Yes, Master, Allah be Praised!
Want that dialog? Abject surrender to Islam? That is the only dialog they want. Talk-Talkers have this strange belief that we can jawbone the Iranians into being nice. It won't happen. Iran is on a course of power-grabbing and is using Islam as its weapon. Their good book (?) , the Koran, says that infidels (unbelievers in Islam) can be lied to, cheated, beaten, and even killed by Muslims with no penalty. Now is that the way to begin some kind of talk, except one of submission?
For most Americans the answer is hell no! I believe that most of us are damned sick and tired of the mealy-mouthing, coddling, and gentle touches being given to Muslims. What they need is a taste of their own medicine: being demonstrated against, and threatened with ostracism if they don't shape up and fight with us for our freedoms and our way of life here, instead of with the Islamic fascists. When their religion fosters blood-letting, terror, murder, bombings and dhimmitude for America in the name of Allah they have forfeited their right to be tolerated and allowed to practice their religion in the US.
I suggest we tell the Muslims, all of them: you are either with us, or you are against us. Choose! We know what to do with those who are against us.
Addendum: Muslims must prove by their actions that they are with us. They must throw out the imams from Iran that have been brought into the US. They must demonstrate against Islamofascists. They must become very vocal against the evils of Islam. They must not hide and stay silent.
That Clinton Snarl Stays With Me!
What we have seen on TV is the off-the-air Clinton, the usual snarler around the office and home. I suddenly have a mild case of sympathy for Hillary, except that I am sure she gives quite as much as she takes in the infighting. When we talk about lying, we should examine the lies Bubba gave us in the interview. "I tried", he said, to kill OBL. If he means shooting at the Afghan training camp with Tomahawk missiles, that is the real extent of "trying". Problem with that is the timing, and it was a very long shot at best, not a proper assassination attempt. So he gets no credit for destroying an empty camp.
The remarkable thing was that a Democratic President stated on public TV with great force that he ordered the killing of OBL. I do not believe any President to my knowledge has ever publically admitted he ordered a killing before Clinton's tirade, and it was such a weak attempt at it that we can simply ignore it altogether. A Special Forces team would have succeeded, whereas tossing bombs at a mountain from 700 miles away is simply unlikely to have the desired results. So, as he said, "I failed!" Indeed he did, almost as if he set it up that way.
He also claimed that he passed a comprehensive plan for counterterrorism to the Bush Administration, which is patently untrue, as Condolizza Rice has pointed out in detail. The Bush Team had to start from scratch, because Bubba was not into counterterrorism, as witness his disasterous handling of the USS Cole, the Embassy bombings, and the Somalia fiasco. I suppose he was too infatuated with his little fat intern to pay attention to the real world. Or, maybe he was counting the money he got from the Chinese.
Here is proof of the kind of lying leadership we get from a Democratic President when we are attacked.
May God help us if that ever happens again! Hillary? We are totally in the soup if that happens.
Here is an airplane, the A380, that is intended to carry 555 passengers a hefty 7,000 miles. It is a huge plane, perhaps a third bigger than a Boeing 747. It has been an engineering marvel up to now, and the world has been full of praise for French, German, and English main contractors. But something went wrong, drastically wrong, with the last steps of certifying the plane, beginning full scale production, and servicing the world. Delays and management changes on top of changes have plagued the Airbus consortium, with ever mounting costs and non-delivery penalties.
There has been little of substance in the press about the exact reasons for the significant delays. If there is an engineering problem, it is being close-held to preserve the Airbus image as being a superlative engineering company, and the A380 image as being a safe airplane to fly. Many of the airports the A380 is expected to use have had to make heavy investments in larger docking facilities, concrete aprons, and people plus baggage handling facilities, for a plane that won't come on line within its planned timeframe. Airbus will have to compensate many of these airports for their losses.
The entire program is threatening to unravel as the major first-user who ordered 43 of the monsters, Dubai , is rethinking its order. This unravelling will not happen, however, because there is too much EU pride at stake. EU Government funds will be shelled out to save the situation, at the EU taxpayer's cost. I believe we are talking several billions of Euros to bail out Airbus from this A380 debacle, plus its other failure plane, the A350, which has been sent back to the drawing board for lack of sales in competition with the forthcoming Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
The engineering and management misfortunes of Airbus will favor Boeing sales over the next several years, and if Boeing can make its supersized 747 an attractive alternative to the A380, it will further depress the European company.
