Confederate Yankee

June 09, 2006

Zarqawi Strike Aftermath

AllahPundit digs this up from the Times of London:


Al-Zarqawi's second wife Israa, in her late teens, and their 18-month-old baby, Abdul Rahman, died in the strike, Jordanian officials told The Times. Israa was the daughter of Yassin Jarrad, a Palestinian Islamic militant, who is blamed for the killing in 2004 of Ayatollah Muhammad Baqr al-Hakim, the Iraqi Shia leader.

Officials also said that Jordan would not allow the body of al-Zarqawi to be buried in his native country.

I guess I should feel sorrow that Zarqawi's wife and child died, but I can't seem to find my sympathy right now. Israa is the daughter and wife of terrorists, and the world is diminished by her loss no more than it was when Eva Braun died, and perhaps less.

Abdul Rahman, some are sure to note, was only an 18-month old infant, and it is true that he has done nothing wrong. He was however, the son and grandson of terrorists, and odds were that he would have grown into the "family business." If Uday and Qusay Hussein are any indication, he could have grown up to be even more of a sociopath than his father.

But the violent termination of the al-Zarqawi bloodline isn't the only news of note in this Times article. The move to center stage of Zarqawi's suspected successor shoots holes in one of the most firmly held liberal lies about the war, that Iraq had no ties with al Qaeda before the 2003 invasion:


...al-Zarqawi's likely successor was an Egyptian national, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, whom the radical leader first met in 2001 at a terrorism training camp in Afghanistan. Al-Masri, who has a $50,000 (£27,000) price on his head, is believed have come to Baghdad in 2002 on a mission to set up al-Qaeda's first cell in Iraq.

al-Masri was setting up al Qaeda cells in Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion?

So much for the liberal lie that there were no terrorists in Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion (well except for Abu Nidal. And Abu Abbas. And Abdul Rahman Yasin. And—oh, you get the point)

Look for this "fact" to be hammered again and again as long as al-Masri remains alive.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:03 PM | Comments (45) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Loose Lips

After reading this post at the Corner (h/t Instapundit)and just a few minutes of internal deliberation, I decided that we need to find the man in this article and make an example of him to others:


The Americans had gotten close before, but Mr. Zarqawi had always managed to get away. He was an elusive and wary figure who knew well how much the Americans relied on high technology to track down suspects: he and his men refrained from using cellphones, knowing how easily they could be tracked. Instead, American officials said, they relied on handheld satellite phones, manufactured by a company called Thuraya, to communicate with one another. The Thurayas were more difficult to track.

Indeed, what the Americans had always lacked was someone from inside Mr. Zarqawi's network, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, who would betray him — someone close enough and trusted enough to show the Americans where he was.

According to a Pentagon official, the Americans finally got one. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the raid are classified, said that an Iraqi informant inside Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia provided the critical piece of intelligence about Mr. Rahman's meeting with Mr. Zarqawi. The source's identity was not clear — nor was it clear how that source was able to pinpoint Mr. Zarqawi's location without getting killed himself.

"We have a guy on the inside who led us directly to Zarqawi," the official said.

This man should be hunted down ruthlessly, exposed, and imprisoned, or if allowed by law, executed as a warning to others. I'm talking, of course, about the “Pentagon official” who “spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the raid are classified.”



Once again, the Pentagon leaked classified National Security information to the New York Times. Once again, the Times published this information with reckless disregard for the lives it puts in danger.



We had an asset inside al Qaeda, one that helped us find and kill al-Zarqawi and seven of his top lieutenants. This same asset could have presumably stayed hidden and provided further intelligence, helping roll up other senior terrorist leaders in al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, dismantling their network from the inside. Perhaps he or she could have shortened the war to some extent, and in doing so, could have saved the lives of American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, or more likely, save the lives of the Iraqi soldiers, police, and civilians who have been the focus of the brunt of al Qaeda's attacks.



Instead, the Pentagon leaks continue, and this asset was compromised within one day of al-Zarqawi's end.



Evil men who could have been compromised will continue to haunt this earth. The blood of good men—and women, and children—will continue to soak Iraqi soil. All because of a simple betrayal that this anonymous Pentagon official no doubt sees as nothing, or almost nothing; a simple favor for a journalist.



