Monday Open

Blogging will be light for a couple of days while I am out of town on business. — Nuke

A California Lawyer’s Perspective on Iraq War

The following essay is by a VietNam Vet, now writer and lawyer in Northern California. It is kind of long, but well worth the time. h/t smoothsailing (Free Republic)

A California Lawyer’s Perspective on Iraq War:
Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat, and had sunk more than four hundred British ships in their convoys between England and America for food and war materials.
Bushido Japan had overrun most of Asia, beginning in 1928, killing millions of civilians throughout China, and impressing millions more as slave labor.
The US was in an isolationist, pacifist, mood, and most Americans and Congress wanted nothing to do with the European war, or the Asian war.
Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 , and in outrage Congress unanimously declared war on Japan , and the following day on Germany, which had not attacked us.
It was a dicey thing. We had few allies.
France was not an ally, the Vichy government of France aligned with its German occupiers. Germany was not an ally, it was an enemy, and Hitler intended to set up a Thousand Year Reich in Europe . Japan was not an ally, it was intent on owning and controlling all of Asia .
Japan and Germany had long-term ideas of invading Canada and Mexico, and then the United States over the north and south borders, after they had settled control of Asia and Europe.
America’s allies then were England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Australia, and Russia, and that was about it.
There were no other countries of any size or military significance with the will and ability to contribute much or anything to the effort to defeat Hitler’s Germany and Japan, and prevent the global dominance of Nazism. And we had to send millions of tons of arms, munitions, and war supplies to Russia, England, and the Canadians, Aussies, Irish, and Scots, because NONE of them could produce all they needed for themselves.
All of Europe , from Norway to Italy, except Russia in the east, was already under the Nazi heel.
America was not prepared for war. America had stood down most of its military after WWI and throughout the depression, at the outbreak of WWII there were army units training with broomsticks over their shoulders because they didn’t have guns, and cars with “tank” painted on the doors because they didn’t have tanks. And a big chunk of our navy had just been sunk and damaged at Pearl Harbor .
Britain had already gone bankrupt, saved only by the donation of $600 million in gold bullion in the Bank of England that was the property of Belgium and was given by Belgium to England to carry on the war when Belgium was overrun by Hitler – actually, Belgium surrendered one day, because it was unable to oppose the German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble the next day anyway just to prove they could. Britain had been holding out for two years already in the face of staggering shipping loses and the near-decimation of its air force in the Battle of Britain, and was saved from being overrun by Germany only because Hitler made the mistake of thinking the Brits were a relatively minor threat that could be dealt with later and turning his attention to Russia, at a time when England was on the verge of collapse in the late summer of 1940.
Russia saved America’s butt by putting up a desperate fight for two years until the US got geared up to begin hammering away at Germany.
Russia lost something like 24 million people in the sieges of Stalingrad and Moscow, 90% of them from cold and starvation, mostly civilians, but also more than a million soldiers. More than a million.
Had Russia surrendered, then, Hitler would have been able to focus his entire campaign against the Brits, then America , and the Nazis would have won that war.
Had Hitler not made that mistake and invaded England in 1940 or 1941, instead, there would have been no England for the US and the Brits to use as a staging ground to prepare an assault on Nazi Europe, England would not have been able to run its North African campaign to help take a little pressure off Russia while America geared up for battle, and today Europe would very probably be run by the Nazis, the Third Reich, and, isolated and without any allies (not even the Brits), the US would very probably have had to cede Asia to the Japanese, who were basically Nazis by another name then, and the world we live in today would be very different and much worse. I say this to illustrate that turning points in history are often dicey things. And we are at another one.
There is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has, or wants and may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, almost anywhere in the world, unless they are prevented from doing so.
France, Germany, and Russia, have been selling them weapons technology at least as recently as 2002, as have North Korea, Syria, and Pakistan, paid for with billions of dollars Saddam Hussein skimmed from the “Oil For Food” program administered by the UN with the complicity of Kofi Annan and his son.
The Jihadis, the militant Muslims, are basically Nazis in Kaffiyahs – they believe that Islam, a radically conservative (definitely not liberal!) form of Wahhabi Islam, should own and control the Middle East first, then Europe, then the world, and that all who do not bow to Allah should be killed, enslaved, or subjugated. They want to finish the Holocaust, destroy Israel , purge the world of Jews. This is what they say.
There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East – for the most part not a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its Inquisition and its Reformation today, but it is not yet known which will win – the Inquisition, or the Reformation.
If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihadis, will control the Middle East, and the OPEC oil, and the US , European, and Asian economies, the techno-industrial economies, will be at the mercy of OPEC – not an OPEC dominated by the well-educated and rational Saudis of today, but an OPEC dominated by the Jihadis.
