CNN- Outstanding Journalism Eludes Them

In an earlier post I spent a few minutes complaining about CNN allowing itself to be used as a propaganda tool for terrorists. Sadly, but not surprisingly they continue to strive for mediocrity. In the following story they just miss the mark.

Palestinian rocket injures sleeping soldiers

JERUSALEM (AP) -- A rocket fired from Gaza struck a tent filled with sleeping Israeli soldiers, wounding more than 20 of them early Tuesday, Israeli medics and the army said.

The army confirmed that a rocket had landed on a base in southern Israel about a half-mile north of Gaza.

Palestinian militants in Gaza fire crude rockets almost daily at towns in southern Israel, causing panic but rarely causing serious casualties. [emphasis mine]

Forgive my outrage, but CNN seems happy to talk about injured soldiers but neglects to cover the attacks on children.

Watch the video in this link of children running for cover or better yet watch it here and tell me you aren't upset. Tell me you aren't outraged and ask CNN why they minimize the seriousness of crude rocket attacks.

The Hamas Version of Peace

On the second day of school terrorists continue to fire rockets at schools in Sderot. This is going to get uglier before it gets better.

Parents, can you imagine sending your children to school under these conditions.

Al Qaeda's Beaver Boy

It is not Aussie Dave's separated at birth bit, but it works. I am sorry, but it is hard to take this guy seriously. Not only does he resemble an overgrown rodent, he makes me think of Elmer Fudd. But something tells me that when his day comes he won't find himself engaged in witty banter with Bugs Bunny.

If you haven't figured out who this jackass is, he is Adam Yahiye Gadahn, formerly of California. Al-Qaeda has decided that he serves as a good mouthpiece and consequently we hear their threats through him.

(CNN) -- U.S. Embassies and American interests "at home and abroad" are prime targets for terrorist attacks, American al Qaeda member Adam Yahiye Gadahn said in a newly released al Qaeda-produced video.

"We shall continue to target you at home and abroad just as you target us at home and abroad ... ," Gadahn -- also known as Azzam the American -- says in the video provided to CNN by www.LauraMansfield.com, a Web site that analyzes terrorism.

Later in the video, which is about an hour long and takes the form of a documentary, the self-proclaimed American jihadist makes explicit threats against the United States and U.S. interests, singling out embassies and consulates"These spy dens and military command and control centers -- from which you plotted your aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq and which still provide vital moral, military, material and logistical support to the crusade -- shall continue to be legitimate targets for brave Muslims ... until and unless you heed our demands: Stop the crusade and leave the Muslims alone," he said.

If I were president I'd make a point of paying extra special attention to Al-Qaeda. It is time to remind them what it feels like to try and walk when a steel toed boot is shoved halfway up their rectum. I don't like having to feel or be this way, but if they want to see what happens when they stick their hand into the lion cage it is time to show them.

I am serious about that. They aren't playing games. They are trying to get to us. I only hope that when they come they receive the special greeting that they deserve.

Defeat Stolen From The Jaws of Victory

"Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster."
General William Tecumseh Sherman

This is not the first time that I have heard or read something like this:

(IsraelNN.com) A Hizbullah man interviewed by Israel's Channel 10 TV said that the terror group was saved by the Olmert government's decision to call a cease-fire.

"The cease-fire [at the end of the Second Lebanon War] acted as a life jacket for the organization," the terrorist said. He explained that the group would have surrendered if the battles had continued for another 10 days.

He described the condition of Hizbullah's equipment and morale at the end of the fighting, saying they were running low on food, water, and arms.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni boasted before the Winograd Commission that the cease-fire was her idea, with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert saying it was one of the major accomplishments of the war.

The officer also admitted to firing missiles from inside urban centers, knowing that it would lead to civilian casualties on the Lebanese side. He explained that firing from open areas simply was not feasible, as the IAF quickly targeted any launchers operating in such areas.

Olmert and company bungled this badly. There will be another war and more people will die. Let's hope that the next time is managed better than the last.

Glorifying Terrorists

Seraphic Secret has a story which is quite distressing.

Recently The New York Times carried a review of a film called Hot House that goes inside Israeli prisons and examines the lives of Palestinian prisoners. We're not recommending the film or the review. But we do want to share our feelings with you about the beaming female face that adorns the article. You can see it here.

The film is produced by HBO. So it's presumably HBO's publicity department that was responsible for creating and distributing a glamor-style photograph of a smiling, contented-looking young woman in her twenties to promote the movie.

