Mood:  happy

More news about the ass-whupping Iran is talking itself into:

The Sunday Times  January 07, 2007

Revealed: Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran
Uzi Mahnaimi, New York and Sarah Baxter, Washington
ISRAEL has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons.

Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian
facility using low-yield nuclear "bunker-busters", according to
several Israeli military sources.

The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Israeli weapons would each have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb.

Under the plans, conventional laser-guided bombs would open
"tunnels" into the targets. "Mini-nukes" would then immediately
be fired into a plant at Natanz, exploding deep underground to reduce the risk of radioactive fallout.

"As soon as the green light is given, it will be one mission, one
strike and the Iranian nuclear project will be demolished," said one
of the sources.

The plans, disclosed to The Sunday Times last week, have been prompted in part by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad's assessment that Iran is on the verge of producing enough enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons within two years.

Israeli military commanders believe conventional strikes may no longer be enough to annihilate increasingly well-defended enrichment
facilities. Several have been built beneath at least 70 ft. of concrete
and rock. However, the nuclear-tipped bunker-busters would be used only if a conventional attack was ruled out and if the United States
declined to intervene, senior sources said.

Israeli and American officials have met several times to consider
military action. Military analysts said the disclosure of the plans
could be intended to put pressure on Tehran to halt enrichment, cajole America into action or soften up world opinion in advance of an Israeli attack.

Some analysts warned that Iranian retaliation for such a strike could
range from disruption of oil supplies to the West to terrorist attacks
against Jewish targets around the world.

Israel has identified three prime targets south of Tehran which are
believed to be involved in Iran's nuclear programme:

* Natanz, where thousands of centrifuges are being installed for
uranium enrichment

* A uranium conversion facility near Isfahan where, according to a
statement by an Iranian vice-president last week, 250 tons of gas for
the enrichment process have been stored in tunnels

* A heavy water reactor at Arak, which may in future produce enough
plutonium for a bomb

Israeli officials believe that destroying all three sites would delay
Iran's nuclear programme indefinitely and prevent them from having to live in fear of a "second Holocaust".

The Israeli government has warned repeatedly that it will never allow
nuclear weapons to be made in Iran, whose president, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, has declared that "Israel must be wiped off the map".

Robert Gates, the new US defence secretary, has described military
action against Iran as a "last resort", leading Israeli officials to conclude that it will be left to them to strike.

Israeli pilots have flown to Gibraltar in recent weeks to train for the
2,000-mile round trip to the Iranian targets. Three possible routes
have been mapped out, including one over Turkey.

Air force squadrons based at Hatzerim in the Negev desert and Tel Nof, south of Tel Aviv, have trained to use Israel's tactical nuclear
weapons on the mission. The preparations have been overseen by Major General Eliezer Shkedi, commander of the Israeli air force.

Sources close to the Pentagon said the United States was highly
unlikely to give approval for tactical nuclear weapons to be used. One
source said Israel would have to seek approval "after the event",
as it did when it crippled Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osirak with
airstrikes in 1981.

Scientists have calculated that although contamination from the
bunker-busters could be limited, tons of radioactive uranium compounds would be released.

The Israelis believe that Iran's retaliation would be constrained by
fear of a second strike if it were to launch its Shehab-3 ballistic
missiles at Israel.

However, American experts warned of repercussions, including widespread protests that could destabilise parts of the Islamic world friendly to the West.

Colonel Sam Gardiner, a Pentagon adviser, said Iran could try to close
the Strait of Hormuz, the route for 20% of the world's oil.

Some sources in Washington said they doubted if Israel would have the nerve to attack Iran. However, Dr Ephraim Sneh, the deputy Israeli defence minister, said last month: "The time is approaching when Israel and the international community will have to decide whether to take military action against Iran."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2535310,00.html

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 2:52 AM MST

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Mood:  irritated

Today's entry began after I researched something completely unrelated in one of the "urban legends" Web sites which I hadn't used before.