You want gas in your car? You want heating oil next winter? You want jobs? You want the dollar to be worth anything? You better hope the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition, loses, and the Islamic Reformation wins.
If the Reformation movement wins, that is, the moderate Muslims who believe that Islam can respect and tolerate other religions, and live in peace with the rest of the world, and move out of the 10th century into the 21st, then the troubles in the Middle East will eventually fade away, and a moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge.
We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have to fight the Inquisition, i.e., the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda, the Islamic terrorist movements. We have to do it somewhere. We cannot do it nowhere. And we cannot do it everywhere at once. We have created a focal point for the battle now at the time and place of our choosing, in Iraq.
Not in New York, not in London, or Paris, or Berlin, but in Iraq, where we did and are doing two very important things.
(1) We deposed Saddam Hussein. Whether Saddam Hussein was directly involved in 9/11 or not, it is undisputed that Saddam has been actively supporting the terrorist movement for decades. Saddam is a terrorist. Saddam is, or was, a weapon of mass destruction, who is responsible for the deaths of probably more than a million Iraqis and two million Iranians.
(2) We created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point, with Islamic terrorism in Iraq . We have focused the battle. We are killing bad guys there and the ones we get there we won’t have to get here, or anywhere else.
We also have a good shot at creating a democratic, peaceful Iraq , which will be a catalyst for democratic change in the rest of the Middle East, and an outpost for a stabilizing American military presence in the Middle East for as long as it is needed.
The European nations could have done this, but they didn’t, and they won’t. The so-called “Coalition Forces” are, in most cases, little more than a “Token Force” to keep face with the US . And once attacked, like the train bombing in Madrid , they pull their forces and run for home. We now know that rather than opposing the rise of the Jihad, the French, Germans, and Russians were selling them arms – we have found more than a million tons of weapons and munitions in Iraq . If Iraq was not a threat to anyone, why did Saddam need a million tons of weapons?
And Iraq was paying for French, German, and Russian arms with money skimmed from the UN Oil For Food Program (supervised by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and his son) that was supposed to pay for food, medicine, and education, for Iraqi children.
World War II, the war with the German and Japanese Nazis, really began with a “whimper” in 1928. It did not begin with Pearl Harbor . It began with the Japanese invasion of China . It was a war for fourteen years before America joined it. It officially ended in 1945 – a 17 year war – and was followed by another decade of US occupation in Germany and Japan to get those countries reconstructed and running on their own again …. a 27 year war.
World War II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a full year’s GDP – adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion dollars, WWII cost America more than 400,000 killed in action, and nearly 100,000 still missing in action.
[The Iraq war has, so far, cost the US about $180 billion, which is roughly what 9/11 cost New York. It has also cost over 2,300 American lives, which is roughly 2/3 of the lives that the Jihad snuffed on 9/11.] But the cost of not fighting and winning WWII would have been unimaginably greater – a world now dominated by German and Japanese Nazism.
Americans have a short attention span, now, conditioned I suppose by 1 hour TV shows and 2-hour movies in which everything comes out okay.
The real world is not like that. It is messy, uncertain,and sometimes bloody and ugly. Always has been, and probably always will be.
If we do this thing in Iraq successfully, it is probable that the Reformation will ultimately prevail. Many Muslims in the Middle East hope it will. We will be there to support it. It has begun in some countries, Libya , for instance. And Dubai. And Saudi Arabia. If we fail, the Inquisition will probably prevail, and terrorism from Islam will be with us for all the foreseeable future, because the Inquisition, or Jihad, believes they are called by Allah to kill all the Infidels, and that death in Jihad is glorious.
The bottom line here is that we will have to deal with Islamic terrorism until we defeat it, whenever that is.
It will not go away on its own. It will not go away if we ignore it.
If the US can create a reasonably democratic and stable Iraq , then we have an ” England” in the Middle East , a platform, from which we can work to help modernize and moderate the Middle East . The history of the world is the clash between the forces of relative civility and civilization, and the barbarians clamoring at the gates.
The Iraq war is merely another battle in this ancient and never-ending war. And now, for the first time ever, the barbarians are about to get nuclear weapons. Unless we prevent them. Or somebody does.
The Iraq war is expensive, and uncertain, yes. But the consequences of not fighting it and winning it will be horrifically greater. We have four options –
1. We can defeat the Jihad now, before it gets nuclear weapons.
2. We can fight the Jihad later, after it gets nuclear weapons (which may be as early as next year, if Iran ‘s progress on nuclear weapons is what Iran claims it is).
3. We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its dominance in the Middle East, now, in Europe in the next few years or decades, and ultimately in America.
4. Or we can stand down now, and pick up the fight later when the Jihad is more widespread and better armed, perhaps after the Jihad has dominated France and Germany and maybe most of the rest of Europe . It will be more dangerous, more expensive, and much bloodier then.