That female is our child's murderer. She was sentenced to sixteen life sentences or 320 years which she is serving in an Israeli jail. Fifteen people were killed and more than a hundred maimed and injured by the actions of this attractive person and her associates.

Click here to read the full story. And please click here to read more about Malka Chana Roth, or Malki, the girl who was brutally murdered in a senseless terrorist act.

Al Qaeda strongest since 9/11

CNN is one of many news agencies reporting that Al Qaeda is the strongest that it has been since 9-11-01.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Al Qaeda is the strongest it has been since the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a new U.S. government analysis concludes, according to a senior government official who has seen it.

Despite a campaign of military action and counterterrorism operations, al Qaeda has regained its strength and found safe haven in the tribal areas of Pakistan, the report says, according to counterterrorism officials familiar with the report.

The five-page intelligence analysis remains classified and was prepared for senior U.S. policymakers. It was not issued in response to a specific threat.

Two intelligence officials said the report's finding are similar to what is expected to be in the National Intelligence Estimate anticipated to be released later this summer. The NIE is the intelligence community's collective analysis of pressing national security issues.

The White House's view is that "over the past six years, we have prevented attacks from al Qaeda by taking the fight to them," a senior administration official said. "But they are an enemy that adapts."

Am I the only one who is furious about this. I don't want to hear that they are growing in strength. I want to read about how we have placed a stranglehold upon their neck and a boot in their ass.

It reminds me a of a scene from The Untouchables:

Capone: I want you to get this fuck where he breathes! I want you to find this nancy-boy Eliot Ness, I want him DEAD! I want his family DEAD! I want his house burned to the GROUND! I wanna go there in the middle of the night and I wanna PISS ON HIS ASHES!

I have written about Al Qaeda on numerous occasions including this post from earlier in the week. I haven't any compunction about calling them evil because they are. But they are also smart, resourceful, patient and very dangerous. You don't play games with people like this.

It is like cancerous tumor. You go in and remove it and then use aggressive treatment to see that it doesn't return. We have to do better than this.

Al-Qaeda- This Is Evil

The following information comes from Michael Yon's blog but it has been widely reported around the net.

Since my reporting of the massacre at the al Hamari village, many readers at home have asked how anyone can know that al Qaeda actually performed the massacre. The question is a very good one, and one that I posed from the first hour to Iraqis and Americans while trying to ascertain facts about the killings.

No one can claim with certainty that it was al Qaeda, but the Iraqis here seem convinced of it. At a meeting today in Baqubah one Iraqi official I spoke with framed the al Qaeda infiltration and influence in the province. Although he spoke freely before a group of Iraqi and American commanders, including Staff Major General Abdul Kareem al Robai who commands Iraqi forces in Diyala, and LTC Fred Johnson, the deputy commander of 3-2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team, the Iraqi official asked that I withhold his identity from publication. His opinion, shared by others present, is that al Qaeda came to Baqubah and united many of the otherwise independent criminal gangs.

Speaking through an American interpreter, Lieutenant David Wallach who is a native Arabic speaker, the Iraqi official related how al Qaeda united these gangs who then became absorbed into “al Qaeda.” They recruited boys born during the years 1991, 92 and 93 who were each given weapons, including pistols, a bicycle and a phone (with phone cards paid) and a salary of $100 per month, all courtesy of al Qaeda. These boys were used for kidnapping, torturing and murdering people.

At first, he said, they would only target Shia, but over time the new al Qaeda directed attacks against Sunni, and then anyone who thought differently. The official reported that on a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al Qaeda invited to lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy, he said, who was about 11 years old. As LT David Wallach interpreted the man’s words, I saw Wallach go blank and silent. He stopped interpreting for a moment. I asked Wallach, “What did he say?” Wallach said that at these luncheons, the families were sat down to eat. And then their boy was brought in with his mouth stuffed. The boy had been baked. Al Qaeda served the boy to his family. (Emphasis is mine)

Other bloggers who covered this include: Seraphic Secret, Sleeping Ugly and The Right Truth among others. It is worth mentioning again that a US Army raid netted a copy of the Al-Qaeda Torture handbook.

In modern society we often hesitate to use labels. In many ways I am sympathetic to that particular point of view, but at the same time I understand that there are needs that over ride others.

And let's face it, an organization such as Al-Qaeda has no redeeming features. People who subscribe to this murderous and evil ideology need to be dealt with and handled with extreme prejudice. They would not hesitate to do so with us and we mustn't with them.