For the moment, the future looks dark for Airbus.
The silence is telling!
Muslims in America are loyal either to the US or to Islam, there can be no compromise between the two. Our open and free society, with all of its spectrum of behaviors that are anathema to Muslims, is threatened from without by Islamofascists. If Muslims here were loyal to the US, they would stand up and demonstrate against their terrorist bretheren in Iraq, in Iran, in Afghanistan, and all over the world. Do we hear their shouts of disapproval in our streets? No. Do we see a procession of Muslims standing up and denouncing terrorism and the Islamofascists? No. Do we see article after article by Muslims in our publications stridently calling for a halt to terrorism? No.
Does anyone take this in and wonder about it, or are we asleep again? The six million Muslims in America are quiet. They are not making a statement strongly and unmistakably that their loyalties lie with us and not Islam. The only rational conclusion to make is that they are loyal to Islam. Are they a Fifth Column?
Take a hard look at all cars, many times, and in many places!
It was gratifying to see that the Iraqi government and our forces have decided to limit access to Baghdad, something I recommended many months ago here. The common denominator in car bombings is...cars and explosives. Make sure that all cars in the city are legitimately there, and that all cars entering and leaving get a thorough security check. It should help tremendously. Spot checks throughout the city will help too.
They seem to have started my other suggestion also; that is, a house-to-house search for weapons and bomb-making materials. This search will have to be done over and over, since a cleared area can be rapidly reinfiltrated later. Random area cordons with search teams suddenly appearing would be a good tactic also. It would be too much for them to implement my most ruthless tactic, I suppose; that is, to declare the death penalty for anyone possessing weapons or bomb-making materials illegally. Maybe not, though, we shall see!
A meme from the media
The meme "War Weary" has been promoted by the left-biased media that is attempting to portray the entire nation as weary of the war in Iraq. What we are weary of is the unabashed use of the carnage in Iraq to further the aspirations of the Left. What we are weary of is the inability of the Congress to expand the armed forces back to a decent level, thus allowing sufficient troop power to handle the missions we have undertaken around the world. This shameful situation was caused by the Clinton cuts of our troop strength by 40% during his administration. No one remembers this sad fact, which has been at the base of our lack of troops in Iraq.
The real people who have every right to be war weary are the troops that are being rotated in and out three and four times, and their families. They are the ones suffering from overuse and fear for loved ones. The rest of the public is doing business as usual, working, playing, and enjoying our strong economy.
It is disgraceful that any of us that haven't served in Iraq or had their loved ones serve should feel war weariness. That meme is simply not proper! It is purely a meme designed to attack George Bush, and to attempt to get Democrats elected this year, and in 2008.
Of course we are frustrated by our seemingly slow progress in Iraq and the emormous bills we are paying to be there. But, we did elect to go there, and most of the Congress agreed at the time that it was proper. Now that we are there, and the going is tough, we see the namby pambies of the Left trying to back out, cut and run, and clothe themselves in the false thought that they were lied to by Bush. Never mind that they had access to the same intelligence as Bush did.
History will not be kind to the Lefties in Congress.
We do not do torture.
On the surface this is an easy question. Torture is the act of doing irreparable harm to an individual. Thus, cutting off fingers or hands, pulling out fingernails, driving holes in the body, gouging out eyes, hitting a pregnant woman in her stomach, using the rack to stretch a body, burning the body with hot irons, hanging a body by the thumbs, or any similar acts, are torture.
Does torture work? Yes. It works very well indeed. But, we in the US do not perform such acts on captives. We draw the line at irreparable harm techniques. The Islamofascists do not draw any lines at all, since they have no respect for infidels or other enemies of Islam. Islamofascists torture men, women and children with gusto.
We use a list of interrogation techniques that do no irreparable harm to captives. Playing loud and discordant music all day and night, keeping a prisoner awake for many hours, threatening them with all kinds of harm, questioning them endlessly about the smallest details of their lives, and applying psychological pressure wherever indicated, are some of the techniques that do no irreparable harm.