Yes, the Jihadis say that they look forward to an Islamic America . If you oppose this war, I hope you like the idea that your children, or grandchildren, may live in an Islamic America under the Mullahs and the Sharia, an America that resembles Iran today.
We can be defeatist peace-activists as anti-war types seem to be, and concede, surrender, to the Jihad, or we can do whatever it takes to win this war against them.
The history of the world is the history of civilizational clashes, cultural clashes. All wars are about ideas, ideas about what society and civilization should be like, and the most determined always win.
Those who are willing to be the most ruthless always win.
The pacifists always lose, because the anti-pacifists kill them.
In the 20th century, it was Western democracy vs. communism, and before that Western democracy vs. Nazism, and before that Western democracy vs. German Imperialism. Western democracy won, three times, but it wasn’t cheap, fun, nice, easy, or quick. Indeed, the wars against German Imperialism (WWI), Nazi Imperialism (WWII), and communist imperialism (the 40-year Cold War that included the Vietnam Battle, commonly called the Vietnam War, but itself a major battle in a larger war) covered almost the entire century.
The first major war of the 21st Century is the war between Western Judeo /Christian Civilization and Wahhabi Islam. It may last a few more years, or most of this century. It will last until the Wahhabi branch of Islam fades away, or gives up its ambitions for regional and global dominance and Jihad, or until Western Civilization gives in to the Jihad.
Senator John Kerry, in the debates and almost daily, makes 3 scary claims:
1. We went to Iraq without enough troops.
We went with the troops the US military wanted. We went with the troop levels General Tommy Franks asked for. We deposed Saddam in 30 days with light casualties, much lighter than we expected.
The real problem in Iraq is that we are trying to be nice – we are trying to fight minority of the population that is Jihadi, and trying to avoid killing the large majority that is not. We could flatten Fallujah in minutes with a flight of B52s, or seconds with one nuclear cruise missile – but we don’t. We’re trying to do brain surgery, not amputate the patient’s head. The Jihadis amputate heads.
2. We went to Iraq with too little planning.
This is a specious argument. It supposes that if we had just had “the right plan” the war would have been easy, cheap, quick, and clean.
That is not an option. It is a guerrilla war against a determined enemy, and no such war ever has been or ever will be easy, cheap, quick, and clean. This is not TV.
3. We proved ourselves incapable of governing and providing security.
This too is a specious argument. It was never our intention to govern and provide security. It was our intention from the beginning to do just enough to enable the Iraqis to develop a representative government and their own military and police forces to provide their own security, and that is happening. The US and the Brits and other countries there have trained over 100,000 Iraqi police and military, now, and will have trained more than 200,000 by the end of next year. We are in the process of transitioning operational control for security back to Iraq .
It will take time. It will not go with no hitches. This is not TV.
Remember, perspective is everything, and America ‘s schools teach too little history for perspective to be clear, especially in the young American mind.
The Cold war lasted from about 1947 at least until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Forty-two years. Europe spent the first half of the 19th century fighting Napoleon, and from 1870 to 1945 fighting Germany .
World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten year occupation, and the US still has troops in Germany and Japan. World War II resulted in the death of more than 50 million people, maybe more than 100 million people, depending on which estimates you accept.
The US has taken more than 2,000 KIA in Iraq in 3 years.
The US took more than 4,000 Killed in action on the morning of June 6, 1944, the first day of the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism. In WWII the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week for four years. Most of the individual battles of WWII lost more Americans than the entire Iraq war has done so far.
But the stakes are at least as high . . . a world dominated by representative governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal freedoms . or a world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement, by the Jihad, under the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic law).
I do not understand why the American Left does not grasp this. They favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and freedom, but evidently not for Iraqis. In America , absolutely, but nowhere else.
300,000 Iraqi bodies in mass graves in Iraq are not our problem. The US population is about twelve times that of Iraq , so let’s multiply 300,000 by twelve. What would you think if there were 3,600,000 American bodies in mass graves in America because of George Bush? Would you hope for another country to help liberate America ?
“Peace Activists” always seem to demonstrate where it’s safe, in America.
Why don’t we see Peace Activist demonstrating in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, North Korea, in the places in the world that really need peace activism the most?
The liberal mentality is supposed to favor human rights, civil rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc., but if the Jihad wins, wherever the Jihad wins, it is the end of civil rights, human rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc. Americans who oppose the liberation of Iraq are coming down on the side of their own worst enemy.
If the Jihad wins, it is the death of Liberalism. Everywhere the Jihad wins, it is the death of Liberalism. And American Liberals just don’t get it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Raymond S. Kraft is a writer and lawyer living in Northern California .