There was a link entitled "Al Gore vs. Christianity" which, I have to admit, I clicked on expecting to see pictures of Algore slow-roasting Pope Benedict on a spit.  Instead, it was an indignant rebuttal of remarks Gore's supposed to have made along the "patronizing condemnation of you stupid right-wing Christians" line:

"Subject: AL Gore re: Christianity

THE NOTORIOUS QUOTE OF THE DAY

"Refusing to accept the earth as our sacred mother, these Christians have become a dangerous threat to the survival of humanity. They are the blight on the environment and to believe in Bible prophecy is unforgivable."

Fair enough, so far.  Crap like that deserves to be debunked hard enough to bounce.

But it wasn't enough to expose the ur-source of that particular myth as garbage. 

One of the Web site's associates dug up what was probably got twisted around (a very, very little) to create the bogus Gore quote:

"For some Christians, the prophetic vision of the apocalypse is used — in my view, unforgivably — as an excuse for abdicating their responsibility to be good stewards of God's creation. Secretary of the Interior James Watt, who deserved his reputation as an anti-environmentalist, was once quoted as belittling concerns about environmental protection in part because it would all be destroyed by God in the apocalypse. Not only is this idea heretical in terms of Christian teachings, it is an appallingly self-fulfilling prophesy of doom. ("Earth in the Balance," p. 263)"

Wellll... that was actually the sort of patronizing crap I was expecting to see when I clicked on the link.  Worse, Gore used the convenient "(victim of slander) was once quoted as" to weasel-word something into James Watt's mouth that he did not say.  I can recognize this sort of thing pretty quickly, having had over a decade of Gore-isms to compare it against.

Does it seem weird to anyone else that the lady who went to all the trouble to find this paragraph in Gore's first bore-fest of a book reproduces an urban legend (and worse, a probable slander) about someone else while rushing to Al Gore's defense?  It sure pegged my weird-stuff-o-meter off scale. 

I decided to look into the matter and sure enough, someone else on the Web thought it was weird, too, that James Watt would suddenly start foaming at the mouth during a Congressional hearing. 

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/009475.php pointed out the probable provenance of the "James Watt is a millenialist weirdo" urban legend.  Like so much other pernicious crap, it traveled through Bill Moyers' poison pen to the op-ed page of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.  But before that, it appeared in a spottily-researched and sporadically-accurate article in grist.org, in an embellished quote from an anti-Christian tract:

http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2004/10/27/scherer-christian/index.html
 

Soooo... having covered my backside with some Internet research of my own (ask.com - don't ever leave home page without it!), I wrote the urban legend page in question with the following suggestion:

"In your debunking of the "Al Gore vs. Christianity" net myth, you perpetuate another vicious, politically-motivated myth, this one about James Watt, Reagan's Secretary of the Interior.

You have Karen Eiler quoting (from Gore's "Earth in the Balance"):

"For some Christians, the prophetic vision of the apocalypse is used — in my view, unforgivably — as an excuse for abdicating their responsibility to be good stewards of God's creation. Secretary of the Interior James Watt, who deserved his reputation as an anti-environmentalist, was once quoted as belittling concerns about environmental protection in part because it would all be destroyed by God in the apocalypse. Not only is this idea heretical in terms of Christian teachings, it is an appallingly self-fulfilling prophesy of doom. ("Earth in the Balance," p. 263)"

It's no better for Gore to weasel-word a piece of diaphanous slander such as this by saying  "James Watt (skip over ad hominem attack)... was once quoted as saying... "  without supplying the source of the quote, its context, time, place, et cetera than to tell the lie direct.

The source of the quote was a speech given by Bill Moyers at Harvard Medical School (in acceptance of an environmental award) which was later picked up as an op-ed by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, based on erroneous information - a quote from the anti-Christian tract Setting the Captives Free by Austin Miles - in grist.org.

In fact, Glenn Scherer, author of the article in grist.org which Moyers quoted, added to the confusion by embellishing Miles's account of what Watt was supposed to have said - adding the spurious detail that Watt was supposed to have said it before Congress.

