May 18, 2007

Goodbye, GOP

Ace's suggestion sounds about right to me:

Write, call, and fax your Congressmen and Senators -- especially Republican ones -- and let them know you will never vote for them or their party again should the immigration bill actually pass.

And let them know that you don't particularly trust them on national security, spending, or taxes either, so they won't wrongly believe those trump cards will still win the hand for them. Let them know if this isn't scuttled -- if the border isn't secured first, verifiably, before any amnesty legislation passes -- you will no longer vote for, volunteer for, or donate to any Republican candidate for any office ever again.

Not a dime, not a vote.

It's time to let them know they're walking into the abyss. Inform them in no uncertain terms that they are attempting to purchase the votes of new "Americans" who split 5:1 Democratic by losing your reliably conservative vote forever.

I've never felt I owed anything to the Republican party.

I told my Senators Elizabeth Dole and Richard Burr last night:

Senator, my name is Bob Owens. I run a conservative political blog called Confederate Yankee (http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/) that 90,000-100,000 opinionmakers visit each month.

Tonight, I will tell my readers, conservative Republicans, fence-sitting conservative Democrats and moderates, that if the Senate passes the pending illegal alien amnesty bill, that I will formally abandon the Republican party, as it has abandoned me. I will then ask them to do the same. I will ask that they refuse to contribute to Republican campaigns. I will ask them to stay at home and refuse to vote for Republican candidates, or even consider voting for Democrats in protest in 2008.

I am not alone.

Kill this amnesty bill

But you know what? I lied.

There is no "if, then" here. There are no longer any conditionals left. I'm simple done with today's iteration of the "Grand Old Party." This amnesty bill was merely the straw that broke the camel's back.

I've just downloaded and printed my North Carolina Voter Registration Application/Update form.

I'm re-registering as "unaffiliated."

Goodbye, GOP.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:21 AM | Comments (32) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

May 17, 2007

AG Gone?

If the Paper Chase is correct, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez may soon be on his way out:

Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, predicted Thursday that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will resign from his post at the conclusion of current investigations into the allegedly-political firings of federal prosecutors. Specter's comments followed others made by Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) Wednesday, who suggested that by remaining in his position, Gonzales was harming the Justice Department. Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS) concurred, telling the Associated Press that it was noteworthy that Gonzales is spending more time on Capitol Hill defending himself than working as the Attorney General.

I'll be depressed when this happens.

Really.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 05:33 PM | Comments (17) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Waiting for Sderot

Did you hear about the high school hit yesterday by a pair of missiles?

Of course you didn't. It was an Israeli school in Sderot that was struck, and the missiles were fired by Hamas.

A quick Google search of news outlets shows that this kind of school violence is apparently not newsworthy by the standards of our gatekeeper media.

To be fair, Google News did not capture all mentions of the story (NOTE: see update below).

The New York Times mentioned the attack in passing in the ninth paragraph of this story, which was focused almost exclusively on Israel's retaliatory air strike against Hamas commanders.

CNN followed a similar pattern, kindly donating a few words about the high school attack in the tenth paragraph of a story focused on Israel's air strike and the Hamas-Fatah not-civil war.

Only CBN covered the attack on the high school with any depth at all:

Palestinian terrorists in Gaza launched at least 11 Kassam rockets at the besieged Israeli city of Sderot Thursday, hitting a high school and a greenhouse in another Israeli community in the western Negev. Scores of rockets have fallen in the area this week, forcing thousands of residents to seek shelter elsewhere.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has promised a "harsh and severe" response to the rocket attacks, which could include the renewal of targeted assassinations of terrorist groups in Gaza or eventually even a military reinvasion of the Gaza Strip.

Two rockets hit the high school in the Shaar HaNegev Regional Council as students met in fortified classrooms to take their matriculation exams in mathematics.

The Kassams damaged an unfortified section of the building and lightly injured two people. Several others suffered shock.

Rueters' Nidal al-Mughrabi completely neglected to mention the attack on the high school, even though his story was side-barred by these pictures of the attack.

Caption: An Israeli firefighter surveys the scene after a rocket, fired by Palestinian militants, landed in a high school classroom in the southern town of Sderot May 17, 2007. REUTERS/Gil Cohen Magen

Caption: Israeli students embrace during a rocket attack at their high school in the southern town of Sderot May 17, 2007. REUTERS/Gil Cohen Magen

Caption: Israeli students hold their hands up to their faces on the scene of a rocket attack at their high school in the southern town of Sderot May 17, 2007. REUTERS/Gil Cohen Magen

The news outlets of the world apparently have little interest in the attack on an Israeli school, but instead bend over backwards to write more than 2,500 3,000 stories about the results of the Israeli air force targeting Hamas leaders who are blamed for ordering the attacks on Sderot.

Update: A reader at Wizbang! noted that the Google search I ran for "Sderot high school missile" was incorrect, as a rocket, not a missile, was used by Hamas. I then ran a Google News search on "Sderot high school rocket," and the search hits jumped dramatically... no, not really.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:03 AM | Comments (31) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Back to the Grassy Knoll

Take this for what it's worth:

In a collision of 21st-century science and decades-old conspiracy theories, a research team that includes a former top FBI scientist is challenging the bullet analysis used by the government to conclude that Lee Harvey Oswald alone shot the two bullets that struck and killed President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

The "evidence used to rule out a second assassin is fundamentally flawed," concludes a new article in the Annals of Applied Statistics written by former FBI lab metallurgist William A. Tobin and Texas A&M University researchers Cliff Spiegelman and William D. James.

The researchers' re-analysis involved new statistical calculations and a modern chemical analysis of bullets from the same batch Oswald is purported to have used. They reached no conclusion about whether more than one gunman was involved, but urged that authorities conduct a new and complete forensic re-analysis of the five bullet fragments left from the assassination in Dallas.

[snip]

Tobin, Spiegelman and James said they bought the same brand and lot of bullets used by Oswald and analyzed their lead using the new standards. The bullets from that batch are still on the market as collectors' items.