Lebanon Maps Tell The Story

click on each image to enlarge

Known Terror Cells In The US

link h/t Carolyn (lgf)

Iran, Venezuela Strike Alliance

Calling President Ahmadinejad “my brother”, Chavez stated that several oil contracts would be signed between Iranian and Venezuelan companies during his visit. Ahmadinejad on the other hand hailed his Venezuelan counterpart’s decisive stance” against Washington, noting that having him in Iran was “like a meeting between two brothers and comrades.” On Sunday, Iranian President will hand Mr. Chavez the “High Medal of the Islamic Republic of Iran” for his contribution to improving bilateral ties between the two countries in recent years. “Mr Chavez is very close to Iran due to his revolutionary standpoints and also the two countries of Iran and Venezuela have various common points on regional and global issues,” Ahmadinejad said. … Iran and Venezuela have joined forces with the aim of undermining the U.S. currency

read more at aljazeera

Interesting, isn’t it? You would think the commies might learn from history. The last time they tried an alliance with the nazis, it didn’t work out too well.

Nuke

update at 13:20

It just occurred to me that by his alliance with Iran, Chavez effectively removes himself from contention for the Idiotarian of the Year Award, and has instead, moved himself to contention for full memebership in the Axis of Evil. It is a shame, too, because of the strong 2nd place finish for last year’s award, Chavez had become an early favorite for this year’s extravaganza.