Do these interrogation techniques work? Yes. They work very well, perhaps not as fast as torture would, but in the end they are quite effective in extracting information of great value. Can I prove this? Yes. I cite my own experience in observing these interrogation techniques in action. There is no better statement to be made than first-hand observation of the results of others performing these non-invasive techniques, and seeing the results pay off in combat. Anyone that says they do not work has not been sufficiently involved to see the results, or else they have a dishonest motive and an agenda of their own to champion.
Update: The Geneva Convention, which is questionably applied to terrorist captives in my opinion, pleads for maintaining the human dignity as well as the corporeal integrity of prisoners. Personally, I could not care less about the human dignity of an Atta, or an OBL fiend once we have proof of terrorist involvement. I do care that we pump all we can out of such monsters to prevent further killing of our citizens and other innocent people.
There are those who strongly believe in pacivism. The essence of this belief is "Thou shalt do no harm to another." The maxim holds for one-on-one, one-on-many, and many-on-many relations. Thus a pacivist does not believe in warfare, even in self defense. One root of all the hoopla over the Bush Presidency is the fact that he led us into a war of retaliation against terrorism and Islamofascism--a decidedly un-pacivist act.
For many citizens, this attitude of pacivism is simply a sure way to get beaten to death by those who are aggressors. There are many more aggressors in the world than pacivists, I believe, so it isn't surprising that pacivists yell and scream all the time as they are feeling very insecure and put-upon. Indeed they are insecure!
The average citizen sympathizes with the idea of non-violence, and genuinely wants this to be the norm of life. For some, especially veterans of warfare, the horrors of combat are burned into their souls, and avoidance of any repetition of such conflagration is uppermost in their minds. Our reluctance to fight, particularly in long, drawn-out engagements, is spawned by our feelings of abject horror at the bloodshed and misery being inflicted on both sides of any conflict.
However, it is also true that Mr. Average Citizen is vitally concerned about preservation of our way of life here in the US. When he is convinced that he must arm himself and defend his family, his City, State, and Nation, he will do so. Even if the national government doesn't step up to the need for defense, the Citizen will find a way to do it by himself, or with his neighbors and friends.
Not just the young and willing, but also the elderly and relatively infirm would grab a gun and ammunition and proceed towards the sounds of war. Many women as well as men, would respond with vigor to the idea that the home is under attack, and would pick up a weapon to help the cause. This is our heritage and our belief in this nation.
We would defend the right of the pacifist to cower in his home, too, but this does not mean that we would like him for it! Fact is, we would loathe such actions when the fate of our home and land is at risk, and all but pacivists are putting their lives on the line to defend ourselves--and them!
There is a limit!
Opinions are one thing, and free speech too. We respect other's opinions and allow others to speak out at will. Except, of course, in certain circumstances, like not shouting Fire! in a theater. When the speaker is doing the equivalent to shouting Fire!, we must constrain him for the greater good. What I have witnessed is Leftists of several species calling for demonstrations, riots, insurrection, the murder of the President, and the overthrow of the US and our Constitution. That is far, far beyond the allowable limit!
That was the basis for my rant in the previous post. There are virtually always Moonbats who will answer the call to insurrection, simply because they are bored with their life, believe they can get something out of rioting, usually loot, and halfway sign on to the ravings of the Left. They are envious of those who have a good life in comparison to theirs, and would be delighted to take some of it away if they can hide behind a crowd and steal, steal, steal... Such is the moral state of Leftists. Take from the successful by force or (their kind of) law, and split it up between their fellows, probably quite unequally at that.
Both communism and socialism preach taking from the rich and giving to the masses, except their masses are just the elite members of the movement, not the rest of the peons. They don't say exactly this around the poor, you see, since the poor and unaware are the dupes of the con job. Given total power and control of the assets of a nation in the hands of an elite group, what do you think would happen? Right! The elites will fight like hell to stay in power, to keep their riches, and to hold sway over the people. Every communist state has the same problem. They eventually implode from their inequity and inefficiency, and most have to murder millions to gain control in the first place. Yes, millions! This has been well-documented for the USSR, and for China, Laos, and Cambodia.
So, when some Moonbat who thinks he is one of the elite starts raving about overthrow of the nation or murder of the President, he is crying Fire! in our theater, about to cause mass murders, and he should be stopped cold.
Dead cold.