They found that the scientific and statistical assumptions Guinn used -- and the government accepted at the time -- to conclude that the fragments came from just two bullets fired from Oswald's gun were wrong.

"This finding means that the bullet fragments from the assassination that match could have come from three or more separate bullets," the researchers said. "If the assassination fragments are derived from three or more separate bullets, then a second assassin is likely," the researchers said. If the five fragments came from three or more bullets, that would mean a second gunman's bullet would have had to strike the president, the researchers explained.

If I'm reading this right, there is no new evidence of a second shooter, just a criticism of the bullet analysis used at the time.

How they can jump from questioning the methodology, to postulating that there may have been three or more bullets and a second gunman, should be a red flag. They have no data to support their third bullet/second gunman theories.

Retro-Trutherism. How chic.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:47 AM | Comments (24) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

When Does the Gaza Conflict Become a Civil War?

This sure sounds like one to me:

Gaza City was shuttered on Wednesday as gunmen took over rooftops and top-floor apartments. Most everyone else huddled fearfully indoors on the fourth day of factional Palestinian fighting that is drawing in the Israeli military.

At least 19 Palestinians were killed on Wednesday — more than 40 have been killed over the past four days — in fighting between Fatah and Hamas as their unity government fractures and rage rises on both sides.

"We want this to end, because what's happening endangers not just the unity government, but the Palestinian nation and cause," said Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian negotiator and an aide to President Mahmoud Abbas.

Hamas attacked symbols of Fatah power in Gaza, including the home of the chief security commander. He was not there, but six bodyguards were killed.

The Los Angeles Times report is equally dire:

Rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah wage battles in the streets of the Gaza Strip. Three truces have come and gone. In four days, at least 40 people have been killed, including 14 on Wednesday, as an increasingly violent struggle threatens to bring down what had been touted as a Palestinian "unity" government.

When their new political power-sharing coalition was unveiled in March, amid smiles and congratulations, leaders of Fatah and Hamas pledged to put an end to their fighting. But the ferocious violence shredding the Gaza Strip this week has made a mockery of the agreement. Rank-and-file members of the two factions are once again battling for supremacy on the streets, as ordinary residents, worn down by years of economic and social chaos, remain trapped in their homes.

Are Palestinians in a civil war?

Wikipedia defines a "civil war" as:

A civil war is a war in which parties within the same culture, society or nationality fight against each other for the control of political power.

Some civil wars are categorized as revolutions when major societal restructuring is a possible outcome of the conflict. An insurgency, whether successful or not, is likely to be classified as a civil war by some historians if, and only if, organized armies fight conventional battles. Other historians state the criterion for a civil war is that there must be prolonged violence between organized factions or defined regions of a country (conventionally fought or not).

The definition provided by Wikipedia is interesting when applied to the quite different conflicts in Iraq and Gaza.

The conflict in Iraq is routinely referred to as a civil war by politicians and journalists, even though doing so relies on the debated insurgency definition above. Clearly, the Iraqi conflict, while certainly involving an insurgency and intertwined sectarian conflicts, have never seen the widespread use of organized armies fighting conventional battles. Most of the sectarian violence is typically composed of guerillas (Sunni or Shia) attacking primarily civilian targets with mortar fire, IEDs and bombs, along with kidnappings, murders, and ambushes.

Calling the Iraqi sectarian conflict a civil war thus relies upon a debated definition.

The conflict in Gaza, however, seems too far more closely fit the agreed upon definition of a civil war. Fatah and Hamas are well organized, typically wear something of a uniform (if not consistently), fight small scale but typically intense conventional battles, and clearly fight for political power as their primary goal, and usually against recognized targets such as enemy units, commanders, and positions.

Shouldn't the Palestinian "factional fighting" thus easily earn the definition of a "civil war?"

If politicians and the media can used a debated definition to declare that Iraq is in a civil war, then they should certainly consider the near letter-perfect and undisputed definition of a "civil war" to describe the battle between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza.

The Palestinians in Gaza seem to be clearly involved in a bloody civil war. I'm curious as to why politicians and the media won't provide the proper definition for this conflict that it so clearly deserves.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:45 AM | Comments (19) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

May 16, 2007

American Legion to John Edwards: Don't Politicize Memorial Day

I think this one stands on its own.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:30 PM | Comments (17) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Getting the War Wrong... Again

A chronic problem of news agencies reporting from Iraq is their apparent inability to separate sectarian violence--violence committed by one sect on another, typically Sunni to Shia, or Shia to Sunni--with the terrorist attacks instigated by al Qaeda and aligned groups.

al Qaeda will attack against anyone and everyone else, including their Sunni co-religionists. It is this propensity towards terrorism for terrorism's sake that has spurred both the Anbar and Diyala Awakening movements.

AFP today provides a prime example of the media mislabeling an act of violence, turning a terrorist attack into a sectarian attack, even when their own report indicates they got it wrong:

Insurgent bombers detonated a van bomb in a crowded Iraqi market, police said on Wednesday, as Shiite militiamen clashed with police and the US military hunted for three kidnapped comrades.

The latest apparently sectarian attack ripped through a Shiite enclave northeast of Baghdad late on Tuesday, killing at least 32 civilians and wounding 65 more, according to local security and municipal officials.

Iraqi officials said the bomb had been packed with tanks of chlorine gas, but the US military said a team sent to the scene could not confirm this.

Other news organizations are also reporting on this story, and all are mentioning the still unconfirmed reports that chlorine gas canisters were used in the attack.

Now, if true, who has a M.O. of using chlorine-laced conventional bombs against civilians?

Why, I just don't know.

/sarcasm

If you click through the links, you'll notice that al Qaeda and it's umbrella group, the Islamic State of Iraq, have detonated these weapons against Sunni and Shia civilians, and government forces alike.

While disputed, the claims of chlorine in the explosives would actually point away from a sectarian attack, towards a terrorist attack by al Qaeda or its terrorist allies.