Christmas In July — Sunday Open

Santas from around the world gather in Copenhagen, Denmark Wednesday July 26, 2006. Six months ahead of Christmas, more than 150 Santas gathered in Denmark for the annual World Santa Claus Congress. (AP Photo/John McConnico)

Bush Is A Saint

Heisman Trophy winner Reggie Bush appears at a news conference at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Thursday, Jan. 12, 2006. Bush agreed to a six-year deal with the New Orleans Saints on Saturday night, July 29, 2006, and the Heisman Trophy winner will report to training camp Sunday, The Associated Press has learned. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon,file)

Suburban Warfare

From the Herald Sun,

“The images, obtained exclusively by the Sunday Herald Sun, show Hezbollah using high-density residential areas as launch pads for rockets and heavy-calibre weapons.
Dressed in civilian clothing so they can quickly disappear, the militants carrying automatic assault rifles and ride in on trucks mounted with cannon.
The photographs, from the Christian area of Wadi Chahrour in the east of Beirut, were taken by a visiting journalist and smuggled out by a friend. “

read more( h/t FreeRepublic)

Nuke

Are These The End Times?

Newsweek has a fascinating interview with the author of the best-selling Left Behind series, Tim LaHaye …

NEWSWEEK: How do you interpret what’s happening in the Middle East? Are you seeing signs that these are the end of days?
Tim LaHaye: Biblically speaking, the very nations that are mentioned in prophecy—and have been mentioned for 2,500 years as occupying the focus of the tension of the last days—are the very nations that are involved in the conflict right now. That may be one of the reasons there’s a sudden interest in bible prophecy because all of a sudden they realize end-time events could possibly take place and break forth right now.
NW: But first-century Christians believed that the end of the world could come during their lifetime.
TL: We call it the belief in the imminent return of Christ. It’s a motivational factor to serve the Lord and not let the world be so much with us that we don’t serve the Lord in the spiritual environment.
NW: Couldn’t almost anything then be taken as a clue that any point in history might be the end times?
TL: Down through the years that’s true. But never the accumulation of events as we have today. I have often said that no one knows the day nor the hour that Christ will come, but no generation has had so many signs of the times as our generation. We have more reason to believe that Christ could come in our lifetime than any generation before us.

read more of Brian Braiker’s interview

Nuke

Crab Fest 2006 – Bay St. Louis, Mississippi

Better Living Through Chemistry

World events in the past few weeks have been difficult to watch, even from the comfortable confines of my own private little corner of paradise.
So for a change of pace, here’s a recap of some great news from the corporate axis of eeeevil for you to ponder.

Dramatic results in treating Multiple Sclerosis . h/t SwampWoman
Four years ago, Karen Ayres was paralyzed from the neck down by multiple sclerosis.
“When I was lying in my hospital bed, not even able to twitch my toes, I was jealous of anyone who could walk,” she said.
But she started receiving an experimental combination of drugs, and within weeks, she was walking — right out of the hospital.
Australian Scientists May Have Found A Cure For Alzheimer’s Disease In a world first, a Melbourne research team has developed the once-a-day pill to combat the brain disease.Human trials of the drug start next month.
Cervical cancer vaccine will go on sale in weeks A vaccine against cervical cancer could go on sale within weeks.
Gardasil has proved 100 per cent effective against the two main strains of the virus which trigger most cervical cancers.

Nuke

send your questions to dearnuke@myway.com

NORAD Mountain: Going To Standby

A bus exits the NORAD Cheyenne Mountain Complex, on Cheyenne Mountain. The North American Aerospace Defense Command says it is virtually closing the secretive defense complex .

The Cheyenne Mountain complex was begun in 1961 and completed in 1966. It consists of 15 buildings (some resting on springs to minimize blast effects) in a 4 1/2 acre cavern that was bored out of the granite mountain. It became a fabled location in movies about Cold War confrontations with the old Soviet Union.
NORAD is not the sole tenant inside the mountain complex, though. Air Force Space Command – which monitors everything flying in space – is also housed there, but is looking at moving its central headquarters to Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, the Air Force’s premier missile-launch base.

read more

Nuke

How do you say “Hutzpah” in Farsi?

from Instapundit :
THIS WOULD SEEM TO ARGUE AGAINST THE THEORY THAT HEZBOLLAH IS WINNING: “Hezbollah leader said to be hiding in Iranian Embassy.”

The Iranians are no doubt confident that no one would be so depraved as to disregard the sanctity of an embassy . . . .