But this “favor” can cost lives in a war far from over, and this “favor” is a form of treason, a form of espionage, and a form of sabotage, one that should be exposed and prosecuted with ruthless aggression.



When people talk in war, people die. It's time to root out those that talk, and put them where they belong.


6/11/06 Update: It's like Chris Muir can read my mind...



Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:14 AM | Comments (83) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

June 08, 2006

This is CNN



As you can see in the screen capture above, CNN appears almost disconsolent that Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in an airstrike late yesterday afternoon, lamenting with the headline, 'al-Zarqawi Betrayed.'

CNN also shows a prominent picture on the CNN.com home page not of al-Zarqawi, or of celebrating Iraqis, or of President George Bush, or of Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki, or anything else of major importance to this story, but focuses instead of neighboring home destroyed in the airstrike.

It seems that CNN would like to focus on something, perhaps anything other than marking al-Zarqawi's death as a victory for the coalition, and the network that turned a blind eye to Saddam's terrorism seemed almost delighted to feature a video clip breathlessly proclaiming "(Watch how attacks turned nearby houses to heaps of cinder blocks --3:23)".

Whether more sympathy for the devil or corporate echoes of Eason Jordan disgraceful tenure, CNN seems bound and determined to tarnish any positive news coming out of Iraq, even news as big as the death of a terrorist mastermind.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 04:25 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Lost In Translation?

Perhaps Juan Cole should call his blog Poorly Informed Comment:

[my bold]


Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced Thursday morning that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had been killed, along with 7 aides, in a gun battle with US and Iraqi troops at Baqubah.

Of course, the article Juan Cole linked to said nothing of the sort:


Al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has been killed in a joint U.S. and Iraqi military raid north of Baghdad, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced on Thursday...

How he could get the most basic of facts wrong—that al-Zarqawi was killed in an airstrike—in such a widely reported story, is absolutely astounding.

Perhaps he's having translation issues again?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:02 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi Is...






Dead. Dead. Dead.



Update:Perhaps not too surprisingly, some Democrats are taking this as an opportunity to retreat, and Texas Rainmaker notes that the hive--well, mind isn't quite the right word--at the Democratic Underground is already in overdrive.


Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:12 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Veracity of Haditha Witnesses is Questionable

I'm starting to understand why the Naval Criminal Investigative Service has been working so long to develop physical evidence and forensics to base their Haditha investigation on.

Dan Riehl notes in comparisons of "witness" interviews in various media outlets that few if any of the Haditha witnesses are credible. One of the witnesses even admits to knowing that an IED blast was imminent.

This information would in no way make it acceptable for U.S. Marines to shoot civilians (in Haditha or anywhere else) without just cause, but it does make this incident far more complex than many initially thought.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:17 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

June 07, 2006

Young Americans

Raw.

That one word sums up what I've seen in the trailer of Pat Dollard's Young Americans (link on this page definitely NSFW), a documentary shot over seven months in places like Fallujah and Ramadi in the Sunni Triangle of Iraq with U.S. Marines.

Dollard was injured in an IED attack on his Humvee on February 18.



The HMMWV Dollard was in when it was destroyed by an IED in Ramadi, Iraq.

Unlike others reporting events in Iraq who were injured by IEDs, a Google News search reveals just one only article about Patrick Dollard in Iraq. I guess if you aren't reporting the right stories you don't deserve much of a mention.

The trailer I viewed for Young Americans is, if anything, excruciatingly raw, often vulgar, but almost certainly real footage of how frontline Marines act after the networks retire back to the Green Zone.



Private Zachary Kother (left), Pat Dollard (center), Lance Corporal Eric Cybulski (right). survived the IED attack that killed Lt. Almar Fitzgerald and Corporal Matthew Conley.

Dollard himself is something of a controversial figure, a former Hollywood agent and producer (read more here) that looks like a cross between Anthony Perkins and R. Lee Ermey who generates strong opinions from those who know him.