Watt actually did testify to the need to conserve natural resources before Congress before the House Interior Committee in February 1981 - the only time he ever alluded to the Second Coming of Christ in Congressional testimony - in an interlocution with Rep. Weaver of Oregon:

"Mr. Weaver: I am very pleased to hear that. Then I will make one final statement... I believe very strongly that we should not, for example, use up all the oil that took nature a billion years to make in one century.

We ought to leave a few drops of it for our children, their children. They are going to need it... I wonder if you agree, also, in the general statement that we should leave some of our resources--I am now talking about scenic areas or preservation, but scenic resources for our children? Not just gobble them up all at once?

Secretary Watt: Absolutely. That is the delicate balance the Secretary of the Interior must have, to be steward for the natural resources for this generation as well as future generations.

I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns, whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations."

This is the complete opposite of what grist.org reported in the article from which Moyers quoted, "The Godly Must Be Crazy - Christian-right views are swaying politicians and threatening the environment,"

http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2004/10/27/scherer-christian/index.html

which originally contained this alleged quote from Watt and a sententious gloss afterward:

'But a scripture-based justification for anti-environmentalism -- when was the last time you heard a conservative politician talk about that?

Odds are it was in 1981, when President Reagan's first secretary of the interior, James Watt, told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. "God gave us these things to use. After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back," Watt said in public testimony that helped get him fired.

Today's Christian fundamentalist politicians are more politically savvy than Reagan's interior secretary was; you're unlikely to catch them overtly attributing public-policy decisions to private religious views. But their words and actions suggest that many share Watt's beliefs. Like him, many Christian fundamentalists feel that concern for the future of our planet is irrelevant, because it has no future.'

This text was redacted from the body of the article as it now appears after grist.org had their attention called to its factual errors.  It's now carried at the bottom of the Web page in insurance policy-small type, with the following comments:

" *[Correction, 04 Feb 2005: The asterisked section of the article, above, originally read:"

(text quoted above)

"In fact, Watt did not make such a statement to Congress. The quotation is attributed to Watt in the book "Setting the Captives Free" by Austin Miles, but Miles does not write that it was made before Congress. Grist regrets this reporting error and is aggressively looking into the accuracy of this quotation.]"

and then apparently later, after they looked into the quote's accuracy aggressively:

"[Update, 11 Feb 2005: Grist has been unable to substantiate that Watt made this statement. We would like to extend our sincere apologies to Watt and to our readers for this error.] "

I have to give the people at grist.org credit for acknowledging their mistake, although I have to say that it would have meant more if the acknowledgement had been carried in the same font and size as the article above it.

But even that verbal equivalent of a muttered apology is more than either Austin Miles, Al Gore or Bill Moyers ever did after slandering James Watt.

My point in writing this letter is that it's more than a little ironic to let the air out of one urban legend and then follow it up immediately by repeating an even more vicious piece of slander as though it were the truth.

I'd say that Gore's comment, "Secretary of the Interior James Watt, who deserved his reputation as an anti-environmentalist, was once quoted as belittling concerns about environmental protection in part because it would all be destroyed by God in the apocalypse," is a more profound indictment of Gore's character than the original urban legend which you demolished.  Good guys don't repeat vicious slams on other people without trying to find out if what they're saying is true or not."

I felt like being much more definite in my comments, but people usually don't respond well to rants in their in-boxes, so I toned my remarks down a bit.

But this urban legend really had legs - a staff writer with the Washington Post repeated the substance of Gore's/Moyers's/Scherer's/Mills's lies about James Watt nearly verbatim - no fact-checking, apparently not even the casual Internet Google-check that anyone who can work a keyboard can do.  More "James Watt was quoted as... " with not a bit of fact afterwards. 

In fact, the only published remarks of Watt's which deal with the Second Coming and the environment directly contradict what the ecolo-slander squad say Watt said.  Watt, in testimony before a House committee, basically said that since we have no idea how long we have until the return of Christ, we'd better be good stewards of the environment.  No "what the heck, let's use it all up because the Rapture is coming," no "Jesus will come after the last tree falls... " - none of that nonsense.

