what kind of soldiers they were. What's important is to kill and hammer out the Germans in Kunduz.
You just don't understand: There is no need for special orders anymore. The mujahedeen are just doing what they are responsible for doing. To kill and attack Germans is the goal and that is clear to everyone. The entire chain and network is responsible.
Hey ya big stupid Krauts, get a CLUE yet why you should be killing these guys instead of letting them get away?
Getting soldiers killed for no reason at all. F**king useless people in Germany.
#4
Pregame and halftime. Deranged Keith somehow doesn't show up during that so as not to offend America's cold blooded killers since, unlike his show, people actually watch Sunday Hight Football.
#5
Keith Olbermann said something deranged today. In other surprising developments, the Earth's rotation caused the sun to appear to rise in the eastern sky this morning . . . a new scientific study reports water is wet . . . bears were observed defecating in the woods . . . babies were born . . . dogs barked . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
05/21/2008 15:40 Comments ||
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#6
Someone needs to put this f8ckwit on the right drugs to rescue him from the violent schizophrenic insanity that has him firmly in its grip.
#8
As in checked for which type of brain tumor Halliburton should infect him with...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/21/2008 18:05 Comments ||
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#9
I figured it was, thanks for the confirmation. I got about half way through the vid and then had to shut it down. I could feel his spittle coming through my monitor..
Posted by: Snash Oppressor of the Mohammatans aka Broadhead6 ||
05/21/2008 20:51 Comments ||
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#10
Sunday Night - "Football Night in America" on NBC - might wanna remind your affiliate, GE (parent corp.), and their advertisers that you turn the sound down while this dickhead blathers. He's a true b-list POS, who's picking fights in hope of making a-list
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/21/2008 20:58 Comments ||
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#11
Even I could a cold-blooded killer if it became necessary, I imagine. It's about doing what it takes to win the fight, not playing the game... without malice or anger ending the problem caused by those who choose to be our enemies. We Americans are a practical people; would it be better were we passionate killers like the jihadis, who kill the innocent with even more glee than they kill those they claim to be aimed at?
#12
2:24 was all I could take. I'd like to see him call Eric Kurilla or Bob Prosser a cold-blooded murderer to his face. He might get the response he so badly deserves.
By Ed Koch We are now getting down to the homestretch as we wrap up the Democratic primary and begin the race to the November general election. We will be electing the next president of the United States, and almost everyone expressing an opinion, informed or uninformed, believes the Democratic candidate will be Barack Obama.
I am a supporter of Hillary Clinton, but I too believe the odds of her defeating Barack Obama are overwhelmingly against her. It looks as if Senator Obama will prevail in the Democratic primary before or at the Democratic convention.
His rise has been phenomenal and swift. I believe a major attraction for Democratic voters is his optimistic personality, a strong desire for change and racial reconciliation. I believe the U.S. has indeed entered its Golden Age in which discriminatory views are rapidly breaking down. The result is that there is virtually no bar to the election nationally and locally of minority candidates, whether they be black, Hispanic or Jewish, and that gender bias in the selection of candidates, whether or not Hillary prevails, has been thoroughly defeated for elections to come. So our efforts now should be devoted to nominating and electing the best candidates available, particularly for president of the United States.
Anyone who knows me is aware that I am a proud American and a proud Jew who, while not religiously observant, fiercely loves and defends his faith. It has become fashionable for Americans in general, Jew and gentile, to hold President George W. Bush up to derision. As I believe many readers and listeners of my commentaries know, I crossed party lines in 2004 to support the President's reelection, saying at the time that I did not agree with him on a single domestic issue, but I did believe he was the only one running who appreciated the threat of Islamic terrorism to American values and Western civilization and was prepared to wage a war to defend those values.
I have no regrets for having made that decision and helping the President to win a second term. Today, according to the most recent CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey, "71 percent of the American public disapprove of how Bush is handling his job as President, an all-time high in polling." His position can be compared with that of Harry Truman who left Washington unpopular and alone in 1953. Today, with the passage of time, most historians and certainly the American people, see Truman in a different light, primarily for his willingness to stand firm against Soviet aggression, whether against Greece or South Korea, and proclaim the Truman Doctrine, effectively defending the free world from Soviet efforts to expand their hegemony. Like Truman, George W. Bush, in my view, will be seen as one of the few world leaders who recognized the danger of Islamic terrorism and was willing with Tony Blair to stand up to it and not capitulate.