All the footage taken in Dollard's seven months in Iraq in Ramadi, Fallujah and other part of the "Triangle of Death" were shot by Dollard himself or the Marines he was with, and the 600 hours of high-def footage is being edited into a 15-20 hour ultra-reality series for cable.

Dollard's "Young Americans" trailer isn't pretty, isn't politically correct, and isn't going to be liked by many people.

In short, it's war.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:26 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Other Than Honorable

Today, quite a few news outlets and blogs are discussing the case of Army 1st. Lt. Ehren Watada, an officer in the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division based in Fort Lewis, Washington, who has stated the intention to refuse deployment to Iraq with the rest of his unit this month. His stated reason?


"I feel that we have been lied to and betrayed by this administration," Watada said Tuesday in a telephone interview from Fort Lewis. "It is the duty, the obligation of every soldier, and specifically the officers, to evaluate the legality, the truth behind every order — including the order to go to war."

If Watada follows through with his stated intentions, he will likely be the first military officer to refuse deployment to Iraq. Further in the article, Watada's father explains his son's reasoning:


His father — Robert Watada, a retired Hawaii state official — was opposed to the war in Vietnam, and was able to do alternative service in the Peace Corps in Peru.

And Robert Watada said he laid out the "pros and cons" of military service as his son considered joining the service in the spring of 2003 as the invasion of Iraq was launched.

"He knew very well of my decision not to go to Vietnam, and he had to make his own decision to join the Army," Robert Watada said. "It was very noble. He felt like he wanted to do his part for his country."

After the younger Watada enlisted, he was sent to officer-training school in Georgia. Watada said he supported the war at that time because he believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

"I had my doubts," he said. "But I felt like the president is our leader, and he won't betray our trust, and he would know what he was talking about, and let's give him the benefit of the doubt." Over the past year, his feeling changed as he read up on the war and became convinced that there was "intentional manipulation of intelligence" by the Bush administration.

In January, Watada told his commanders that he believed that the war was unlawful, and therefore, so were his deployment orders. He did not, however, consider himself a conscientious objector, since he was willing to fight in wars that were justified, legal and in defense of the nation.

So Watada's basic argument is this: he joined the U.S. Army several months after the invasion of Iraq in March of 2003, because he believed that Iraq under Saddam Hussein possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs). For reasons not clearly stated, Watada then determined that in his mind, "that we have been lied to and betrayed by this administration," and that he didn't have to deploy in what he regarded as an "illegal" and "immoral" war.

Watada's stance has garnered the support of many on the far left, presumably from the very same web sites and blogs where he "read up on the war" and became convinced that "there was 'intentional manipulation of intelligence' by the Bush administration."

I might have some sympathy for Lt. Watada's position if he had formally stated his opposition to the war to his superiors in his nearly three years of continuous military service until this point. Instead, he withheld these sentiments until his deployment orders were issued. Watada's newly-pronounced idealism reeks of an attempt to cover for other mortal flaws in his own character, shows a profound lack of loyalty to his men, and betrays an absence of any true and binding morality.

Soldiers do not get to pick and choose their wars, yet hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Guardsmen, and Reserves have cycled into an out of Iraqi in the past three years of war, and while many perhaps felt that this war was not one they would chose, they followed their lawful orders to deploy.

They do not do this because they love combat, nor death, nor deprivation. They give up families, stability and even their lives, because of honor, duty and loyalty. They do this because of bonds between soldiers that civilians such as you or I will never truly understand.

Ehren Watada has betrayed the men in his command. He has shown that his fear of dying, and flailing political sensibilities are stronger than is sense of duty and loyalty to his men, and be betrayed his oath and his commitment to this nation.

Based upon the previous convinctions of other soldiers and sailors, Watada will likely be court-martialed and demoted, perhaps sentenced to prison, and when he is finally excreted from the military criminal justice system, it will be with with a Other-Than-Honorable (OTH) discharge, with which he will be able to continue to live out an other-than-honorable life.

Update: Kim Priestap at Wizbang and Michelle Malkin have more.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:29 PM | Comments (23) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

June 06, 2006

Breaking: LAW in Durham

WRAL TV (no story link yet) in Raleigh is reporting that two light antitank weapons have been found by a contractor working at a home in Durham, NC. A weapons disposal team is on the way from Fort Bragg.