It may take a village to raise a child, but it apparently just takes four or five thoughtless fools to tarnish someone's reputation.  Maybe someday the press will repent of what it's done to James Watt's good name, in the same way it reversed its stand on his old boss - but it won't happen very soon if the past is any indication.  Even after the blogosphere has shot this lie full of holes, it still reverberates down the Internet.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 2:15 PM MST

Updated: Saturday, 13 January 2007 1:06 AM MST

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Mood:  happy

Defiant Saddam refuses hood in quick execution

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 10:08 PM MST

Updated: Thursday, 4 January 2007 11:26 PM MST

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Mood:  not sure

ABC News has sent Ted Koppel over to Iran to interview a bunch of ordinary folks who don't have a particular problem with America.

Unfortunately, the ordinary folks aren't in the command-and-control loop which will eventually authorize a nuclear strike or transfer of special weapons to Al-Qaeda.

I just read an indication of what the guys who'll be in charge of the big toys either believe or profess to believe in Yahoo's open source intelligence (OSI) group.

Here it is:

Posted: December 31, 2006
6:04 p.m. Eastern

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53577
C 2006 WorldNetDaily.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 8:32 PM MST

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

I feel that it's my duty - most of all to the memory of my son, who died fighting Islamist terror in Iraq - to point out and keep on pointing out what is obvious when you see the evidence - we are at war with the leadership, and probably most of the people of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

A poll of adult men conducted by the Saudi security service shows that at least 90 percent of them approve of and support the Al-Qaeda terrorist group that killed 3000 Americans on September 11th, 2001. Several of their leaders, the Saudi royal family, supported the September 11th attack with money - personal checks from the wife of Prince Sultan (former Saudi ambassador to the US) were found in the personal effects of one of the 9/11 hijackers, and the paper trail extends much farther than that.

This post quotes extensive excerpts from an article published on January 31, 2005, "Report Links Brooklyn Mosque to Saudi Hate Material," in the New York Sun by Meghan Clyne. Read it and judge for yourself. Ms. Clyne's article is available at: http://www.nysun.com/article/8445 According to Ms. Clyne: "Just three miles from the site of the World Trade Center, the government of Saudi Arabia is distributing hate materials expounding an extremist Wahhabi ideology, according to a new report by the Center for Religious Freedom.... " "While this group typically monitors the state of religious freedom under oppressive regimes abroad, the center has just concluded a year-long study of 200 documents that it said were collected in more than a dozen mosques across America, bear the seal of the Saudi government, and spread hateful indoctrination. The group called the propaganda a violation of Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."

"According to a press release and to the center's director, Nina Shea, the 89-page report, which was issued Friday, finds that the materials incite violence, inform Muslims that it is their religious duty to hate Jews and Christians, and even give specific instructions on how properly to express that hatred to one's infidel neighbors." "The Saudi-produced and - distributed materials denounce democracy - and democratic America - as un-Islamic.

Ms. Shea said the materials are directed toward recent immigrants. According to the report, Muslim newcomers are told that, while in America, they should think of themselves as operating behind enemy lines and should use their time in America either to acquire information and resources for jihad or to convert the infidels to Islam."

"The literature also promotes Wahhabism, the version of Islam officially embraced by the Saudi kingdom and adhered to by several of the September 11 hijackers, as the only true Islam, and it denounces more moderate Muslims who advocate tolerance as apostates. In Saudi Arabia, Ms. Shea said, apostasy is a capital crime. "If you're a Muslim and you become an infidel," she said, "you're put to death."

"According to the report, one of the strongest denunciations of so-called apostasy was issued in Brooklyn's Al-Farooq mosque, on Atlantic Avenue." A book published by the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs which was obtained from the Al-Farouq Mosque in Brooklyn, New York (written by a former Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, the late Bin Baz), authorizes Muslims to kill converts to Islam who violate their sexual mores, according to the report."