D-Day

Again I offer my thanks to those who fought so that we could live as we do today. Here is a link to what I wrote last year.

Al-Qaeda Torture Handbook

The Smoking Gun has information about materials taken in a US Army raid on a house in Iraq.

MAY 24--In a recent raid on an al-Qaeda safe house in Iraq, U.S. military officials recovered an assortment of crude drawings depicting torture methods like "blowtorch to the skin" and "eye removal." Along with the images, which you'll find on the following pages, soldiers seized various torture implements, like meat cleavers, whips, and wire cutters. Photos of those items can be seen here. The images, which were just declassified by the Department of Defense, also include a picture of a ramshackle Baghdad safe house described as an "al-Qaeda torture chamber."

I am more than a little disturbed by this. Scroll down the page and you can see the drawings here.

Hat Tip: EOW.

Voices of The Fallen

Newsweek has a special section called Voices of the Fallen. It is composed of letters/videos/audio recordings that the families of fallen vets shared. Regardless of what you think of the war it is worth taking a moment to look/listen.

These people gave their lives. We can honor their memory.

Click here.

Iran 'seizes' 15 British sailors

Things continue to stay heated with Iran. There may be some confusion about whose waters they were in, but on the other hand I still think that Iran is testing. It is a dangerous game they play.

Iran 'seizes' 15 British sailors

LONDON, England (CNN) -- An Iranian naval patrol seized 15 British marines and sailors who had boarded a vessel suspected of smuggling cars off the coast of Iraq, military officials said.

The British government immediately demanded the safe return of its troops and summoned Tehran's London ambassador to explain the incident.

The Royal Marines and ordinary naval officers were believed to have been apprehended by up to six ships from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy who claimed they had violated Iranian waters.

British naval officials said the sailors, using small boarding craft, had completed an inspection of a merchant vessel in Iraqi waters when the Iranians arrived.

Commodore Nick Lambert, commander of the HMS Cornwall -- the frigate from which the British patrol had been deployed -- said the incident did not involve fighting or use of weapons.

"We've been assured from the scant communications that we've had from the Iranians at the tactical level that the 15 people are safely in their hands," he said.

The British defense ministry said that it was pursuing the incident "at the highest level."

There was no immediate comment from Iranian officials.

Lambert said the British sailors had been on a "normal, routine boarding" of a vessel that had aroused suspicions as it navigated the Shatt al-Arab, a disputed waterway that marks the border between Iraq and Iran on the shores of the Persian Gulf.

For more information click here.

This Disgusts Me

Animals behave like this, people do not.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraqi insurgents used two children as cover to get through a checkpoint in Baghdad and then blew up the car while the kids were still inside, a U.S. general said Tuesday.

The car went through a checkpoint Sunday and parked by a market across the street from a school, said Maj. Gen. Michael Barbero, deputy director for regional operations in the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Two adults jumped from the car, leaving the children in the back. Moments later, the car exploded, witnesses said.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Confesses

In the next few days we are going to be reading quite a bit about this. We'll have to see if how things shake out. I won't be surprised to see a few changes here and there. In the meantime here are some excerpts for your consumption.

"I was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z," Mohammed said in a statement read during the session, which was held last Saturday.

The transcripts also refer to a claim by Mohammed that he was tortured by the CIA, although he said he was not under duress at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo when he confessed to his role in the attacks.

In a section of the statement that was blacked out, he confessed to the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, The Associated Press has learned. Pearl was abducted in January 2002 in Pakistan while researching a story on Islamic militancy. Mohammed has long been a suspect in the killing.

Using his own words, the extraordinary transcript connects Mohammed to dozens of the worst terror plots attempted or carried out in the last 15 years and to others that have not occurred. All told, thousands have died in operations he directed.

His words draw al-Qaida closer to plots of the early 1990s than the group has previously been connected to, including the 1993 World Trade Center truck bombing. Six people with links to global terror networks were convicted in federal court and sentenced to life in prison.

It also makes clear that al-Qaida wanted to down a second trans-Atlantic aircraft during would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid's operation.

Mohammed said he was involved in planning the 2002 bombing of a Kenya beach resort frequented by Israelis and the failed missile attack on an Israeli passenger jet after it took off from Mombasa, Kenya. He also said he was responsible for the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia. In 2002, 202 were killed when two Bali nightclubs were bombed.

Other plots he said he was responsible for included planned attacks against the Sears Tower in Chicago, the Empire State Building and New York Stock Exchange, the Panama Canal and Big Ben and Heathrow Airport in London none of which happened.