More as the story develops.

Blind Speculation: I'm going on a hunch that if a contractor found these in a home being renovated, they may be older rockets, perhaps 70s-era M72s... and they very well could be inert.

Update: Via WRAL:


Authorities said a contractor found two suspected rocket launchers under a Durham home early Tuesday evening.

According to police, the contractor was doing work on a rental property on Midland Terrace around 6:30 p.m. when he discovered found two items that appeared to be lightweight anti-tank weapons in a crawl space under the house.

Police evacuated residences in the immediate vicinity and blocked Midland Terrace between Faucette Avenue and Cheek Road. Durham, state and federal authorities responded to the scene after the discovery. Authorities said that a bomb squad from Fort Bragg is expected to arrive at the scene overnight to inspect and dispose of the device.

According to authorities, no one was injured by the weapons. Police are trying to determine where the devices came from and how they ended up in that location.

Google Maps shows us that the suspected anti-tank weapons are in one of these homes not too far from the I-85/U.S. 70 interchange between Floyd Drive and Aiken Avenue.



Hopefully, members of the Duke University Lacrosse team were not among the renters.

6:49 AM Update: WRAL states that Fort Bragg EOD has removed the devices and confirms that "two items originally believed to be two anti-tank weapons -- each measuring around two feet in length" are in fact inert.

Their length and description all but confirms them as the disposable launcher tube-and-firing mechanism of the obsolete M72 LAW, which is 24.8 inches long (closed), or the reloadable M190 training variant of the same weapons system.

I suspect that the tube assemblies were obtained as souvenirs, and I cannot immediately find any applicable firearms legislation that would indicate that the possession of such devices would be illegal, since they cannot readily be made into functional weapons.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:08 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Shooting Messengers

Ann Coulter, she of 9/11/01 "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity" fame, has released her new book Godless: The Church of Liberalism and has quickly (and predictably) generated a media firestorm with her rhetoric.

A key graph of her book that has generated a significant amount of heat in the liberal blogosphere after Today Show host Matt Lauer read this portion of her book on the air, regarding a group of 9/11 widows:


"These self-obsessed women seem genuinely unaware that 9-11 was an attack on our nation and acted like as if the terrorist attack only happened to them. They believe the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing Bush was part of the closure process." And this part is the part I really need to talk to you about: "These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband's death so much."

Think Progress has a transcript of the entire exchange, in which Coulter attacks what she calls the "left's doctrine of infallibility."

Lauer was predictably almost speechless, and most of the liberal blog reaction proved that they either didn't understand the meaning of her commentary, or it didn't have an effective rebuttal for this line of attack.

Peter Daou of The Grit and Steve Soto at the Left Coaster were reduced to griping about the fact that Lauer interviewed Coulter, and never sought to engage Coulter's point. The point, of course, was simply this: personal tragedy does not bestow omnipotence upon the bereaved.

The particular group Coulter reviles is a group of just four 9/11 widows sometimes known as "the Jersey girls" that did, in fact use the celebrity afforded by their spouses deaths on 9/11/01 to make plenty of noise in support of John Kerry's Presidential run in 2004. These women do have the right to voice their opinion, and the right to politicize that opinion on stage as loud as the public is willing to bear. But just as certainly, the fact that they were made widows because of a horrific terrorist attack did not grant them unassailable credibility or inherent wisdom.

Excessive hyperbole aside, Coulter was right on this point.

Despite the much-mocked and paraphrased fallacy of Maureen Dowd (before she was walled up Amontillado-like behind the wall of Times Select) that "the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute," the death of a loved one does not automatically grant intelligence or insightfulness or Truth, nor does it grant a Writ of Veracity, where the speaker can no longer be challenged because of the shield of personal loss.

Both sides have been "grief pimps" at times, trotting out survivors of one tragedy or another who conveniently fit their political needs of the day, but is it s a disingenuous person indeed that attacks the messenger for this, instead of an obviously perverse message.

The so-called Jersey Girls have my sympathy for their personal loss, but they are not qualified to preach unopposed about matters of public policy.