"According to the report's translation, Al-Farooq worshipers are told: "If a person said: I believe in Allah alone and confirm the truth of everything from Muhammed, except in his forbidding fornication, he becomes a disbeliever. For that, it would be lawful for Muslims to spill his blood and to take his money." The report emphasizes that this isn't the first time the Al-Farooq mosque has been cited in conjunction with terrorism and terrorist ideology. On Friday, the trial in Brooklyn federal court of a Yemeni sheik, Mohammed Ali Hasan al-Moayad, who stands accused of conspiring to raise millions of dollars for Hamas and Al Qaeda began. Some of this alleged fund-raising activity was allegedly undertaken at the Al-Farooq Mosque.

"A senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Andrew McCarthy, who led the prosecution of the ringleader of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Omar Abdel Rahman, spoke yesterday of Al-Farooq's other alleged connections to terrorism."

"The mosque, Mr. McCarthy said, was a regular stop for the blind sheik on his fund-raising tours in the late 1980s, and in 1989, the former prosecutor said, several conspirators in the Landmark Bomb Plot - which aimed to blow up the United Nations and New York City's tunnels - met at Al-Farooq before heading out to Long Island to conduct jihadist training activities."

"This latest revelation about Al-Farooq, Mr. McCarthy said, was 'just another drop in the barrel.'" "'What the Saudis do is very disturbing,' Mr. McCarthy said.

'We turn a blind eye to the really bad things the Saudis do ... to not appear as if we're being, God forbid, judgmental about Wahhabism and Saudi proselytizing of a particular brand of Islam that is very alarming to most people,'"

"Mr. McCarthy said the purported Saudi propaganda was further evidence that conducting a war on terrorism is 'a bad idea' when America is really engaged in 'a war against militant Islam.'"

"Saudi representatives in America, however, have denied spreading hateful materials to mosques, Ms. Shea said in her report. A spokesman for the Saudi Embassy, Adel al-Jubeir, says the Saudis 'don't approve of hate ideology in any way.'

She continued, 'But he's lying, they do promote this.'" "Several of the documents obtained by the center read, "Greetings from the Cultural Attache of the Saudi Embassy in Washington," Ms. Shea said." When the New York Sun's reporter Clyne asked Saudi officials in Washington about the hate literature bearing his country's seal, she was told that the officials were out of the country on the yearly hajj pilgrimage.

"While saying the Saudis may be 'lying low,' Ms. Shea emphasized that the report's focus was not on the activity of the mosques cited, but on what she said was an attempt by the Saudi government, over a period of decades, to create 'a fifth column within the American Muslim community."

"'It's political propaganda as much as it is religious,' Ms. Shea explained. 'We have to confront it in our bilateral relations with Saudi Arabia - at the highest levels of government, we have to tell the Saudis, 'No more.''"

-- 

I agree. America is in the same state of blind denial toward Saudi Arabia's reign of hate that she was in toward Germany before 1941. If no American serviceman had set a boot inside of Iraq by now, the Saudis' hate literature against us would still be just as virulent, just as present, and used just as much to promote terrorism on our own soil and against Americans overseas.

When we kill Al-Qaeda terrorists in Iraq, it means that there are that many less of them to attack us at home and abroad. There are already beginning to be public complaints about precisely this depletion of the "dumb Saudi" pool of potential terrorists from within Al-Qaeda. I'll say more about that in another post. 

It's time to show the Saudis that they cannot conquer the world with their "missionaries" who spread hate and terror around the world. If we have to use strategic nuclear weapons to sterilize the source of this infection, well, why not? It is better to risk dying as men than to live as slaves to those swine.

Before we do that, though, we should give the Muslims who are not part of the Saudis' campaign to spread hatred and terror the opportunity to defend and reclaim their holy places. I personally have no problem with Muslims as such. I don't agree with their theology, but I can say the same of many Christians. I actually got along well with most of the Muslims I met in college and had two Muslim roommates, one of whom was a Shiite from Iran, and the other a supporter of the Shah (this was back before the Islamic Revolution in Iran).

- 

What I have a real problem with is the Saudis and their violent, hate mongering sect of Islam. I would bet that most Muslims who are not part of that sect also have a real problem with the Saudis. Again, we should give the free Muslim world an opportunity to wrest control of their holy places back from the Saudis before taking the risk of making the desert to their east (and parts of the Persian Gulf) radioactive.