In the days of Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and an organizer and supporter of terror, Western European countries led by France, Germany and Italy, had understandings with Islamic terrorists that if the terror was confined to acts against Israel, the European countries would allow the terrorists to function without challenge. What those European countries came to understand was that they could not buy peace by offering up Israel as a sacrificial lamb, because the ultimate goal of the supporters of Osama bin Laden, and other jihadists throughout the Islamic world, was and remains the reestablishment of the caliphate (or Islamic religious rule) in all Muslim lands, including in any nation that was once under Muslim rule, e.g., Spain. If successful, this would place one billion, 400 million Muslims under one theocracy.
As part of their master plan, the jihadists intend to bring the West to its knees, and to replace moderate Arab regimes, e.g., Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and Turkey, with Islamic republics, ultimately to become part of the reborn caliphate.
For most of Osama bin Laden's career, the destruction of Israel was not a priority. However, this has now changed as the jihadists believe that Western countries have grown weary of unending war and may be convinced to offer Israel up as a sacrificial lamb.
Recently, President Bush went to Israel to celebrate its 60th birthday as a nation and addressed its parliament, the Knesset. He said, "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have an obligation to call this what it is: the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
Bush's remarks were heavily criticized by leading Democrats, particularly Barack Obama, who said, "Now that's exactly the kind of appalling attack that's divided our country and that alienates us from the world."
Really? Is it wrong to call the philosophy supporting negotiating at the highest levels - President to President without pre-conditions -- with the terrorists and radicals by its rightful name - appeasement?
The President was accurate in my opinion in recalling the specter of Neville Chamberlain's pre-World War II efforts to satisfy Adolf Hitler. Those efforts responded to Hitler's siren call that all he wanted was the Sudetenland, with Chamberlain responding, "yes," and returning to Britain waving a paper and announcing, "peace in our time." Must we really learn the terrible lesson of Munich all over again seventy years later?
Israel and the Western world are in great danger from a declared enemy that knows no limits when it comes to achieving its goal of destroying Western civilization and spreading militant Islam through threats and terrorism throughout the world.
The danger to Israel comes not from any unwillingness of its citizens to fight. They are willing to fight the enemy, and Israel is willing to suffer the deaths of its young men and women in battle to preserve its values and its very existence. The Western world appears in many parts of Europe in particular to have lost its self confidence and willingness to stand and fight an enemy willing to continue the war until victory is achieved and their goals met. When one side loses its resolve to fight and win and the other retains its resolve, that side which has lost its courage will look for ways to appease and entice the enemy to bring the war to a conclusion. If the enemy says, understanding the weakness, "give us the Sudetenland," and later says "give us all of Czechoslovakia," as we know from history, such demands will be met. Bin Laden, recognizing the willingness of some in the Western world to give up today's Czechoslovakia - Israel - in two messages within the past few days, has emphasized his demand that Israel be delivered to the jihadists, saying, "To Western nations...this speech is to understand the core reason of the war between our civilization and your civilizations. I mean the Palestinian cause. The Palestinian cause is the major issue for my (Islamic) nation. It was an important element in fueling me from the beginning and the 19 others with a great motive to fight for those subjected to injustice and the oppressed."
In fact, in most prior bin Laden threats, Palestine and Israel were rarely mentioned. Shrewdly, bin Laden, believing that with the war-weariness rising in the U.S. and Europe, and anti-Semitism escalating in Europe, there are fertile grounds to make Israel the new Czechoslovakia.
The reason I believe history will redeem President George W. Bush is that he is one of the few leaders on the planet today who understands the larger picture. He has not lost his courage and vision of the future. He knows what calamities await the world if it engages in appeasement and deserts an ally in order to buy an illusory peace. We will recognize his worth long after he is gone.
#3
He'll share company with Truman and Polk as the currently dumb things he has done pale in importance and the implications of the correct calls he made become apparent.
#1
"Hamas" Obama may get a short term break if during his first year or so he begins direct talks with Islamic Jihad. He will do that, then it will be all down hill from there.
WASHINGTON -- When he was told that some in the Army were dismissive of press reports on the mistreatment of patients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, according to one witness, grew "very, very quiet." Within two weeks, the Walter Reed commander was out of a job.
This kind of decisive silence has been employed by Gates to good effect in scandals ranging from misdirected nuclear parts to the cremation of both fallen American soldiers and pets at the same facility.
To those who know this Eagle Scout with 28 years of experience in government, Gates' subdued efficiency is not surprising. To those of us who haven't had the pleasure, his transformational ambitions and strategic boldness are surprising indeed.