No one is.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:41 PM | Comments (24) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

A Higher Standard

Think of this CNN report the next time you here a member of the media or a hyperventilating liberal blogger intone that the military is whitewashing potential war crimes in Iraq:


Seven Marines and a Navy medical corpsman are being held in the brig at California's Camp Pendleton, as commanders weigh possible charges against them in connection with the April 26 killing.

[snip]

An attorney representing the Navy medical corpsman, expressed concern that the media frenzy surrounding the case "has contributed to the current conditions my client is enduring at the Camp Pendleton Brig."

"There are known terrorists incarcerated in military facilities around the world who enjoy more freedom and less restriction than he is experiencing," Jeremiah J. Sullivan said in a statement issued to the media.

"During the one brief period per day he is allowed to utilize the recreational yard, my client remains shackled at the hands, waist, and ankles. Anytime he walks within the recreational yard he is escorted by at least one military prison guard who grasps onto his waist shackles at all times. The balance of his time is spent in solitary confinement," Sullivan said.

If this account is accurate, then captured al Qaeda terrorists confined at Guantanamo Bay have more freedom that do U.S. military servicemen and women that have not yet been charged with a crime.


Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:28 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

A Rather Dim View on Atrocity Reporting

Former CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather apparently advocates the killing of newsmen who report on suspected war crimes.


In "Lone Star," an unauthorized bio of Rather out this September, Alan Weisman writes that [Morley] Safer "has not been a friend of Rather's for years, since their days in Vietnam." The final straw came when Rather took over for Safer not long after Safer's jolting report about the burning of a Vietnam village by a platoon of U.S. Marines.

"When Rather replaced me . . . he went to a group of Marines and said, 'If I were you guys, I would have shot him.' Or words to that effect," Safer tells Weisman. "And that my report should never have gone on the air." Asked whether Rather had ripped his fellow newsman to cozy up with the troops, Safer bristles, "Who the hell knows why? Have I ever confronted him about it? No. Now we just have a polite relationship."

Of course, this might not mean that Gunga Dan would support shooting today's reporters.



He might just have a different perspective on this war entirely.


Praise be to AllahPundit for the link.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:29 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

"A Link In A Great Chain"




General George S. Patton's Normandy Invasion Speech:


"Be Seated."

"Men, this stuff we hear about America wanting to stay out of the war, not wanting to fight, is a lot of bullshit. Americans love to fight - traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble player; the fastest runner; the big league ball players; the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win - all the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost, not ever will lose a war, for the very thought of losing is hateful to an American."

"You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you here today would die in a major battle. Death must not be feared. Every man is frightened at first in battle. If he says he isn't, he's a goddamn liar. Some men are cowards, yes! But they fight just the same, or get the hell shamed out of them watching men who do fight who are just as scared. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some get over their fright in a minute under fire, some take an hour. For some it takes days. But the real man never lets fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to this country and his innate manhood."

"All through your army career you men have bitched about "This chickenshit drilling." That is all for a purpose. Drilling and discipline must be maintained in any army if for only one reason -- INSTANT OBEDIENCE TO ORDERS AND TO CREATE CONSTANT ALERTNESS. I don't give a damn for a man who is not always on his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn't be here. You are ready. A man to continue breathing must be alert at all times. If not, sometime a German son-of-a-bitch will sneak up behind him and beat him to death with a sock full of shit."

"There are 400 neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily all because one man went to sleep on his job -- but they were German graves for we caught the bastard asleep before his officers did. An Army is a team. Lives, sleeps, eats, fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is a lot of crap. The bilious bastards who wrote that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real fighting, under fire, than they do about fucking. We have the best food, the finest equipment, the best spirit and the best fighting men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity these poor sons-of-bitches we are going up against. By God, I do!"

"My men don't surrender. I don't want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he is hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight. That's not just bullshit, either. The kind of man I want under me is like the lieutenant in Libya, who, with a Lugar against his chest, jerked off his helmet, swept the gun aside with one hand and busted hell out of the Boche with the helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out and killed another German: All this with a bullet through his lung. That's a man for you."