We have no quarrel with them. Saudi control of Mecca and Medina is actually a new thing, historically speaking. The Hashemites - basically just the King of Jordan now, unless the former Iraqi royal family wish to re-assert their claim to the Iraqi throne, which would probably just get them killed - have a better claim to the surrounding area and specifically to the stewardship of the Holy Places.

- 

But an even better claim rests with Islam worldwide - Muslims throughout the world who do not want to be remade in the Saudi mold. Worldwide, Muslims have some legitimate gripes with the rest of the world and with Christianity specifically. But the Saudis are doing what we are simply being falsely accused of - they take Qur'ans away from other Muslims visiting to make the hajj, often destroying what they don't simply steal, they rush around Mecca and Medina with demolition crews and concrete to flatten and pave over holy sites - things the vast majority of Christians have absolutely no interest in doing.  We simply don't care about interfering in Muslim worship.  And when this crucial fact gets better known, perhaps the vast majority of Muslims will recognize their real enemy and act to stop them.  God willing.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 7:19 PM MST

Updated: Saturday, 13 January 2007 12:50 AM MST

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Mood:  incredulous

There's the version you get from Big Media, and there's the truth. 

(And why on Earth would someone make up stories about the war in Iraq turning out a whole lot better than the news people are telling us for the rare privilege of staying out there to be shot at?)

Quoted from Col. Jill Morgenthaler's "GI Jill's Adventures in Baghdad" blog:

"May 22, 2004

Hey, Everyone,

Things are quiet right now.  We begin the countdown to sovereignty for Iraq.  Good things are happening.  The Reserve unit that has received so much bad press has done good things.  Here’s one of their stories:

Men, women of the 372nd are also the good guys.
JAMES RADA
Times-News Staff Writer
CUMBERLAND:  What would you call a man who jumped into a creek to help people caught inside a truck that had rolled there? What would you call a group that helped build a center to enable women to become successfully independent? What would you call a group that made an entire city feel safer?  Would you call them heroes? Civic activists? Friends? Lately, these people have been called sadists, monsters and criminals. That’s because the good deeds and good work done by the 372nd Army  Reserve Unit have been forgotten and tarnished by the alleged misdeeds of a  few.  Sgt. Roger Plummer of Ridgeley, W.Va., served in Iraq from June 2003 to January 2004. He knows the men and women of the 372nd because he has lived with them, fought with them and worked with them.  Al Hilla was named one of the safest cities in Iraq because of the work done by the 372nd police,” said Plummer.

The Coalition Provisional Authority recognized the South Central Region of Iraq as progressing faster than any other unit, in part, because of the work done by Plummer and his fellow reservists.   Our personalities really helped us with that city,  said Plummer.  He said that when the 372nd was in charge of security there, the city had been safe and the Iraqi police department had been an open place where Iraqis knew they could come to get help. 

“We were open and the people felt comfortable with us, said Plummer.  Then the 372nd was sent to do other work and the replacement unit came in and turned the police department into a “fortress.  And that’s when all the trouble started when we closed ourselves off from them, said Plummer.  Plummer was part of a group of 372nd soldiers that was helping train an Iraqi boxing team to qualify for the Olympics as a way to restore national pride.  When a truck went off the road and into a creek, it was a member of the 372nd who dove into the water and began pulling Iraqis out of the truck.   He gave one old guy CPR for 20 minutes trying to save him, said Plummer.  The 372nd also held police academies for Iraqi policemen who had little or no training.  Plummer said that during the four months his platoon was assigned to the Coalition Provisional Authority it participated in the following projects:

• 8 women’s rights centers were built
• 6 schools were built or remodeled
• 6 youth centers were built
• 4 hydroelectric turbines were repaired
• 2 universities were built or remodeled
• 2 democracy centers were built
• 2 water filtration plants were rebuilt
• 1 airfield was built

“I couldn’t tell you how many miles of road I saw paved. I saw electrical lines run into cities that didn’t have power,” added Plummer.  The construction was performed by Iraqi contractors who bid on the jobs.  They were paid from money that had been confiscated from Saddam Hussein. 