When Gates was nominated in late 2006, conservative suspicions and liberal hopes coincided. Gates, then a member of the Iraq Study Group, was expected to ease the American retreat from Iraq and begin the American engagement with Iran. Foreign-policy realism was back. When asked at his confirmation hearing if America was winning in Iraq, Gates replied, "No, sir" -- a candor that foretold change. But since Gates was the opposite of an ideologue, it was difficult to predict what form that change might take.
In the 17 months of his tenure, some of this transition has been stylistic. One Pentagon source (who didn't want to be identified for fear of sounding like a suck-up) calls Gates "extraordinarily quick and extraordinarily even" and praises his "sense of humor and candor behind closed doors."
But the most important shift has been substantive. Donald Rumsfeld -- along with the early President Bush -- set out an ambitious vision of military transformation. The Pentagon would use a period of relative international calm to make bold leaps in military capabilities so America would be unmatched in future wars. That calm ended on 9/11, but the Afghanistan and Iraq wars were still generally seen as temporary distractions from this great transformational purpose.
Far from treating Iraq as a distraction, Gates has posed the question: Why not concentrate on winning the wars our soldiers are currently fighting? In a series of groundbreaking speeches, Gates has argued that asymmetrical conflicts in the "long war" against "violent jihadist networks" will remain the likely face of battle for decades to come, that "procurement and training have to focus on that reality," and that shaping civilian attitudes in these conflicts will be just as important as winning battles.
There have been at least three practical outcomes of the nicely rhymed Gates Doctrine -- "the war we are in ... is the war we must win" -- in Iraq and beyond.
First, Gates has pushed to deploy technologies immediately useful in low intensity conflict, particularly unmanned aerial vehicles. "Three armed Predators over Sadr City," says my military contact, "have hammered anyone challenging our forces. They help account for the eagerness for a cease-fire."
Second, Gates is institutionalizing the teaching of counterinsurgency strategy. The old theory, says my contact, went: "If we could do the big stuff -- major combat operations -- we could take care of the little stuff, the asymmetrical stuff. But the little stuff turned out to be more prolonged and difficult." So the Army's new manual on "Full Spectrum Operations" trains new officers to conduct simultaneous offensive, defensive and "stability operations" -- things like political reconciliation, providing basic services, promoting local government. "The human terrain," says my source, "is the decisive terrain, and Gates gets it."
Third, Gates argues that while American military power can be a prerequisite for stability, winning asymmetrical wars requires other elements of American power. So he calls for "a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security -- diplomacy, strategic communications, foreign assistance, civic action, and economic reconstruction and development."
The Gates Doctrine has helped right a listing Iraq War -- and has met opposition. Getting the Air Force to deploy unmanned vehicles instead of concentrating on expensive, manned aircraft has been, Gates says, like "pulling teeth." Elements of the defense establishment, he charges, have been "preoccupied with future capabilities and procurement programs, wedded to lumbering peacetime process and procedures, stuck in bureaucratic low-gear." Recently -- seven years after 9/11, five years after the Iraq War began -- Gates noted that portions of the military are still not on a "war footing."
With Americans engaged in a war, this scandal dwarfs any Gates has faced. In confronting it, the "realist" has become genuinely transformational.
#1
In fairness, he certainly didn't have much of an act to follow. Not to labor it, but there is a bit more to the story about the relief of the WRH commander.
While the media offers mostly images of violence, and many Americans have grown weary of the war in Iraq, I bring hopeful news to Washington this week as I meet with the administration and members of Congress.
Since 2003, we have built the Kurdistan Region as a model for democracy and a gateway for development for all of Iraq. We are willing partners in this transition toward an Iraqi government that is representative of all its people. Through our peshmerga forces, we provide some of the most effective units against al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. We Kurds are committed to a federal, democratic Iraq at peace within its borders and with its neighbours.
We are working with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the Iraqi leadership in Baghdad on the difficult issues facing our country. Our relationship with Iraq's federal government has never been better. And progress is being made on an oil law, the status of disputed territories, the proper role for Iraq's neighbours to play, and on relations between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Turkey.
First, the oil law. We will now start negotiations using a draft drawn up in February of 2007. We'll also establish a process to send the national oil law, the revenue sharing law, and the laws concerning the Iraqi National Oil Company and the Oil Ministry in Baghdad to parliament as one package to be voted up or down.
New oil contracts will be approved based on agreed-upon guidelines. The oil exploration contracts the KRG has already signed won't present a problem, because they were negotiated based on the highest standards of transparency.