And, if anyone needs reminding, the photo is of the US Embassy, circa 1979, Tehran.

Nuke

Botox Burqa Babes

“Malaysia’s highest Islamic authority has banned Muslims from using Botox injections for cosmetic purposes.
The National Fatwa Council ruled on Thursday that the injections were not to be allowed because they contained some substances that were banned.The council technically has no legal power, but Muslims who go against their rulings are said to be committing sins.
It made its decision “after studying reports from abroad, local specialists and fatwas made in Middle Eastern countries”, council chairperson Shukor Husin told the newspaper.”

National Fatwah Council?
Holy sh*thouse mouse.
My question is this: burqua-clad women obviously have no need for botox. So, has there been a rash of muslm men getting botox injections?
ROFL!
Let the seething begin.

Nuke

Time To Crank Up Ol’ Sparky

It’s a Small World After All

“Like other rural residents of southern Mississippi, Jamie Lucenberg, 35, faced a huge cleanup job last fall in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. He needed a tractor fast to clear debris and trees from his 17-acre family farm, just 16 miles north of devastated Biloxi. “We literally had to cut our way up and down the blacktop roads,” he recalls.

But rather than buy an American-made John Deere or New Holland, brands he grew up with, Lucenberg chose a shiny red Mahindra 5500 made by India’s Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. “I have been around equipment all my life,” says Lucenberg, who also used the tractor to earn extra money clearing destroyed homes along the Gulf Coast. But for $27,000, complete with a front loader, the 54-hp Mahindra “is by far the best for the money. It has more power and heavier steel,” Lucenberg says. “When you lock it into four-wheel drive, you can move 3,000 pounds like nothing. That thing’s an animal.” The local dealership in nearby Saucier, Miss. (population 1,300), figures it has sold 300 Mahindras in the past four months.”

Emerging multinational corporations from China, Brazil, Russia, and India are fast becoming major players in the world business scene. The landscape is changing quickly. The worst thing we can do is to underestimate them.

read more at businessweek

Nuke

Katrinopoly

Here’s a great gift idea for your Trial Attorney, or for lawsuit fans everywhere.
And just in time for Christmas!

Different state editions of the ‘Hurricane Blame Game’ for each of the hurricane-prone states are offered, such as the Florida Edition(shown above). The players represent trial lawyers who compete to see whose law firm can collect the greatest wealth from filing lawsuits against ‘Big Oil’ companies, or against individual states that failed to respond to hurricane strikes.

…

The players do not have to prove that global warming caused individual hurricanes to be able to win lawsuits against the oil companies. “Just like in the real world, public displeasure with oil company profits after the 2005 hurricane season is expected to lead to successful lawsuits and large monetary awards, just like in our game”, explained Mr. Tarrow. “Every player ends up being a winner.”

read more at ecoEnquirer

Nuke

Atlas Live-blogs Bolton Hearings

Live-blogging the Bolton hearings.
here’s the link

Nuke

send your questions to dearnuke@myway.com

p.s.
some people think this may be a cynical attempt to drive up my traffic count by putting the picture of Atlas at the top.
(I’ll let you know when I check the sitemeter at the end of the day. Heh™)

A View of D Street

Keesler Air Force Base, Biloxi, Mississippi
August 29, 2005

Operation Spotlight: “We Made A Difference Out There”

Marines from 1st Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment, rescued three hostages and uncovered a large weapons cache, including a fully-assembled vehicle-borne improvised explosive device, during Operation Spotlight.

————————

Although the spotlight of the media has been on the turmoil in Bagdhad and the fighting in Lebanon, the US Marines are making progress in Iraq. This report from Marine Corps News;

“Right off the bat it didn’t start like a normal day for us,” said Sgt. Brian Vitale, a 24-year-old from Methuen, Mass., assigned to the battalion’s personnel security detachment. “When I saw almost a hundred vehicles and hundreds of anxious Marines departing friendly lines heading for the village, I knew the operation was going to be a good one.”Vitale was right. It wasn’t going to be just another mission for them. A huge convoy rolled into Fuhuylat before the sun could rise over the desert area south of Fallujah. Security was set for a forward command point, while immediately the operational force was making its way through the villages surrounding areas. …
“We came across some sand bags and decided to check them out,” explained Cpl. Russell P. Untiedt, a 22-year-old combat engineer from Excell, Mo. “I was amazed at what we had found. Pounds of explosive material used to make IED’s.”