"All real heroes are not story book combat fighters either. Every man in the army plays a vital part. Every little job is essential. Don't ever let down, thinking your role is unimportant. Every man has a job to do. Every man is a link in the great chain. What if every truck driver decided that he didn't like the whine of the shells overhead, turned yellow and jumped headlong into the ditch? He could say to himself, "They won't miss me -- just one in thousands." What if every man said that? Where in hell would we be now? No, thank God, Americans don't say that! Every man does his job; every man serves the whole. Every department, every unit, is important to the vast scheme of things. The Ordnance men are needed to supply the guns, the Quartermaster to bring up the food and clothes to us -- for where we're going there isn't a hell of a lot to steal. Every last man in the mess hall, even the one who heats the water to keep us from getting the GI shits has a job to do. Even the chaplain is important, for if we get killed and if he is not there to bury us we'd all go to hell."

"Each man must not only think of himself, but of his buddy fighting beside him. We don't want yellow cowards in this army. They should all be killed off like flies. If not they will go back home after the war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed brave men. Kill off the goddamn cowards and we'll have a nation of brave men."

"One of the bravest men I ever saw in the African campaign was the fellow I saw on top of a telegraph pole in the midst of furious fire while we were plowing toward Tunis. I stopped and asked what the hell he was doing up there at that time. He answered, "Fixing the wire, sir." "Isn't it a little unhealthy right now?," I asked. "Yes sir, but this goddamn wire's got to be fixed." There was a real soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how great the odds, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at the time."

"You should have seen those trucks on the road to Gabes. The drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those son-of-a-bitching roads, never stopping, never faltering from their course, with shells bursting around them all the time. We got through on good old American guts. Many of these men drove over forty consecutive hours. These weren't combat men. But they were soldiers with a job to do. They did it -- and in a whale of a way they did it. They were part of a team. Without them the fight would have been lost. All the links in the chain pulled together and that chain became unbreakable."

"Don't forget, you don't know I'm here. No word of the fact is to be mentioned in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell became of me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this Army. I'm not even supposed to be in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the goddamn Germans. Someday I want them to raise up on their hind legs and howl, 'Jesus Christ, it's the goddamn Third Army and that son-of-a-bitch Patton again.'"

"We want to get the hell over there. We want to get over there and clear the goddamn thing up. You can't win a war lying down. The quicker we clean up this goddamn mess, the quicker we can take a jaunt against the purple pissing Japs an clean their nest out too, before the Marines get all the goddamn credit."

"Sure, we all want to be home. We want this thing over with. The quickest way to get it over is to get the bastards. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin. When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a Boche will get him eventually, and the hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one. We'll win this war but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans we've got more guts than they have."

"There is one great thing you men will all be able to say when you go home. You may thank God for it. Thank God, that at least, thirty years from now, when you are sitting around the fireside with your grandson on your knees, and he asks you what you did in the great war, you won't have to cough and say, 'I shoveled shit in Louisiana.' No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, 'Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a-Goddamned-Bitch named George Patton!'"

"That is all."

God Bless the veterans of the Great Crusade launched on this day in Normandy, France in 1944, and the soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen that today carry on that same fighting spirit.

Update: BlackFive has far more.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:52 AM | Comments (29) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Never Say Die



One of the best sporting comebacks I've ever seen.

Well, since the 1992 Peach Bowl when my beloved Pirates came back to beat N.C. State 37-34 to cap off a 11-1 1991 season, anyway.



Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 06:30 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

June 05, 2006

I Guess She Hates Him, Too

I guess reminding Cindy Sheehan that the UN (not the U.S.) imposed sanctions on Iraq, that the Koran flushing never happened, and that white phosphorus is not a chemical weapon (or no more than TNT is a chemical weapon) and that it is no way related to napalm and that it cannot be "enhanced" by it, wouldn't do much good.


Support the troops? I support only those who are NOT supporting the exploitation of the Iraqi people, and those who do not allow the war profiteers to carry on with their death and destruction all for the sake of an opulent lifestyle. I do not support those who are supporting a criminally insane and treacherous foreign policy.