There is also progress in settling the status of Kirkuk and other disputed territories. Previous Iraqi regimes expelled Kurds, Turkmen and Christians from Kirkuk, and gerrymandered provincial borders to change its demography. Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution establishes a legal process to remedy this injustice. We are encouraged that the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary General is helping to develop a proposal regarding the implementation of Article 140.
As we resolve internal issues, we also understand the importance of a peaceful relationship with all our neighbours, based on mutual respect and noninterference in internal affairs.
To that end, we will continue reassuring our neighbours that a federal Iraq is not a threat. But we will also continue to encourage our neighbours to do what they can to stop terrorists from infiltrating Iraq.
We think it is imperative that Middle Eastern states send their diplomatic representatives to Iraq, and for these states to proactively prevent terrorists from slipping across their borders. Unprovoked and recurring bombardment of the Kurdistan Region by Turkey and Iran must stop.
There has also been a historic step forward in KRG-Turkish relations. On May 1, I represented my government in the first high-level, official bilateral meeting with Turkey. Held in Baghdad, the meeting was conducted in a cordial atmosphere, and both sides stressed similar views on a wide range of issues. We reiterated to our Turkish colleagues our commitment to good neighbourly relations, which is underscored by the growing Turkish investment in the Kurdistan Region. Our talks also focused on the need for practical steps and continued dialogue on all outstanding issues, including the problem of the PKK.
We Kurds understand and share America's frustration with the pace of political progress in Iraq. We are doing all we can to create security, stability and prosperity. While progress has not come fast enough, Iraq remains a worthy cause.
As Americans debate the future of the US role in Iraq, allow me to say that America's mission remains vital to the stability and security of our region. A precipitous withdrawal of US forces could be calamitous. We welcome a US presence in the Kurdistan Region as part of any redeployment of forces.
The Kurdish people of Iraq suffered under Saddam Hussein. And we fought and died alongside Americans to liberate our country. There is no ambiguity about the depth of gratitude that Kurds feel for America's sacrifices in Iraq. Americans who have been killed or wounded in Iraq are heroes to me and to all of Iraq's Kurds. We will never forget what you have done for us.
Mr Barzani is prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq.
A detailed map released by a French Web site citing Lebanese sources shows the main network of communications established by Hezbollah throughout Lebanon. It details the organization's closed circuit telephone system, a network independent from the one operated by the government.
This parallel network was at the heart of the recent flare-up between Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's cabinet and Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.
The latter accused the government of attempting to seize the network while the Lebanese government stating that no communication network could operate outside the law. Hezbollah's response was that its status as a "resistance" organization justified it running its own "closed communications system." In other words, to behave as a state within the state.
Under the country's constitution the Lebanese government had the right to demand that Hezbollah shuts down its illegal operation. But no sooner was the ministerial decision made public that Hezbollah launched a blitz campaign on the Lebanese government.
Even though the government was not in a position to dismantle Hezbollah's network or prepared for a militarily confrontation, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah held a press conference, declared war against the government and gave a signal to the coup.
Why would Hezbollah wage such a risky war for a telecommunication system? Is it because of the income generated by the network to sell international phone calls? Less likely. The Iranian foreign aid to the group was upgraded from $300 million to a little less than $1billion a few months ago.
Obviously more revenue is always welcomed by the leaders of the so-called "resistance," but more important is the big picture revealed by the Hezbollah phone map.
Close analysis of the map tells us the following:
The "Red Lines" stretch from southern Beirut along the coast to the Hezbollah exclusive zones in the south. It covers a complex network of bases in the area, cuts through the Jezzine district and connects with the Bekaa Valley all the way up to northern Lebanon. The most important features and dimensions of the Hizbo-net are the following:
1. The net covers large parts of Greater Beirut: This can provide Hezbollah with the ability to organize its forces in Dahiye (southern suburb of Beirut) for assaults against West Beirut, East Beirut and the Druze Mountain in Aley and the Chouf. The closed circuit can mobilize thousands of fighters without interception from Lebanese or international monitoring. It explains how Hezbollah launched its blitzkrieg offensive on Sunni Beirut, the Druze Mountain and was testing Christian Beirut, without real warning to the areas under attack.
2. The coastal cable-line links the Dahiye to the inner land of the Hezb. It serves to move troops and material from the south to the north without major detection. It explains how thousands of Hezbollah forces were moved from as far as Nabatieh and Tyre to Beirut. But it also tells about the capacity of Hezbollah to use it against UNIFIL forces in the future, if needed.