Marines pressed forward, moving throughout several square miles, searching and waiting for insurgeant activity.“We pushed out to another spot and that’s when things got a little hairy,” said Sgt. Richard J. Chase, a turret gunner from Killingly, Conn., assigned to the PSD.Enemy mortar rounds began impacting around the group’s position.“My heart was pumping like it was going to come out of my chest when the mortars started coming in next to us,” said Cpl. Andy Melendez, a 25-year-old turret gunner, from Utica, N.Y. “I thought that the insurgents were going to zero-in on us at any moment,” Vitale added.

Miles away, Marine artillerymen were swinging their 155 mm M-198 howitzers and lobbing their own fire back at the insurgents.“Within seconds the radio traffic started going crazy and I learned the artillery Marines not only found them, but they had them zeroed-in,” Vitale said.Thuds from artillery pounded in the distance on the insurgent mortar positions.“That’s what it’s all about,” Melendez said. “We all support each other and without the artillery unit who knows what would have happened to us.”

Before the Marines could catch their breath, they were applauding the efforts of their counterparts as reports of more weapons caches were sent their way. Weapons Company Marines radioed that they captured armed men guarding three Iraqis tied up inside of an underground bunker.“It shows that they are not only terrorists, but they are animals,” Vitale said. “I mean to kidnap somebody and put them in the ground like that. It’s just not human.”

The operation pushed on for most of the day while “New England’s Own” Marines continued to capture enemy material and gather information from locals.“It feels good to be out their helping people, you know,” Untiedt said.“Anytime we take weapons out of insurgent hands it’s a successful mission, especially considering we saved three innocent lives,” said 25-year-old Lance Cpl. Christopher J. Dent, an imagery analyst from Boston. The mission was debriefed and the Marines all agreed the day was a success. “It was a great day,” Dent said. “With all of the weapons we found and rescuing three innocent people from the terrorists, we made a difference out there.”

read more at MCN

Great job, men. You make us very proud.

Nuke

Send your questions to dearnuke@myway.com

Americans: “Mindlessly Patriotic”

In a meeting that will go down in internet history, the United States government last night conceded that it can no longer expect to maintain its position as the ultimate authority over the internet.

Having been the internet’s instigator and, since 1998, its voluntary taskmaster, the US government finally agreed to transition its control over not-for-profit internet overseeing organisation ICANN, making the organisation a more international body.

However, assistant commerce secretary John Kneuer, the US official in charge of such matters, also made clear that the US was still determined to keep control of the net’s root zone file – at least in the medium-term.

Ultimately, what came out of a gathering of the (English-speaking) great and the good regarding the internet was two things:

1. That the US government recognises it has to transition its role if it wants to keep the internet in one piece (and it then has to sell that decision to a mindlessly patriotic electorate)
That ICANN has to open up and allow more people to decide its course if it is going to be allowed to become the internet’s main overseeing organisation

read more at The Register

You silly Americans are just too mindlessly patriotic to know what’s best for you.
If you folks thought Dubai Ports, and Immigration Reform are tough sells, you ain’t seen nothing! Heh™

Nuke

send your questions to dearnuke@myway.com

update 12:20

This article should make the reality-based community feel good about themselves, since they’re being lumped in one big category called “the electorate”, nobody can question their patriotism.

Actually, I imagine that the dems will come out in favor of this hornswaggle. It ought to rate right up there with Jimmy Carters’s giveaway of the Panama Canal.

The Real Thing

Mississippi Gulf Coast
September 2005

War of the Ages

Interesting comments at Jihad Watch.