You would hope AFP and other news organizations would pick up on things like that, and yet here they go, arguing against their own reporting, getting it wrong... again.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:05 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Storm Builds

Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran.

That will be the take-away for most on this Telegraph article published today, and while that is an extreme bastardization of what former ambassador to the United Nations John Bolten actually said--he actually advocated an escalating course of significant economic sanctions, regime change, and the use of force only if nothing else works--the headline of "We must attack Iran before it gets the bomb" does accurately describe what appears at this point to be the probable end game.

Melanie Phillips does an admirable job of almost describing the stakes:

The choice is not between a negotiated peace with Iran and a war with appalling risks. It is a choice between a war with appalling risks and an Iran that will hold the world to nuclear ransom, having destroyed Israel as a throat-clearing exercise. It is a choice between war with Iran, and war with a nuclear Iran; war on our terms, and war on Iran’s terms; war in which we take the initiative and thus have every prospect of winning, and war in which Iran holds the trump card, which means we have a near certainty of losing.

At the same time, as Bolton also emphasised, making such a grim choice must be a last resort. All-out war with Iran is a prospect fraught with appalling perils and uncertainties. Only a fool would embark upon such a war precipitately. But only a fool would rule it out as a possibly inevitable last resort. The problem is that the EU — and parts of the US government — are behaving as if such a last resort is totally unthinkable. This has powerfully undermined the diplomacy, since Iran clearly believes — and with good reason — that the west simply isn’t serious about enforcing its will and will never go to war against Iran in any circumstances.

I this Phillips is right on the generalities of her statement, but would disagree with her comment that, "Iran that will hold the world to nuclear ransom, having destroyed Israel as a throat-clearing exercise."

Israel has developed an air force over the past decade with the express purpose of targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, which explains their purchase of long-range F-15I "Ra'am" and F-16I "Sufa" strike fighters. Israel has purchased 25 of the F-15I "Ra'am" strike fighters and 102 F-16I "Sufa" strike fighters, the last of which will be delivered in 2008. These aircraft have the capability of hitting Iranian targets without in-flight refueling, and with in-flight refueling, could target any location in that country. Both aircraft are capable of carrying "bunkerbuster" bombs thought to have been purchased from the United States, and would almost certainly be designed to carry the 60-85 nuclear weapons (according to the DIA) thought to be in Israeli inventories.

A U.S. Army paper cites the data of a fired Israeli nuclear technician, Mordechai Vanunu, who went public with his information in 1985, which seems to indicate:

...a sophisticated nuclear program, over 200 bombs, with boosted devices, neutron bombs, F-16 deliverable warheads, and Jericho warheads.

The same paper also indicates that Israel's military may already have official government authorization for a retaliatory nuclear strike if Israel was struck first with nuclear weapons.

Iran may very well destroy Israel as a nation in a nuclear first strike, but Israel's nuclear arsenal would answer holocaust with a holocaust, and as noted yesterday, the Hojjatieh cult running Iran may very well be depending on an Israel response to force a messianic return.

Iran will either be stripped of its nuclear weapons program, or Iran (and other countries) will be stripped of life.

While the headline was perhaps a bit misleading, it was nonetheless true: if economic sanctions and regime change efforts fail, we must attack Iran before it gets the bomb to avoid the deaths of tens of millions.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:48 AM | Comments (26) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

An Accidental Interview

I had an interesting twenty-minute face-to-face conversation with a Spec Ops soldier named "K.C." last night.

K.C. first jumped into Iraq on March 26, 2003 with the 173rd Airborne Brigade, in the largest combat air drop since WWII. He most recently served in a six-man Long Range Surveillance (LRS) unit. The LRS are direct descendents of the famed LRRP "A-teams" of the Vietnam War era.

He was careful not to mention assignments or duty locations, but based upon some of the things he stated in our conversation, I gather that he has served extensively in Iraq, and perhaps in Afghanistan as well. He is presently on leave.

During the course of our conversation, K.C. told me the same things I've heard time and again from soldiers at nearby Fort Bragg, airmen from Pope AFB, and the occasion Marines from Camp Lejune and MCAS Cherry Point.

Stop me if you've heard these before.

"The war you see in the media is not the war we are fighting."

If he has his way, K.C. would boot all media out of Iraq. Like others soldiers and Marines before him, he noted to problem of news organizations basing many of their stories based upon anecdotal conversations from locals with their own agendas, while ignoring the testimony of U.S. soldiers, or sometimes cherry-picking comments and dowdifying them to the point that they no longer reflected what the soldier actually said, reflected the battles they've fought, or the experiences they've had. Reporters have alsoeither ignored the physical evidence supporting soldiers contentions, or have been too ignorant or biased to assimilate the information.

K.C.'s observation reminds me of a conversation I had with a soldier who fought in Ramadi some months ago, who spoke of an attack in his area that left civilians dead. The media blamed the deaths on a firefight involving U.S. forces, even though it was 7.62x39mm shell casings (the cartridge used almost universally by Arab militaries, militias, and insurgent groups) and expended RPG fragments found at the scene of the attack, and no signs of American involvement were present.

K.C. related one particular story that obviously still bothered him, that of a school hit by insurgents during the early days of the war. The insurgents killed a number of children, and the media accounts he later saw attributed it to a U.S. airstrike.

I guess that even though the AP has stopped using his name since he was exposed as a fraud, Jamil Not-Hussein still really gets around.

I told him about milblogs, maintained by the active duty soldiers and veterans, and how I thought that if the military was smart, they'd make an effort to channel more information through them to bypass the media that he and other soldiers distrust so much, enabling soldiers to directly tell their stories and experiences to the world. He liked the concept quite a bit, even though he stated he couldn't write about what he personally did.

I hope any military brass that happen to be reading this listens.

"G--D--- Democrats"

Like every single soldier, airman and Marine I've talked to, K.C. is disgusted with Democrat politicians. He pulls no punches: he considers them supporters of terrorism. Period.

This is a sentiment I've also heard before, and interestingly enough, it seems, at least among those I've talked with, that the infantry soldiers and Marines who have spent the most time on the ground feel this the strongest.