The 372nd also did little things, too, like making sure students had plenty of paper, pencils and erasers.  All of this was not easy for members of the 372nd, either. They were shot at with bullets and rockets. Some members survived car bomb blasts.  They endured this because they felt it was the right thing to do. They could see the progress being made with the people, according to Plummer.  He wants people to know of all the good work his unit did, and is still doing, in Iraq. James Rada can be reached at jrada@times-news.com"

and

"Good news:  Great stuff still happening here for a better and free Iraq.  Below is an excerpt from American Daily.

Mainstream Media Robbing Us Of Iraqi War Heroes

By Joe Mariani (06/04/2004) (Joe Mariani was born and raised in New Jersey. He now lives in Pennsylvania, where the gun laws are less restrictive and taxes are lower. Joe always thought of himself as politically neutral until he saw how far left the left had really gone after 9/11.)

 …The New York Times will probably never report the story of Corporal Samuel Toloza, one of 380 soldiers from El Salvador, which was carried in the Washington Times. Corporal Toloza, out of ammunition, bravely defended fallen members of his unit from Iraqi insurgents. He charged the enemy, armed only with a knife. ''One of his friends was dead, 12 others lay wounded, and the four soldiers still left standing were surrounded and out of ammunition. So Salvadoran Cpl. Samuel Toloza said a prayer, whipped out his knife, and charged the Iraqi gunmen." The Iraqis broke, and more Coalition troops arrived before they could regroup. Phil Kosnett, who heads the CPA in Najaf, has nominated six El Salvadorans for the Bronze Star.

''These guys are punching way above their weight,'' Kosnett said. ''They're probably the bravest and most professional troops I've every worked with.'' Yet their story is almost completely buried by the mainstream media's endless liturgy of doom, gloom, and quagmire.

You will probably never see the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders mentioned on ABC, CBS or NBC. When attacked by over 100 of Moqtada al-Sadr's so-called militia (in reality a gang of thugs with a religious motif), the 20 or so soldiers fixed bayonets and mounted a 19-century style charge. Taking only three casualties, the Scots captured or killed 35 of the enemy. No American media outlet saw fit to even mention this action, except those who carry Mark Steyn's opinion column. Not one seems to have thought of the Highlanders' action as newsworthy." 

Thank you, Col. Morgenthaler, for the straight poop.  God bless you, ma'am.

I guess the BBC might have passed that action over, too.  Just a guess. 

Sorry it took me so long to get around to it, but I had surgery not too long ago, and I'm just now getting my act together again.

Why spend time on this?  Because my son Armand Luke Frickey would have wanted me to remind you people that the folks on TV, NPR and the big papers are lying to you.  The one sure way to make this Iraq thing a fiasco is to bail out because Pelosi and Company have decided that's how it'll play out.  He died so that the rest of us could live here in peace.  It's time we began to earn that.

Someone's got to get the truth out.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 12:45 PM MST

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Mood:  sad

From an editorial page in Romania...
Mood:  surprised
Topic: ...Those Who Will Not See 

 

Lately, and especially during the election, we were force-fed information by our news media about how the rest of the world despises us because of things like the war in Iraq. To hear them talk, no one over there ever disagrees with the people who have nothing to do but show up at street rallies to burn the President in effigy and trample and spit on our flag.

Well, this came in my Email the other day. It's an editorial in the Romanian newspaper Evenimentulzilei (which translates to "The Daily Event" or "News of the Day"). A fellow over there named Cornel Nistorescu sent in a letter and the paper ran it. So much for European opinion being solidly against us. Then again, the Romanians can probably remember being oppressed by Muslims recently enough that they aren't interested in having it happen again.

"God Bless America
We rarely get a chance to see another country's editorial about the USA.
Read this excerpt from a Romanian Newspaper.

The article was written by Mr. Cornel Nistorescu and published under the title "C"ntarea Americii, meaning "Ode To America") in the Romanian newspaper Evenimentulzilei "The Daily Event" or "News of the Day".