3. The network between the south and the Bekaa indicates a Hezbollah strategy to close the gap to the east. As I have indicated in many articles and interviews previously, the Lebanese-Syrian borders are all that count to Hezbollah's terror network. As long as these frontiers are open for Iran to supply weapons and logistics via Syria, the state within the state can thrive and grow.
The Lebanese government and the U.N., with European and U.S. backing, should have closed that gap three years ago, but they didn't. Let's leave the blame game to another discussion. Hezbollah was faster than anyone else.
According to this map the Iranian backed militia built an impressive network throughout east Lebanon from the southern fortresses to the closest position to the northern borders with Syria. This means that Hezbollah by now, has covered the entire Bekaa Valley, and thus has beaten the international community to the borders with Syria.
Military and intelligence analysts can understand this development very clearly. Strategically, Hezbollah is in control of these areas as shown by a map B, which I established two years ago.
4. In the mid-Bekaa, the cable route connects the center of the valley to one of the highest peaks in Mount Lebanon and thrusts into the mostly Christian districts of Byblos and Kesrouan. This shows that Hezbollah has already established an axis of penetration inside the Mount Lebanon area, at few kilometers only from the seashore.
5. Map A also shows that Hezbollah positions are connected to the Anti-Lebanon Range and thus to the Syrian hinterland. Militarily there are no Lebanese-Syrian borders to stop the flow of weapons and forces coming from Iran through Syria into Lebanon.
6. The northern tips of the Hezbollah "cable road" show clearly that its forces are deployed as far north as the eastern slopes of the Cedars Mounts. From these positions, the Iranian-backed forces can seize the highest peak south of Turkey, leap to the Akkar district and reach the northern borders with Syria.
7. More importantly, and because of the strategic bridge between Hezbollah and Iran, this communications network is a battlefield system which can be used by the Iranian Pasdaran and eventually by Syrian Special Forces in a potential mass return to Lebanon.
In summer 2007 I presented a projection-map in a briefing to the Caucus on Counter Terrorism at the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as to a number of high ranking U.S. military personnel. It showed the potential paths of a Hezbollah offensive in Lebanon.
Indeed, strategic projections show that Hezbollah can move its forces from the south toward Beirut (which was executed in May). But it also shows that combined forces of Hezbollah and Pasdaran can move on the Damascus road to Beirut and Mount Lebanon and the center of mountain as well.
Hezbollah-Pasdaran forces would move in the north on an East-West axis and jihadist elements and pro-Syrian forces can move from the borders to Tripoli.
The Hezbollah communication systems shows that when the time will come, massive reinforcements from Syria and Iran can move swiftly along axis already secured by Hezbollah across Lebanon. The invasion of West Beirut and the attacks against the Chouf and Aley districts are only the early signs of what is to come.
8. Last but not least, the Hezbollah communications network can also allow an activation of their massive rocket and missile system across Lebanon without significant interference from Western assets.
The aim of this powerful missile force seems to be against a potential "international" force tasked with the mission of bringing peace to the country. Here again Hezbollah and Iran have already beaten the West in the race toward dominating the Eastern Mediterranean.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/21/2008 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Hezbollah
#1
If the Lebanese were going to cut the Iranian/Syrian tentacles encircling their country, they would have needed to do it after the outrage generated by the Hariri assassination.
Now Lebanon can be assured of one thing - it will be the battleground for another round of Israel vs. Hezbollah, with similar destruction of infrastructure and danger to its civilians as the most recent flare-up.
#2
Actually, the next time around I doubt the danger to Lebanon's citizens and damage to its infrastructure will look anything like the damage incurred by Round 1.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
We are now getting down to the homestretch as we wrap up the Democratic primary and begin the race to the November general election. We will be electing the next president of the United States, and almost everyone expressing an opinion, informed or uninformed, believes the Democratic candidate will be Barack Obama.
The President was accurate in my opinion in recalling the specter of Neville Chamberlain's pre-World War II efforts to satisfy Adolf Hitler. Those efforts responded to Hitler's siren call that all he wanted was the Sudetenland, with Chamberlain responding, "yes," and returning to Britain waving a paper and announcing, "peace in our time." Must we really learn the terrible lesson of Munich all over again seventy years later? 
WASHINGTON -- When he was told that some in the Army were dismissive of press reports on the mistreatment of patients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, according to one witness, grew "very, very quiet." Within two weeks, the Walter Reed commander was out of a job.
While the media offers mostly images of violence, and many Americans have grown weary of the war in Iraq, I bring hopeful news to Washington this week as I meet with the administration and members of Congress.