Of course, this could have several reasons. The frontline soldiers have more personally invested blood, sweat and tears in the war, have lost friends, and have killed men in Iraq. They also interact with the Iraqi people, and would presumably know them and the culture better than support troops or the airmen I've spoken with. Some seemed to like the Iraqi people, some did not, but to a man, they all wanted to continue the mission and were visibly, coldly (and sometimes not so coldly) angry with Democratic attempts to lose the war.

I shook hands with K.C., wished him well, and told him to keep his head down as he prepares for his next deployment in Our Children's Children's War.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:46 AM | Comments (26) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

May 15, 2007

Little Love For the Departed: A Roundup of Liberal Reaction to Jerry Falwell's Passing

I'm not a fan of Jerry Falwell, who died today shortly after being found unconscious in his office at Liberty University at the age of 73. That said, I am quite disgusted with the pathological hatred displayed by liberal bloggers in their reactions to his death.

Wonkette:

Jerry Falwell collapsed in his office this morning, and he’s in the hospital, and he’s “gravely unresponsive.”

At a time like this, people deserve sympathy and good wishes ... except for Falwell, who is an evil sonofabitch.

John Edward's former campaign blogger Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon:

The gates of hell swing open and Satan welcomes his beloved son

No word yet on whether or not that position is shared by John and Elizabeth Edwards campaign, or how Edward's staff will spin this into a fundraising opportunity.

Tapped goes for a "twofer" slam:

I'm waiting for Pat Robertson to find a way to blame his rival's death on either feminists or witchcraft.

Daily Kos:

The hagiography to cover up a history of hate and bigotry has officially begun.

A litany of hate at the Democratic Underground.

The "Blog of the Moderate Left" is surprisingly immoderate:

I wish I believed in Hell, so I could imagine Falwell enduring the eternal torment he wished on so many.

Technorati is tracking far more venom than I even want to contemplate, and as always, Allahpundit and Newsbuckit have running updates to capture the full flavor of the Democratic hatefest.

Perhaps I'm just blind by my own biases, but I don't recall similar widespread, triumphant glee and gloating from conservatives the last time a prominent liberal activist or politician died.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:27 PM | Comments (68) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Liberal Anti-Gun Hysteria on Parade

In New Jersey:

New Jersey moved yesterday toward becoming the second state to outlaw the powerful .50-caliber rifle that critics contend could potentially be used in terrorist attacks.

The guns, which resemble large hunting rifles, are accurate up to 11/2 miles, and opponents contend that they could be used to penetrate an airliner or ignite chemical plants, rail tank cars and refineries.

California is the only state with a similar law.

Legislation that would make New Jersey follow suit was released yesterday by an Assembly committee and can now be considered by the full Assembly.

The proposed ban is getting renewed attention after federal investigators announced this week that they had foiled an alleged terrorist plot by six men who were planning to attack Fort Dix.

"As unnerving as the Fort Dix terrorism plot was, it could have been all the more worse if the weapons of choice for alleged assailants had been .50-caliber assault guns instead of AK-47s," said Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D., Mercer).

This is a man holding a .50-caliber rifle (source).

You'll note that the rifle in question is a Steyr HS50, a 28.5-pound, single-shot rifle that weighs roughly 30 pounds with a scope and one cartridge in the chamber. Because of its weight, I assure you he did not hold this pose for very long.

This is what that rifle looks like with a scope.

Let's fisk this anti-gun tirade on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis.

New Jersey moved yesterday toward becoming the second state to outlaw the powerful .50-caliber rifle that critics contend could potentially be used in terrorist attacks.

Lets go past things that "could potentially be used in terrorist attacks," and actually look at thinks that have been used in terrorist attacks:

• shoes
• electrical tape
• fertilizer
• all fuels
• hydrogen peroxide
• and on, and on, and on...

There has never been any sort of documented crime committed in the United States with a .50 BMG rifle.

The guns, which resemble large hunting rifles, are accurate up to 11/2 miles, and opponents contend that they could be used to penetrate an airliner or ignite chemical plants, rail tank cars and refineries.

Actually, they are large hunting rifles, as this Field and Stream article attests. Mechanically, they are no different than any other rifles, other than scaling to match size of the cartridge they use.

Yes, opponents do contend that .50 BMG rifles could be used to penetrate an airliner, but the simple fact of the matter is that virtually any bullet, from the lowly .22 long rifle to all handgun and rifle cartridges will penetrate the very thin aluminum skill of an airliner.

As for the size of the hole such a bullet would cause, here is a high-tech rendering of the size of the hole a .50-caliber rifle would make (left) versus the extremely common .30-caliber rifle (right).

You'll note that if you hold your thumb up next to the .50 "hole" that it is roughly the size of your thumbnail. By comparison, most broadhead arrows have a cutting diameter of more than one inch.

.50 BMG bullets carry far more energy than most rifle bullets, but commercially available bullets are not explosive, and military API (armor-piercing incendiary) cartridges do not function well in these precision rifles. Combine those facts that with the near impossibility of being able to hit a distant moving aircraft with a single bullet from a 30-pound single shot rifle, and the case made by hysterical and ignorant gun control advocates is laughable.

Chemical plants and rail cars?

Not a chance:

When asked about the alleged threat of .50cal rifles to his railcars, Mr. Darymple said that they have long tested their cars against almost every form of firearm, to include .50BMG and larger. When asked what happens when a .50 hits one of his tanks he said with a shrug "It bounces off." He went on to point out that railcars are designed to survive the force of derailing, and collision with other railcars at travel speeds. By comparison the impact of a bullet, any bullet, is like a mosquito bite.

Refineries? Perhaps possible, but nearly any other form of weapon would be far more concealable, far cheaper, and far more effective.

California is the only state with a similar law.

Legislation that would make New Jersey follow suit was released yesterday by an Assembly committee and can now be considered by the full Assembly.

And how well is that law working?