Interestingly, Cindy Sheehan's son Casey "supported the exploitation" (by her definition, not mine) by volunteering to go on a rescue mission into Sadr City. It cost him his life.

I guess Cindy hates him, too.

(h/t Allah)

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:46 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

A Matter of Priorities

A rouge nation with budding nuclear weapons capabilities is being run by a cult obsessed with End Times eschatology, and threatens ten of millions of lives in southwest Asia. Sectarian violence continues in Iraq. We're importing poverty in record amounts through a southern border that leaks like a sieve, and Patrick Kennedy is out of rehab and back on the road.

Mr. President, if you really think I care about gay marriage right now, you're out of your ever-lovin' mind.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:42 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

An Atrocity of Atrocities?

It is but one of several atrocity cases that you will find the press laying at the feet of American Marines in Iraq, but the death of Hashim the Lame strikes me as among the most curious, and potentially the most troubling.

Other incidents in Iraq have led to the deaths of Iraqi civilians at the hands of American Marines. Haditha was the incident that triggered the current media frenzy, and is under investigation as a possible war crime after 24 Iraqi civilians were killed by a Marine unit after an IED attack killed on of their own.

In Ishaqi, a disputed number of women and children were killed after an air strike was called in on a house that was engaging Marines with intense small arms fire. The Marines were cleared after an investigation determined that men with ties to al Qaeda, including an al Qaeda financier, initiated the firefight. The financier was pulled alive from the rubble and is now in U.S. custody.

In both of these incidents, the Marines were responding to immediate provocations. If Iraqi accounts of the death of Hashim Ibrahim Awad al-Zobaie are correct, this killing had no such immediate trigger.

The official Marine account and the version of events told by Iraqi villagers could not be more different:


Members of the Marine foot patrol under investigation in the case said they came upon Hashim digging a hole for a bomb near his home in the Sunni Arab village of about 30 homes near Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad. The Marines said they killed Hashim in a brief gun battle and that they found an AK-47 assault rifle and a shovel by his side.

According to accounts given by Hashim's neighbors and members of his family, and apparently supported by photographs, the Marines went to Hashim's home, took the 52-year-old disabled Iraqi outside and shot him four times in the face. The assault rifle and shovel next to his body had been planted by the Marines, who had borrowed them from a villager, family members and other residents said.

The family members of al-Zobaie have agreed to allow an exhumation and autopsy, which should she light onto which version of events is more accurate. I'm hoping that the Marine account is accurate for the simple reason that the alternative—that Marines singled out and premeditated the murder of a cripple for unknown reasons—is so difficult to contemplate.


Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:05 AM | Comments (0) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

June 04, 2006

The Silence of the Lambs

If you visit the always useful memeorandum.com to see how the blogosphere is responding to the arrests of 17 terrorists in Canada, you'll notice something: not a single left-of-center blog of note will discuss it.

Not yesterday afternoon.

Not last night.

Not this morning.

Ace of Spades noticed this phenomenon last night, and writes:


Not a word about it at has-been harridan Jane Hamsher's combination blog-slash-application for voluntary state psychiatric confinement.

The Daily Kos mentions it as a single item in an open thread about three other news stories, the other three fairly trivial.

Mostly Open Threads are opened. Later in the day, "Georgia" posts this:

Open Thread

by georgia10

Sat Jun 03, 2006 at 05:03:58 PM PDT

It's a slow news day...so what's going on in your corner of the world?

Yes, very slow news day, Georgia. So what's going on? Well, in the state you either live in or share the name of, two Muslim extremists -- or, should I say, Terrorist-Americans -- are named as co-conspirators with the Toronto megabombers.

So, no big whoop. Go back to sleep.

Nada at former Democratic strategist (or something) Peter Daou's "The Grit" blog. He does have time to mention Haditha, of course.

Nothing at Atrios, despite a higher post-to-open-thread ratio today.

Nothing at Jesus' General... though he does think he's pretty funny for showing American kids at a gun range, with a caption saying "GOOD," and Palestinian kids parading with guns, with a caption saying "BAD." Apparently it is lost on him that the American kids shoot at targets, whereas the Palestinian kids (who are younger) shoot at human beings.

Oh, and blow themselves up in pizzarias.