Joe Farah looks at the historical record and concludes that, from a chronological standpoint and with an eye toward the Islamic jihad imperative, this is actually World War I. From WND, with thanks to Clearsight:

I think we’ve mis-numbered the global wars so far.
I see this conflict – one that has defined history for the last 1,400 years – as World War I. This is the real Great War. It’s far bigger than the conflicts that took a few years to settle. And it’s not going away anytime soon.

This war is so big, some people can’t even see it.
[…]
There exists a religious totalitarian ideology that seeks global hegemony.
What we see happening in the Middle East today is the struggle in a microcosm.
[…]
This is the way it has always been – since Muhammad first got his demonic visions in the desert. Ever since then, radical adherents to his message have been on the march – beheading, converting by sword, wiping out entire villages, raping and pillaging. Sometimes they are set back – for years, decades, centuries. Sometimes they are on the ascendancy – for years, decades, centuries.

This isn’t World War III or World War IV. This is World War I.

read more at Jihad Watch

It is time to clearly define the enemy.

Nuke

send yor questions to dearnuke@myway.com

The Bells of Christendom

To this day the bells of parish churches in Catholic countries toll at noon, and mark the hours of the day. But few know the origin….

A moving account of the story behind the struggle for independence and freedom from the muslim Turks in The Budapest Sun.

THE tolling of church bells at noon is a charming, characteristic element of Catholic European life and culture, deeply ingrained in our collective memory. Those who had to leave Hungary for faraway lands during WWII and 1956 seeking freedom and peace, listened for the comforting clang of the tolling of church bells that signal the hours of the day. In traditionally Protestant United States and Canada, they heard none. This left a great gap in their souls, since the tolling of bells at noon is especially meaningful for educated, traditional Hungarians.

The bells have tolled at noon since June 29, 1456, when Pope Callixtus III (Alfons de Borja) ordained bells to ring throughout the Christian world, in prayer against the Turks threatened invasion of Europe. It quickly became associated with the Hungarians’ victory on July 22, 1456 at Belgrade (known to Hungarians at the time as Nándorfehérvár). ~snip~

A century later, in another offensive, the Turks got as far as Vienna, were rebuffed, but succeeded in capturing and occupying the greater part of the Pannonian Basin – greater Hungary and part of Erdély. During their nearly three centuries of occupation, the Ottomans laid waste to everything in their path. They swept through Hungary, destroying churches, monasteries, libraries, and killing, pillaging and raping, while burning cities and farms. They carried off the women and children, with many of the boys raised as Janissaries. When the Holy League under Prince Eugene of Savoy finally liberated Hungary from the Turks in 1717, less than 1/8 of the population was left.

The Battle of Nándorfehérvár ranks among the great events in European history. Ever since, the bells of all churches throughout Christendom toll at noon, calling people to stop work, and pray…[and] reflect on their human condition, and lift up their hearts in thanksgiving for the grace of living in a part of the world no longer wracked by the threat of invasion and destruction.

read more at Ummah News Link

Nuke

send your questions to dearnuke@myway.com

Sensitivity

Leaders of American Muslim and Arab groups are urging the FBI to be sensitive when scrutinizing activities by the Islamic militant group Hezbollah on U.S. soil.

In a letter sent Wednesday, 25 groups, including the Islamic Society of North America and the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, urged FBI Director Robert Mueller instruct field offices and agents to avoid unwarranted profiling and to respect legal protections during questioning.

“We want the FBI, obviously, to protect our nation from those who do us harm, but we want them to focus on actual credible evidence of wrongdoing and not target people based on their ethnicity or religion or . . . political expression,” said Farhana Khera, head of Muslim Advocates, the lead drafter of the letter. ~snip~

Before the Sept. 11 attacks, Hezbollah was responsible for the deaths of more Americans than any other terrorist organization, including the 1983 attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. servicemen .

read more

Here’s a thought, Mr. Khera. When will moderate muslims, such as yourself, bring forward some actionable intelligence and credible evidence against those evil-doers who hide behind your faith and ethnicity?

We’re waiting.

Nuke

send your questions to dearnuke@myway.com