To date, both the .416 Barrett and .510 DTC Europ have been developed to completely invalidate the ban California passed and New Jersey is trying to implement. There is an upside: these cartridges are said by some to be even more accurate than the .50 BMG they replace.

The proposed ban is getting renewed attention after federal investigators announced this week that they had foiled an alleged terrorist plot by six men who were planning to attack Fort Dix.

Irrelevant, anyone?

New Jersey is also overrun by the mentally ill. Quick, ban moose hunting!

And the closing quote from the article, provided by one of New Jersey's mentally ill:

"As unnerving as the Fort Dix terrorism plot was, it could have been all the more worse if the weapons of choice for alleged assailants had been .50-caliber assault guns instead of AK-47s," said Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D., Mercer).

Mr. Gusciora, most .50 rifles sold in the United States are single-shot rifles, and because of their excessive weight, are almost always fired prone. Perhaps a New Jersey Democrat would rather our soldiers be attacked with a lightweight, far more concealable fully-automatic weapon capable of firing hundreds of rounds per minute as the terrorists intended, but I promise, that to a man, any knowledgeable soldier would rather be attacked with a ponderous .50-caliber single-shot rifle than an AK-47.

Thus ends today's lesson.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:46 PM | Comments (24) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Remembering a Fallen Soldier

I sincerely hope that I'm readying Steve Clemons wrong (my bold):

But this young man did serve his nation -- but his death is so incredibly tragic, like the others -- but his even more because his well-respected father has been working hard to end this horrible, self-damaging crusade. It's incredibly sad.

Is Clemon's really saying that this son's loss is more tragic than others, because the father shares Clemon's anti-war beliefs?

Jules Crittenden, who knew Professor Bacevich, offers a much more fitting tribute.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:57 AM | Comments (24) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Eschatology of the Coming Nuclear War

U.S. News and World Report has a short post up concerning the simulation of nuclear detonations in the Middle East:

A simulation has determined that any major use of nuclear forces in the Middle East in the next decade would most likely be "existential," meaning that an attack would amount to an effort to destroy a nation and the ability of its people to ever recover from a nuclear exchange. The briefers determined that Israel would be vulnerable to such attacks--and so would any Iranian attacker. The simulation was developed by the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., to examine the nuclear dynamics likely to develop in the Middle East between 2010 and 2020.

"In fact," noted a Center for Strategic and International Studies summary of the briefing released today, "a nation like Iran--with so much of its economy, culture, and government concentrated in Tehran and a few other cities, might prove to be far more vulnerable to the forces Israel could develop than Israel would be to the forces Iran could hope to deploy" until the end of the 2010-2020 time period. The briefing covers the use of nuclear ground bursts, fallout, longer-term death rates, and population-killing strikes. Other targets will likely include oil and gas distribution and loading facilities, desalination and water purification plants, electric power plants, and refineries--targets likely to affect the general population.

First, is there ever a "minor" use of nuclear forces?

But that isn't my main focus here.

The writer of this piece seems to imply that Iran's vulnerability to a nuclear exchange would keep it from starting a nuclear exchange with Israel. To make such an assumption, if this is the writer's intent, is a failure of cultural understanding.

It would perhaps be fair to apply Western standards and values to the state of Israel, as so much of the Israeli population emigrated to Israel from western nations, and their society and government hold with Westernized cultural values, but to attempt to apply those same cultural values to an Iranian government run by this mullacracy is to avoid the plain fact that Iran's leaders have values shaped by a radical theology all their own.

The Iranian government--and hence its rapidly expanding nuclear weapons program, is slaved to the beliefs of a radical Shia sect called the Hojjatieh, a cult within Shia Islam so radical that it was outlawed in 1983 by Ayatollah Khomeini.

As notes the Persian Journal:

According to Shi'ite Muslim teaching, Abul-Qassem Mohammad, the 12th leader whom Shi'ites consider descended from the Prophet Mohammed, disappeared in 941 but will return at the end of time to lead an era of Islamic justice.

"Our revolution's main mission is to pave the way for the reappearance of the 12th Imam, the Mahdi," Ahmadinejad said in the speech to Friday Prayers leaders from across the country.

"Therefore, Iran should become a powerful, developed and model Islamic society."

"Today, we should define our economic, cultural and political policies based on the policy of Imam Mahdi's return. We should avoid copying the West's policies and systems," he added, newspapers and local news agencies reported.

Ahmadinejad refers to the return of the 12th Imam, also known as the Mahdi, in almost all his major speeches since he took office in August.

A September address to the U.N. General Assembly contained long passages on the Mahdi which confused Western diplomats and irked those from Sunni Muslim countries who believe in a different line of succession from Mohammed.

This fascination has prompted wild stories to circulate.

Presidential aides have denied a popular rumor that he ordered his cabinet to write a letter to the 12th Imam and throw it down a well near the holy city of Qom where thousands of pilgrims come each week to pray and drop messages to the Imam.

But what really has tongues wagging is the possibility that Ahmadinejad's belief in the 12th Imam's return may be linked to the supposed growing influence of a secretive society devoted to the Mahdi which was banned in the early 1980s.

Founded in 1953 and used by the Shah of Iran to try to eradicate followers of the Bahai faith, the Hojjatieh Society is governed by the conviction that the 12th Imam's return will be hastened by the creation of chaos on earth.

How seriously should we take the ruling Hojjatieh sect?

The executive summary of one study provided to the U.S. military by a strategic planning contractor stated:

Ultra-religious Shia clerics and Ahmadinejad are dedicated to the near-term messianic return of the 12th Imam via the creation of an apocalypse.

I don't think it gets much clearer than that.

The contention is that not only do the Hojjatieh anticipate the "creation of chaos on earth," they actively seek to create an apocalypse. Based upon their public pronoucements and nuclear weapons research, it seems quite clear that their preferred method is to instigate a nuclear attack against Israel. They know that Israel will respond with a retaliatory nuclear strike of their own, and are in fact, are more than likely counting on it.

It is this Israeli return nuclear strike on Tehran that Ahmadinejad and the Hojjatieh are counting upon to trigger the Madhi's return.

Iran and Ahmadinejad have been very clear in their desire to see Israel "wiped off the map," with multiple threatening pronouncements, and Ahmadinejad himself seems quite convinced that he is on a mission from Allah.

Mortal concerns and fears have little importance for an Iranian leadership seemingly bent on using a nuclear war to force a messianic return. Tens of millions may perish because a once-outlawed cult thinks a nuclear war will convince a four-year-old messiah to crawl out of a well in which he's been hiding 1,066 years.

I sadly fear that Democratic Party principles of avoidance will force our government to continue to discount the Iranian nuclear threat until after Iranian missiles are already arcing in towards Tel Aviv, at which point any further action against Iran will be addressed to a relative handful of survivors.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:41 AM | Comments (27) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Pour Another Glass

Your unhinged Democratic leadership in action.

I don't know if McDermott actually believes that 500 American soldiers were killed or wounded in a single attack and that those mass casualties were covered up by the government, but the fact remains that he is obviously quite willing to float such a bizarre, unfounded allegation and actually push for an investigation.

Clearly, trutherism hysteria of various sorts has taken over a substantial portion of the Democratic/progressive political movement, from young activists all the way up to senior legislators.

Perhaps we can add McDermott to the Kool Aid campaign.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:39 AM | Comments (14) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Bittersweet: A Nightmare Over

Last night, Vernon Pardue fulfilled a promise he made to me in late 2005. Shortly before 10:00PM, I got an email from him:

Hello Bob

Can you give e a call ASAP
I need to talk to you.

On October 19, 2005, I wrote one of the most difficult blog entries I've ever had to write, Torn.

I wrote then:

Law enforcement officers, like members of the military, firefighters, paramedics and other first responders are the sheepdogs that keep the wolves at bay. These men and women and their families make sacrifices every day that those of us they protect will never fully understand.

Because of all that these families do for us, when I find myself squaring off against the bereaved widow of a law enforcement officer killed in the line of duty, I do not enter into such opposition lightly.

On February 12, 2004, Wake County Sheriff's investigator Mark Tucker was gunned down by Matthew Charles Grant, a felon who didn't want to go back to prison for being the possession of a weapon. Deputy Tucker's widow, backed by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, filed suit against Cary Jewelry & Pawn in October of 2005, alleging that:

...Cary Jewelry & Pawn, of Cary, North Carolina, negligently and illegally sold the murder weapon to an obviously dangerous person.

In November 2003, Van McQueen and Matthew Grant went to Cary Jewelry & Pawn to buy a firearm. McQueen planned to purchase a firearm as a straw buyer for Grant, because Grant was a felon prohibited from buying guns, and in return Grant promised to buy McQueen a beer. McQueen was mentally deficient and was obviously intoxicated, and the shop's clerk refused to sell him a gun. Three days later, McQueen returned to the pawn shop with Grant, again wanting to buy a firearm. Although his home address was a local mission, McQueen had $120 in cash to buy the weapon. This time, even though the same clerk who had seen McQueen intoxicated three days earlier was on duty, the shop completed the all-cash sale. McQueen then transferred the shotgun to Grant, who used it to shoot Investigator Tucker in the face, killing him. Grant was arrested, convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Investigator Tucker.

"The evidence in this case clearly shows that the gun dealer irresponsibly and illegally sold a shotgun to a man it knew to be dangerous," said Daniel R. Vice, Staff Attorney with the Brady Center. "The gun dealer chose to make a quick buck rather than protect public safety; greed and recklessness caused the death of a brave law enforcement officer."

That was according to the Brady Press release.

I questioned the Brady Center's claim, and then did a bit of investigative journalism, publishing my findings several weeks later in a post called Lawyers, Guns, and Money. My investigation showed that several of the allegations made by the Brady Center against Cary Jewelry and Pawn and its owner, Vernon Pardue, in their civil case, were falsified.

Vandorance McQueen was not mentally deficient, did not live in a mission, and did not buy the firearms three days after being turned down.

After I spoke with Pardue about this case in November of 2005, he promised he'd get back in touch with me with any major developments. He made good on his promise.

Last night, Mr. Pardue let me know that Brady has decided to drop its civil suit against him. He perhaps gives me too much credit in thanking me for my writing on the case. It was the blatant falsehoods of the Brady Center case, and the opposition of Sherrif Tucker's blood relatives, that probably had far more influence on the decision to drop the case, as Dan Tucker, Sheriff Tucker's youngest brother, noted in a comment on November 22, 2005:

Hello CY, I am really glad I finally found a website that has been following this nonsense and has made sense from it. I am the youngest brother of Mark Tucker. I would like to publicize the fact that Mark's immediate famiy (by that I mean blood family) have absolutely nothing to with this frivilous law suit against Cary Jewelry and Pawn. We found out about it the same way most of Wake County did, via the local news. I was in the courtroom last year everyday of the trial. I know for a fact that if the pawn shop had done anything wrong, the DA's office would have charged them with criminal charges. I have personally been to see Vernan Pardue to apologize for what he is going to go through and to let him know that I hold no grudges. I would stop this if I could and believe me I've tried. And I am sure Mark would not go along with what is happening in this case. In my opinion this lawsuit is purely for publicity and exposure.

I held then, and still believe now, that the Brady Center was not interested in anything remotely like justice for the murder of Sheriff's Investigator Tucker. Justice was served by a court of law. Matthew Charles Grant is in prison. I strongly suspect that the Brady Center and its lawyers were cynically using the death of a brave law enforcement officer and the grief of his family to push a political agenda. It is a cruel, callous organization that would pursue such a manipulative course of action.

My heart goes out to the Tucker family. They will never be whole again. But I am thankful that Vernon Pardue can finally put this politically-generated nightmare behind him. If I did indeed play a small role in stopping this frivolous case, I'm thankful. Creating more misery and destroying more lives because of tragedy is not justice.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:20 AM | Comments (14) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

May 14, 2007

John Edwards: Support the Troops By Undermining Their Mission

On a day set aside to honor those who have fallen defending liberty, Democrat John Edwards is determined to undermine the mission of those currently at war:

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards is calling on his supporters to turn this year's Memorial Day into a day of antiwar activism, saying that the best way to honor the troops is to demand an end to the Iraq war.

"Each of us has a responsibility as Americans, a duty to our troops and to each other, to do all we can to support the troops and end this war," the former senator from North Carolina said yesterday during a commencement address at New England College in Henniker, N.H.

"This Memorial Day weekend, that means more than just getting in your car, driving to the beach, or a parade, or a picnic and saying the words, 'We support our troops,' " Edwards said.

"We must take responsibility and take action together -- as citizens, as Americans, as patriots. To support the troops. To end the war."

The new token patriotism extends to Edward's new web site Support the Troops. End the War, when they issue this advice:

Gather in public. On Memorial Day, get your friends, kids, co-workers, neighbors, aunts, uncles, grandfathers, grandmothers, and anyone and everyone you know together to publicly support the troops and end the war. Be sure to check with your local authority for any permits you need for public gatherings. Contact local media to publicize your event. Before you get started, please take a moment of silence to honor the fallen. And during your event, make sure you conduct yourself respectfully—both for those serving in Iraq and the memory of the brave servicemen and women that Memorial Day honors.

It says a lot about his base that Edwards feels compelled to remind his supporters to honor the fallen and conduct themselves respectfully, something most Americans have known since childhood.

Edwards also reminds visitors that contributions to his campaign aren't tax deductible.

Even heroic Edwards supporters must be willing to make sacrifices, it seems.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:48 PM | Comments (39) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Al Qaeda Warns U.S. To Stop Search For Missing Soldiers

On Saturday, a U.S. patrol was ambushed near Mahmoudiya, Iraq. Four U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi soldier acting as their interpreter was killed in the ambush, and three soldiers are missing. The Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), an al Qaeda front group, is claiming responsibility for the attack, and has warned the thousands of coalition forces in the area to stop looking for the missing soldiers.

While we all obviously hope that the three missing soldiers will be recovered alive, I suspect that they were never captured alive to begin with, a sad suspicion shared at Hot Air. Knowing the fate in store for them if they did surrender--brutal torture followed by a YouTubed beheading--our soldiers would most likely fight to the death.

Because of this, I suspect al Qaeda managed a successful ambush and body thievery, but captured no living prisoners.

The al Qaeda cry to quit looking for the captured soldiers was likely issued from fears that the on-going search would further disrupt al Qaeda terrorist cells and turn up weapons caches. Thus far, two terrorists have been killed, four others wounded, and 100 people have been detained as the military sweep south of Baghdad continues.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:36 PM | Comments (19) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Edu-Terrorism

A question for parents: how would you feel if your child's teacher terrorized your child?

Staff members of an elementary school staged a fictitious gun attack on students during a class trip, telling them it was not a drill as the children cried and hid under tables.

The mock attack Thursday night was intended as a learning experience and lasted five minutes during the weeklong trip to a state park, said Scales Elementary School Assistant Principal Don Bartch, who led the trip.

"We got together and discussed what we would have done in a real situation," he said.

But parents of the sixth-grade students were outraged.

"The children were in that room in the dark, begging for their lives, because they thought there was someone with a gun after them," said Brandy Cole, whose son went on the trip.

The children in this incident emerged physically unscathed, but that outcome was not guaranteed. The students could have just as easily panicked and attempted to escape, at which point the 69 student could have trampled one another, causing serious injuries.

The school principal, Catherine Stephens, in a hidious understatement, said that the staff members involved exhibited "poor judgment." The school Web site says the teachers involved considered the act of edu-terrorism a "prank."

Poor judgement? A prank? A teacher berating a child in front of their class for getting an answer wrong exhibits poor judgment. A camp prank is "short-sheeting" a bed.

The staff and teachers of Scales Elementary School premeditated and carried out a plot in which almost six dozen children were purposefully convinced they might die. In any other situation, such a threat, serious or not, would and should be viewed as a criminal act.

A real example of poor judgment in this instance would be the continued employment of these sadists as teachers. I hope that Murfreesboro City Schools has better judgement than that.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:16 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Banned Aid

How good of an idea is this?

Soldiers serving overseas will lose some of their online links to friends and loved ones back home under a Department of Defense policy that a high-ranking Army official said would take effect Monday.

The Defense Department will begin blocking access "worldwide" to YouTube, MySpace and 11 other popular Web sites on its computers and networks, according to a memo sent Friday by Gen. B.B. Bell, the U.S. Forces Korea commander.

The policy is being implemented to protect information and reduce drag on the department's networks, according to Bell.

"This recreational traffic impacts our official DoD network and bandwidth ability, while posing a significant operational security challenge," the memo said.

The armed services have long barred members of the military from sharing information that could jeopardize their missions or safety, whether electronically or by other means.

The new policy is different because it creates a blanket ban on several sites used by military personnel to exchange messages, pictures, video and audio with family and friends.

My gut reaction? While I can understand the infrastructure demands that these and similar sites place upon defense networks designed first and foremost with military applications in mind, the ban once again shows a fundamental lack of understanding by military officials the importance online communications can and should play as part of a modern military's communications strategy.

Predictably, users of these sites will simply shift to similar sites that are not banned, and the military will waste more time and resources attempting to keep up in an ever-expanding, cat-and-mouse challenge as our ever-resourceful troops find new ways to keep lines of communication open with their stateside friends and family.

Instead of attempting to muzzle communications between soldiers and their social networks, the military should encourage communications between the troops in the field and their friends and family members back home. Time and again, the most positive messages coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan are those being voiced by our soldiers to friends and relatives in emails transformed into in blog entries and newspaper editorials.