Nothing on Andrew Sullivan. He talks about -- yes, wait for it! -- Haditha and the other alleged "massacres," and also about how much spiritual support disco-pop-synth band Pet Shop Boys have provided him.

Otherwise-- radio silence.



IS ANY LEFT WING BLOGGER COMMENTING ON THIS STORY AT ALL?

Or is it too dangerous to alienate readers by presenting discomfiting facts?

Why, one would almost imagine that a victory in the War on Terror is unwelcome news to them. It's almos as if it's... bad news for them or something.

One could almost venture to postulate, even, that their political and personal interests are precisely aligned with the terrorists'.

Almost.


The Man That Liberals Hate Most lays on the snark:


Somehow, I have a feeling someone's civil rights were violated during all this “investigating” and “probing.” And if that's the case, well, then the terrorists will have already won.

Although to be sure, lots of buildings and public transit venues in a number of countries remain intact as a result—and thousands of innocent civilians were probably spared. Still, small consolation indeed if it turns out some “spy agency” somewhere plucked a conversation out of (cyber)space and used it to zero in on these guys.

Keep an eye on Glenn Greenwald's site for updates and analysis on how, during these overlapping probes, the Constitution was shredded.

Yes, the "true patriots" are silent as the grave on this subject. This "unpleasantness" reminds them we are at war, which tends to destroy the wall of illusion they've been laboring to build since 9/11/01 that we are isolated and safe.

I'm sure they'll snap back later today. They can't let reality intrude over fantasy for too long, you know.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:23 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

June 03, 2006

Close to Home: Terror Sweep in Canada

Via CNN:


Canadian police on Saturday said they have prevented a major al Qaeda-inspired terror plot to attack targets in southern Ontario.

Twelve adults and five young people were arrested, authorities said.

"This group took steps to acquire three tons of ammonium nitrate and other components necessary to create explosive devices," said Royal Canadian Mounted Police Assistant Commissioner Mike McDonell in a statement.

"To put this in context, the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people took one ton of ammonium nitrate."

The detained suspects are all men, Canadian residents "from a variety of backgrounds" and followers of a "dangerous ideology inspired by al Qaeda," said Luc Portelance, assistant director of operations for Canadian Security Intelligence Service, in a news conference.

The targets were all in Toronto, CNN's Jeanne Meserve reported at least one source as telling her.

The charges include: participating in terrorist group activity, including training and recruitment; the provision of property for terrorist purposes; and the "commission of indictable offenses, including firearms and explosives in association with a terrorist group."

What authorities are not saying—and will almost certainly not confirm—is the distinct possibility that this plot was uncovered via the NSA foreign intelligence surveillance program that the NY Times tried to label a “domestic spying” program. As most international communications into North America filter through U.S. switching equipment, it seems logical that if international communications were involved, the NSA would be the lead agency handing off information their counterparts in Canadian border police and intelligence agencies.

CNN also suggests—but doesn't support—is that this raid could be tied to the London terror raid conducted Friday that foiled a suspected chemical weapons plot.

Update: Via Stop the ACLU, it appears that internet monitoring was indeed responsible for helping break the al Qaeda cell:


The investigation began back in 2004, when CSIS was monitoring Internet sites and tracing the paths of Canadians believed to have ties to international terrorist organizations. Local youths espousing fundamentalist views drew special attention, sources say.

[snip]

Four months after authorities began to fear that Canada might have its own homegrown terrorist cell, two Americans entered the picture.

Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, a 19-year-old U.S. citizen of Bangladeshi descent who had attended high school in Ontario, and Syed Haris Ahmed, 21, a student at Georgia Tech, boarded a Greyhound bus in Atlanta on March 6, 2005, and travelled to Toronto to meet "like-minded Islamic extremists," a U.S. court document alleges.

The NSA program, as repeated described, tracked targeted communications between terror suspects in the United States, and other countries... like Canada.

I think we have a winner.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:02 AM | Comments (59) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

June 02, 2006

Live From Kabul

Blogger Bill Roggio is in Kabul, Afghanistan, and has a podcast up at Pajamas Media about the recent anti-American riots.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:24 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

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