He said he was involved in planning assassination attempts against former Presidents Carter and Clinton, attacks on U.S. nuclear power plants and suspension bridges in New York, the destruction of American and Israeli embassies in Asia and Australia, attacks on American naval vessels and oil tankers around the world, and an attempt to "destroy" an oil company he said was owned by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on Sumatra, Indonesia.

He also claimed he shared responsibility for assassination attempts against Pope John Paul II and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.

In all, Mohammed said he was responsible for planning 28 attacks and assisting in three others. The comments were included in a 26-page transcript released by the Pentagon, which blacked out some of his remarks."

Here is a (http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2007/images/03/14/transcript_ISN10024.pdf) link to the PDF of the Transcript. For some reason I am having difficulty copying and pasting from it. I encourage you to review it. It is quite a list and should serve as a stark reminder of just who we are up against.

The Future of Europe

Daniel Pipes (http://www.danielpipes.org/article/4323) offers several potential scenarios regarding the future of Europe. I encourage you to read the whole piece. Here is a short excerpt for each scenario:

Muslim Rule- To sum up: this first argument holds that Europe will be Islamized, quietly submitting to the dhimmi status or converting to Islam, because the yin of Europe and yang of Muslims fit so well: low and high religiosity, low and high fertility, low and high cultural confidence.[2] Europe is an open door through which Muslims are walking.

Muslim Rejection- Or will the door be shut in their face? American columnist Ralph Peters dismisses the first scenario: "Far from enjoying the prospect of taking over Europe by having babies, Europe's Muslims are living on borrowed time. … predictions of a Muslim takeover of Europe … ignore history and Europe's ineradicable viciousness." Instead, depicting Europe as the place "that perfected genocide and ethnic cleansing," he predicts its Muslims "will be lucky just to be deported," and not killed. Claire Berlinski, in Menace in Europe: Why the Continent's Crisis Is America's, Too, implicitly agrees, pointing to the "ancient conflicts and patterns … now shambling out of the mists of European history" which could well trigger violence.

This scenario has indigenous Europeans – who do still constitute 95 percent of the continent's population – waking up one day and asserting themselves. "Basta!" they will say, and reclaim their historic order. This is not so remote; a chafing among Europeans, less among elites than the masses, loudly protests changes already underway. Illustrations of that resentment include the anti-hijab legislation in France, irritation over the restrictions of national flags and Christian symbols, and the insistence on serving wine at state dinners. A movement spontaneously developed in several French cities in early 2006 to serve pork soup to the poor, thus intentionally excluding Muslims.

Muslim Integration- Such optimism, unfortunately, has little foundation. Europeans could yet rediscover their Christian faith, have more babies, and cherish their own heritage. They could encourage non-Muslim immigration or acculturate the Muslims already among them. But such changes are not now underway, nor are their prospects good. Instead, Muslims are cultivating grievances and ambitions at odds with their indigenous neighbors. Worryingly, each generation appears more alienated than its predecessor. Canadian novelist Hugh MacLennan dubbed his country's English-French split the "Two Solitudes"; one sees something similar, but far more pronounced, developing in Europe. Those polls of British Muslims for example, find that a majority of them perceive a conflict between their British and Muslim identities and want Islamic law instituted.

The possibility of Muslims accepting the confines of historic Europe and smoothly integrating within it can virtually be dismissed from consideration. Even Bassam Tibi, professor at the University of Göttingen, who has often warned that "Either Islam gets Europeanized, or Europe gets Islamized," has personally given up on the continent. Recently, he announced that he is leaving Germany after 44 years' residence there, to move to Cornell University in the United States.

There Are Four Iraq Wars

I found this article on Slate to be interesting. Here is an excerpt:

"Thanks to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, I now have an answer: Our strategic stagnation results from the fact that we are fighting four wars, not one. According to Gates: "One is Shi'a on Shi'a,
principally in the south; the second is sectarian conflict, principally in Baghdad, but not solely; third is the insurgency; and fourth is al Qaida, and al Qaida is attacking, at times, all of those targets." The multifaceted nature of these four wars has frustrated American strategy since 2003. Successes in one area produce setbacks in the others, with al-Qaida hovering above the fray to spoil progress whenever it threatens to bring stability to Iraq, as they did by bombing the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra in February 2006 after the successful Iraqi elections. Consequently, any strategies implementing the "counterinsurgency playbook," smart as those plans may be, will necessarily prove insufficient because we aren't just fighting an insurgency anymore."