The War on Terror is every bit as much a war of pixels and pictures and mindshare as it is a war of bullets and bravery. al Qaeda and the various insurgent groups know this instinctively, and dominate social networking and file-sharing sites. The Pentagon should engage their own Army of Davids and have our troops counter terrorist propaganda with their own frontline perspectives. Instead, those in senior positions who do not understand the communications battlespace plan to flee the online field, ceding it to the enemy.

There is no other way to address this than to call this flawed policy what it is: military communications shortsightedness of epic proportions.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:52 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Dollard: Starving Parasites

Pat Dollard, Hollywood agent turned combat filmmaker and IED magnet, is echoing a sentiment I've been hearing more and more from fellow combat journalists: the war in Iraq is going very badly... for al Qaeda:

Terrorists are parasites. They rely on a host body to support them. Now they can terrorize a host body into providing them support, but that will only go so far. Ultimately, the host body must be somewhat sympathetic to the terrorists, or else, by sheer dint of numbers, the members of the host body will be able to reject the terrorists. These two principles explain the entire history of Al Qaeda’s reign over Al Anbar. Al Anbar, like Al Qaeda, is a Sunni entity. The people of Al Anbar were sympathetic enough to Al Qaeda that they provided them sanctuary, support and even manpower - which is to say, the very lifeblood that this parasite required. Finally, the Sunnis of Al Anbar had enough of the bleak and empty future, and very bloody present, that comprised the entirety of Al Qaeda’s offerings. And so the host body rejected the parasite. The parasite is now in its last possible refuge, the mixed Sunni/Shiite Triangle of Death & Diyala Province areas, just south and northeast of Baghdad, respectively. My time in Iraq started there, and will likely end there. Along with Al Qaeda’s.

There is a reason neither Al Qaeda or the Iranian Shiite Insurgents have no traction in Kurdistan. There is no sympathetic and compliant host body. There is a reason Al Qaeda has no traction in the southern/eastern Shiite areas of Iraq. There is no compliant, sympathetic (which is to say, Sunni) host body. There is only one place left with enough of a sympathetic, compliant host body for Al Qaeda to keep itself alive in. This is the mixed Sunni/Shiite Triangle of Death. An appropriate appellation for the battlefield of Iraq’s Apocalypse with its Public Enemy #1. Iraqis, Al Qaeda, U.S. forces. A triangle of death, indeed.

We're not hearing very much like this from the professional media nor the U.S. military, for very understandable and strikingly similar reasons.

The media staked out their narrative to a doomed war long ago, and will only begin to back off of that position once they are sure that al Qaeda,
and the Sunni insurgency is nearing collapse. The Iraqi government, U.S. government, and Coalition military and police forces are likewise cautious about overstating successes knowing that previous claims of a faltering insurgency have turned out to be false.

But Dollard's comments are part of a low, growing rumble from observers who have seen Iraq firsthand. Bill Roggio, J.D. Johannes, and others have been noting for several months the turnaround in al Anbar province, formerly the heart of the Sunni insurgency, as the Anbar Awakening has seen the overwhelming majority of the Sunni tribes once loyal to al Qaeda and the Sunni insurgency reject the terrorists, and accept the U.S. and coalition forces as allies. It is these tribes that are now leading the hunt for al Qaeda, joining the Iraqi police and military in record numbers, and when they cannot get into official government security positions fast enough to hunt the terrorists, using their own ad hoc tribal militias to establish neighborhood security checkpoints and choke al Qaeda off and attack and kill al Qaeda aligned tribes.

This Awakening movement has spread as al Qaeda becomes the hunted in Anbar. al Qaeda continues its flight to Diyala, only to find the Sunni Awakening spreading to Diyala as well.

The media, quick to notice stumbling blocks and setbacks, seems unable to mention the obvious truth that al Qaeda and their Sunni allies, along with similar efforts by Shia militias trained and equipped by Iran, are also in their own version of a surge to counter our own.

Shia death squads will step up attacks against Sunni civilians in an effort to stoke Sunni militancy, just as the Islamic State of Iraq, a Sunni insurgent umbrella group, attempts to goad Sunnis into attacks against Shia, and al Qaeda continues to indiscriminately target Sunni, Shia, and Kurd to increases tensions among all groups.

What the U.S. military is hoping to accomplish with the COIN doctrine will not end the insurgency overnight, nor was that ever the promise. What it does intend, and where it is succeeding, is in engaging the Iraqis and helping civilians tired of war turn on Sunni, Shia, and al Qaeda militants among them.

As Dollard and others have noted, and as the British noted in Mayala, insurgencies are only viable as long as the population will support them. While it typically takes a decade or longer to completely defeat an insurgency, they rarely (never?) succeed once the bulk of the population turns against them. Once that tipping point is reached, much more blood may yet be spilled, but the final outcome all but assured.

Dollard is correct when he states al Qaeda in Iraq may end in Diyala. The tipping point against them seems to have already been reached in al Anbar, with the bulk of their former allies turning against them, and now hunting them down like dogs. As the Diyala Awakening gathers momentum, al Qaeda and aligned insurgents will no doubt mount more spectacular, bloody attacks in an attempt to intimidate the population into compliance. Like in al Anbar, those attacks are only likely to fuel anti-al Qaeda, anti-insurgency sentiment.

It is still very possible, considering the political climate, that we can still lose the war in Iraq because of its unpopularity here in the United States, and a corrupt and incompetent Iraqi government apparently more interested in personal profit than national unity and reconciliation. Our military is stretched close to its limits, and the will of Iran and Syria to continue supporting various militias and insurgent groups does not appear to lack resolve, or any real consequences for their support from either the United Nations or the United States.

The governments of the United States, Great Britain, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and perhaps a dozen other countries near and far are attempting to shape Iraq's future for their own best interests. The various religions, sects, and tribes within Iraq have formed and split alliances over the past four-plus years, attempting to do what they think is best for themselves. With all of these internal and external actors attempting to exert power and influence, it is ultimately up to the Iraqi people to determine which fate will envelope their nation. Perhaps the rise of The Awakening al Anbar and Diyala are an indication that the future they are choosing is one of hope amidst the carnage.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:20 AM | Comments (14) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

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