An Ode to America~

Why are Americans so united? They would not resemble one another even if you painted them all one color!
They speak all the languages of the world and form an astonishing mixture of civilizations and religious beliefs.

Still, the American tragedy turned three hundred million people into a hand put on the heart. Nobody rushed to accuse the White House, the army, and the secret services that they are only a bunch of losers. Nobody rushed to empty their bank accounts. Nobody rushed out onto the streets nearby to gape about. The Americans volunteered to donate blood and to give a helping hand. After the first moments of panic, they raised their flag over the smoking ruins, putting on T-shirts, caps and ties in the colors of the national flag. They placed flags on buildings and cars as if in every place and on every car a government official or the president was passing. On every occasion, they started singing their traditional song: "God Bless America!" I watched the live broadcast and rerun after rerun for hours.

Listening to the story of the guy who went down one hundred floors with a woman in a wheelchair without knowing who she was, or of the Californian hockey player, who gave his life fighting with the terrorists and prevented the plane from hitting a target that could have killed other hundreds or thousands of people. How on earth were they able to respond united as one human being?

Imperceptibly, with every word and musical note, the memory of some turned into a modern myth of tragic heroes. And with every phone call, millions and millions of dollars were put in a collection aimed at rewarding not a man or a family, but a spirit, which no money can buy. What on earth can unite the Americans in such a way? Their land? Their galloping history? Their economic Power? Money? I tried for hours to find an answer, humming songs and murmuring phrases with the risk of sounding commonplace. I thought things over, but I reached only one conclusion...Only freedom can work such miracles.

Cornel Nistorescu"

Thanks, Mr. Nistorescu. And good luck with your country's own democracy. We appreciate the help your people are giving us in the Coalition of the Willing, and appearances to the contrary, we don't forget our friends.

---- 

A year and some months later, it's saddening to note how optimistic Mr. Nistorescu was in his praise of the American nation.

The Democratic Party jumps on every reverse in the war on terror as a sign of how morally and intellectually bankrupt the Bush Administration is (and the national leadership of the Democratic Party knows all about moral and intellectual bankruptcy - from the inside, having nominated a Communist fellow-traveler and lying bastard like John Kerry to the Presidency).

These people do not care at all about the lives of either innocent Iraqis,  Afghans, Europeans, Americans or our troops overseas.  My son and five other Louisiana National Guardsmen died because the terrorists in Iraq know that killing six Americans in one detonation would give them ten days of continuous television coverage in this country - at least.  

CBS News pestered me on the phone for over a month for permission to do one of those obnoxious minor-key woodwind "Isn't it horrible we're still in this war" features on their Evening News show about my son's death, because his widow wanted time to think about whether he would have appreciated being used in antiwar leftist agitprop.  They apparently had no problem with going around her back for permission from someone not my son's next-of-kin.  (And this was when Dick Thornburgh and company was busy giving CBS a clean bill of health for their handling of Rather's and Mapes' solicitation and use of the phony Bush National Guard memos.)

Going back to the general from the specific, it didn't take very long for the vaunted solidarity between Americans after 9/11/2001 to vanish. 

No charge is too scurrilous for the left wing in this country to make about the Bush White House, no lie too transparent to tell.  And nothing the left wing says is too ridiculous for the "mainstream press" (in other words, the press with massive amounts of money behind it) to report as straight news, rather than as partisan opinion.

It's just like living over the fence from a particularly psychotic mother-in-law - no, in this day of ridiculously cheap long-distance telephone calls, it's more like, for your beloved spouse's sake, being reluctant to block incoming calls from her phone number and that of the family members who will let her use their phones.

The hard-line socialists in our country's electorate want power, and they literally will destroy our country and its government to get it.  They see themselves as morally superior to us and thus qualified to peel away right after right from us until we behave in a way pleasing to them.  (Remember the Clinton administration, guys?)

The hard left wing in this country are the psychotic in-laws of America.  It's long past time for a family intervention.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 3:36 PM MDT

Updated: Saturday, 9 September 2006 11:50 PM MDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink