And people call Bush stupid……

“Sad” Nancy Pelosi

The other day, Nancy Pelosi was asked about President Bush’s statement that al Qaeda is responsible for the surge of violence in Iraq. Pelosi responded that “the 9/11 Commission dismissed that notion a long time ago and I feel sad that the President is resorting to it again.” But of course the 9/11 Commission said nothing about al Qaeda’s involvement in post-invasion Iraq. Its findings pertained only to the situation under Saddam Hussein.

Had a Republican leader been this confused, the MSM would have pounced. But since it was Pelosi, the MSM did not. To the contrary, NBC’s David Gregory, who takes obnoxious exception to Bush administration comments at the drop of a hat, passed along Pelosi’s claim as if it were true, and went on to suggest that Bush’s rhetoric about al Qaeda will make it harder for Democrats to work with the White House. It seems implausible that even the Dems would decline to work with the White House on the grounds that it mentions terrorism by al Qaeda — imagine if the Republicans had refused to work with Pres. Roosevelt because he mentioned fascism — but perhaps just this once Gregory knows something we don’t.

There’s more to this story than Pelosi’s appalling ignorance and Gregory’s shameless bias. Whatever was the case in Saddam Hussein’s time, no serious and informed person denies that al Qaeda is present in Iraq now, and prominent in certain areas. And the Dems have said repeatedly that a primary task in the war on terror, from which we should not be diverted by “the wrong war,” is fighting al Qaeda. Under these circumstances, shouldn’t we fight al Qaeda in the portions of Iraq where it is prominent, rather than leaving these areas and handing the terrorists a victory?

That’s a question that Nancy Pelosi would rather not be asked, and that’s probably why she felt “sad” that the president brought up the subject of al Qaeda.
by Powerline

You bet your a@# the MSM would be alll over this quote if any Republican said it…..but it’s a Democrat, so the lying biased media will ignore it.

It’s really simple. Follow any news story and see if they ever give you both sides fairly with an equal amount of time. Usually you will get 90-10, which to them is fair and balanced.

Though to be fair, the NYT had their yearly “positive story” about Iraq, probably the last for this year…. Association of Muslim Scholars – Splits?

by Curt at Flopping Aces

Many people have emailed me with an update on the Iraqi press conference. I received the same email as Michelle Malkin did but she was able to get a more complete transcript. First here is the email from Centcom:

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED

Curt:

From CPATT PAO:

BG Abdul-Kareem, the Ministry of Interior Spokesman, went on the record today stating that Capt. Jamil Hussein is not a police officer. He explained the coordinations among MOI, the Ministry of Health and the

Ministry of Defense in attempting to track down these bodies and their joint conclusion was that this was unsubstantiated rumor.

He went on to name several other false sources that have been used recently and appealed to the media to document their news before reporting. He went into some detail about the impact of the press carrying propaganda for the enemies of Iraq and thanked “the friends” who have brought this to their attention.

AP did attend the press conference.

Vr,
LT Dean

Michael B. Dean
Lieutenant, U.S. Navy
MNC-I Joint Operations Center
Public Affairs Officer

Please note that the AP was at the briefing. I, along with the military and Iraqi’s, will now await a retraction…..think we will have to wait long? I’m sure of it.
Now the more complete transcript via Michelle Malkin, who I have to add has done wonderful work helping to get this story out into the world:

Ministry of Interior Weekly Press Conference Thursday, November 30, 2006

By Brig. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf Al-Kenani
Ministry of Interior spokesman

Press conference synopsis:

1. Media, especially satellite news channels, must adhere to responsible practices:

a. MOI is monitoring coverage, and will insist on corrections to false reports.

b. Unnamed sources should not be used. Two recently named sources do not work for MOI. Contact MOI PAO for official information.

c. Rumors are rampant, and media should be careful to check with official sources about information to avoid spreading false rumors.

2. MOI succeeded in a number of operations against terrorists in Baghdad.

a. The Baghdad Sniper was apprehended, and information gained from
him led to the arrest of 30 others in his organization.

b. Two unauthorized “courts” that had issued death fatwas were broken up.

c. A kidnapping cell, including one that raped a young girl, was arrested.

Statement:

This press conference will cover MOI operations from Nov. 23 to 29, 2006.

Before we start the weekly briefing, I have some points to highlight and to remind the brothers that work in the media, especially the Satellite television Channels. We meant by this note to stress the ministry of interior’s intention that we believe in free press and truthful press, in order not to confuse what the free press presents and the misleading media show, where the latter’s intention is to make the situation in Iraq worse than what it is.

The press release issued by the ministry of interior has three main points: First, a warning to the satellite TV. Channels continue broadcasting false news, and based on that we have formed a special observation room to monitor these TV stations; the purpose of this unit is to determine the fabricated and false news that hurts and gives the Iraqis a wrong picture that the security situation is very bad, when the facts are totally different.

After the monitoring process, we will contact those TV stations by presenting them with the mistakes and errors they committed by broadcasting such false news, hoping they will correct these false reports on their main news programs. But if they do not change those lying, false stories, then we will seek legal action against them.

For example, we have some of the respected news outlets that deal with news fast and have a relation with many TV channels and the media in general, who distributed a story quoting a person called Jamil Hussein. Afterward, we searched our sources in our staff for anyone by this name– maybe he wore an MOI uniform and gave a different name to the reporter for money. And the second name used is Lt. Maythem.

However, all of you know that the ministry of interior has a large public affairs office and its official spokesman, and we are ready to answer any questions you may have. Therefore, you should contact MOI PAO for all your needs to get real, true news. Based on that, we strongly deny any relation with those two names. In order to serve you better and strengthen the relationship with MOI, do not take statements that have no meaning and do not represent any official. We would like this note to be helpful to you and any statement made by those persons to be ignored.

The second subject is rumors. The ministry received in a week more than 12 cases of claims, one stating 50 killed were there, 200 kidnapped here, 30 corpses found there etc. And when we dispatched our forces and investigators to the locations, we found nothing.

On this note, I would like to thank some of the brothers in the media who are cautious and take the extra step to make sure the news he gets is correct or not, by contacting the ministry to verify any news through us that they hear or receive. Not only (do we reply), but we also give them more detail than they expected, and we hope others will follow suit. Also, we ask our people, please do not take any news or give it credibility, except from a well-known source with a name and an address that is part of the security ministries, etc., such as a minister or police station commander. Or if it is from the MOD or MOI, the name of the officer, his rank, his unit, etc. It is not enough to say “a source from the ministry of interior.”

Doing otherwise, you will end up helping the spread of the rumors and make them reality, even thought it was a false rumor. This rumor business — if a large issue, it will take a long time to cover it, but the purpose of the rumors is to disrupt life and make the security apparatus busy with other things than its main tasks. We will end up following rumors instead of hunting terrorists and criminals.

The third subject is, this week the strikes we made against the al-Qaeda terrorist organization in Baghdad were many and very strong in Baghdad. Before my arrival to this press conference, I was informed that one of the three who were just captured or detained is Mazer Al-Jubouri, aka the Baghdad Sniper, and his group. He admitted many things that are very important and very dangerous and our forces used this information about his network and conducted raids in the past 24 hours and detained 30 terrorists.

Those terrorists executed several explosions in Palestine and Beirut streets, and the New Baghdad area. He also admitted that their base is in Diyala province, which supplied them with money, weapons and explosives. They are now under investigation and we think this cell or network has been dismantled.

This week also, we dismantled what are called “courts” in northern and southern Baghdad, and detained the two persons who issued fatwas to kill the people. Our force dismantled what is called the Omar network, this criminal network that used to exercise its criminal activities in southern Baghdad. And they admitted many things about other terrorist networks and our forces are pursuing them now, as well as other networks for kidnapping.

One of them, we regret, kidnapped a girl and used narcotics on her and raped this little innocent young girl. We captured those criminals and the little girl is receiving medical attention. This is not Iraqis’ culture. Just look how far down in debasement they have traveled. With regret, I told you that, because MOI activity does not hold in the media the position it deserves, and also to show the great sacrifice by MOI this week.

So there you have it. Jamil Hussein has been confirmed as a fraud.

How many more of these “sources” are frauds? I would be willing to bet most of them are. The AP and the MSM will buy into anything as long as it produces a feeling of chaos and destruction.

Rusty from The Jawa Report also reports thats buried in this press briefing was this nugget:

The Iraqi Ministry of the Interior announced that it has captured the Baghdad sniper known as Ali Nazar al Jubori. The name sounds eerily familiar. al Jubori….could this be the original Juba sniper? That is the claim being made.

Let me remind my readers that the “Juba the Baghdad sniper” does not exist. He’s a myth. A piece of fictional propaganda produced by terrorists. A heroic superman for the al Qaeda supporters of the world.

This is not to say that there never was an al Qaeda linked sniper in Iraq who got the nickname “Juba”, only that the popular videos showing “his” work are really compilations of not only different snipers, but also of different terror organizations. We know this because the “Juba top 10 video” shows previously released material from several different known terror groups and that at least one of the snipers who’s work is shown in the video was later arrested.

But like many heroes, there may actually be a man behind the myth. Al Jubori may actually be the original “Juba”. In fact, a recent video proported to show the real “Juba” and included interviews with the Baghdad sniper. We’ll see.

If it is “Juba”, then this is an important moral victory for the US and anti-terrorist forces in Iraq. Juba is a real hero to many in the Salafi terrror supporting community.

Great news!

So ends the saga of Jamil Hussein…but I am sure more Jamil’s will pop up. The paper you read today will probably be full of them.

UPDATE 0925hrs PST

The New York Times has picked up on it, sorta:

Against the backdrop of the civil war, occupation, Baathist insurgency, sectarian conflict, and struggle against terrorists in Iraq, to borrow a few descriptors, in addition to the historic meeting between President Bush and Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki today, another battle is brewing. This one pits conservative bloggers and the military’s communications machine against the Associated Press — and the media at large.

At the center of things is one police Capt. Jamil Hussein. Mr. Hussein was the primary source in an Associated Press wire-dispatch last Friday reporting that Shiite militiamen had “grabbed six Sunnis as they left Friday worship services, doused them with kerosene and burned them alive near Iraqi soldiers who did not intervene.”

The report was picked up and widely repeated at various news outlets throughout the weekend.

No chaos, bloodshed, and anarchy in that first paragraph huh?

Conservative bloggers — principally Flopping Aces — had already been questioning the AP’s story, and Mr. Hussein in particular, and with this, it was off to the races.

By Monday, Navy Lt. Michael B. Dean, a military spokesman for the joint operations in Iraq, had sent an e-mail to the Associated Press (which somehow made it onto the conservative blog circuit in a flash), essentially saying Mr. Hussein was neither a police officer nor an employee of the Iraq interior ministry (MOI), and therefore, not an approved source

Meanwhile we all have to remember this statement from the AP:

The attempt to question the existence of the known police officer who spoke to the AP is frankly ludicrous and hints at a certain level of desperation to dispute or suppress the facts of the incident in question.

And take a look at the official Iraqi government statement.

Who appears to be desperate now?

I have contacted the AP for their response and will update as soon as I get it. I was assured it is forthcoming.

Meanwhile the news that the Baghdad sniper has been captured is just about the best news we have received in awhile. He was a huge source of pride and propaganda for the enemy but now he isn’t the superhero anymore.

UPDATE 1000hrs PST

And the AP responds:

From Kathleen Carroll, Executive Editor, The Associated Press

We are satisfied with our reporting on this incident. If Iraqi and U.S. military spokesmen choose to disregard AP’s on-the-ground reporting, that is certainly their choice to make, but it is a puzzling one given the facts.

AP journalists have repeatedly been to the Hurriyah neighborhood, a small Sunni enclave within a larger Shiia area of Baghdad . Residents there have told us in detail about the attack on the mosque and that six people were burned alive during it. Images taken later that day and again this week show a burned mosque and graffiti that says “blood wanted,” similar to that found on the homes of Iraqis driven out of neighborhoods where they are a minority. We have also spoken repeatedly to a police captain who is known to AP and has been a reliable source of accurate information in the past and he has confirmed the attack.

By contrast, the U.S. military and Iraqi government spokesmen attack our reporting because that captain’s name is not on their list of authorized spokespeople. Their implication that we may have given money to the captain is false. The AP does not pay for information. Period.

Further, the Iraqi spokesman said today that reporting on the such atrocities “shows that the security situation is worse than it really is.” He is speaking from a capital city where dozens of bodies are discovered every day showing signs of terrible torture. Where people are gunned down in their cars, dragged from their homes or blown apart in public places every single day.

At the end of the day, we have AP journalists with reporting and images from the actual neighborhood versus official spokesmen saying the story cannot be true because it is damaging and because one of the sources is not on a list of people approved to talk to the press. Good reporting relies on more than government-approved sources.

We stand behind our reporting.

Typically they ignore the bigger point here. There is absolutely NO proof that this incident occured. They first told the world that four mosques were burnt to the ground and six men were burned alive. Then when they discovered (via Centcom and us bloggers) that four mosques were not burned, only one was and that one slightly, they changed the original story. They relied 3 sources who will not go on record, two that will. One of those has retracted his statement and the other (Jamil Hussein) has been shown to have lied about his employment.

The AP has no other evidence that this event occured.

How about the recent case where they reported 11 civilians were shot by US forces based on “eyewitness” accounts once again. Un-named “witnesses” of course.

Separately, police and witnesses said U.S. soldiers shot and killed 11 civilians and wounded five on Sunday night in the Baghdad suburb of Husseiniya. The U.S. military said it had no record of any American military operation in the area.

“We were sitting inside our house when the Americans showed up and started firing at homes. They killed many people and burned some houses,” said one of the witnesses, a man with bandages on his head who was being treated at Imam Ali Hospital in the Shiite slum of Sadr City. The police and witnesses spoke with Associated Press Television News on condition of anonymity to protect their own security.

You may recall Centcom’s response:

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

Sir -

Reference the clarification requested on the story by AP below.

Anti-Iraqi Forces opened fire, targeting civilians in the al-Husseiniya area. 10 civilians were killed and six wounded at 11 p.m. Nov. 26. The incident was reported by the Iraqi Police through the Joint National Operations Center (a civilian matter relayed to the Coalition for tracking purposes). There was no Coalition involvement.

v/r

Capt. J. Elaine Hunnicutt (USAF)

Multi-National Corps – Iraq
Joint Operations Center
PAO OIC Nights

So what we have to rely on from the AP is unnamed “witnesses” and the ones who are named turn out to be frauds.

And this is the response we get from the AP?

Basically a “you believe what you want and we will believe what we want” kind of statement don’t you think? They are unwilling to prove to Centcom that this source of theirs is a real police officer. I mean all you have to do is produce the damn guy. Have him rebut his supposed “bosses”.

But no…..we get this joke of a response.

Typical.

UPDATE 1530hrs PST

The AP just sent me their latest article on this press briefing. As of yet I haven’t seen it on the wire so I will post the whole thing here:

Interior Ministry forms unit to monitor news coverage, threatens legal action

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) _ Iraq’s Interior Ministry said Thursday it had formed a special unit to monitor news coverage and vowed to take legal action against journalists who failed to correct stories the ministry deemed to be incorrect.

Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, spokesman for the ministry, said the purpose of the special monitoring unit was to find “fabricated and false news that hurts and gives the Iraqis a wrong picture that the security situation is very bad, when the facts are totally different.”

He said offenders would be notified and asked to “correct these false reports on their main news programs. But if they do not change those lying, false stories, then we will seek legal action against them.”

Khalaf explained the news monitoring unit at a weekly Ministry of Interior briefing. As an example, he cited coverage by The Associated Press of an attack Nov. 24 on a mosque in the Hurriyah district in northwest Baghdad.

The AP reported that six Sunni Muslims there were burned alive during the attack. The story quoted witnesses and police Capt. Jamil Hussein.

Khalaf said the ministry had no one on its staff by the name of Jamil Hussein.

“Maybe he wore an MOI (Ministry of Interior) uniform and gave a different name to the reporter for money,” Khalaf said.

Khalaf said the ministry had dispatched a team to the Hurriyah neighborhood and to the morgue but found no witnesses or evidence of burned bodies.

The spokesman said the ministry had a large public relations staff and said they should be contacted by the media to “get real, true news.”

U.S. military had no comment on the immolations on the day of the attack but subsequently issued a statement, citing the Iraqi army as saying it had found nothing to substantiate the report.

U.S. Navy Lt. Michael B. Dean, a public affairs officer for the multi-national force, later demanded that the story be retracted because he said police Capt. Jamil Hussein “is not a Baghdad police officer or an MOI employee.”

His allegations were checked with the AP reporter, who had been in routine contact for more than two years with Hussein, in some cases sitting in his office in the Yarmouk police station in west Baghdad. Hussein wore a police uniform during the face-to-face meetings.

Hussein confirmed the burning story on three separate occasions. AP reporters also went to the neighborhood and found three witnesses to the immolations who told nearly identical stories. Since then more people in the neighborhood have told about the incident in a similar fashion. Pictures of the Mustafa mosque where the incident occurred show that it is badly damaged by explosives and shows signs of scorching from fire.

Scrawled in what appears to be spray paint on the mosque compound wall is the phrase “blood wanted,” which Iraqis say has appeared on many structures in areas of heavy Shiite-Sunni sectarian conflict throughout Baghdad.

The phrase is a warning to the sect that is the minority in the neighborhood, Sunnis in the case of the region around the Mustafa mosque in Hurriyah, that they will be killed if they return.

Under Saddam Hussein’s regime, the government imposed censorship on local media and severely restricted foreign media coverage, monitoring transmissions and sending secret police to follow journalists. Those who violated the rules were expelled and in some cases jailed.

And here we go. The AP trying to twist this thing into a censorship issue instead of what it really is, our MSM using local stringers whose loyalties are obviously biased against the Coalition as their one and only source. And to top it all off the main source for a big story is a Police Officer who really isn’t a Police Officer. Talk about doing their homework.

No, all these reporters do is listen to these obviously made up stories of chaos and bloodshed and go to the press with it for one reason and one reason only. To show to the American public that Iraq is out of control. Which it is not.

UPDATE 1545hrs PST

Centcom also sent me a more in-depth memo on the press briefing today. It is quite lengthy so I will have it available to download soon.
Here are a few interesting Question & Answers:

Q There is conflicting news about burning six people in one of the Baghdad neighborhoods. What is the truth about this incident?

A This is another rumor; we dispatched our forces to the area where the rumor claimed the burning took place and found nothing. We also send a team to Al-Dab Aladly (medical center) and I was in touch with this center. No one can confirm any burned, dead body was received. MOD also has no information about this incident, either.

[…]Q Are there any changes or modifications in the Baghdad security plan or new measures that have been added to this plan?

A Iraq does not have only one city. Iraq has 18 provinces and their hot security is deteriorating in four provinces. The ministry doing its best to control the security in these provinces. Our responsibility does not stop in Baghdad; yes we put more effort here than in other provinces. In this past week, after the Sadr City incident, we have use most of our resources and capability in hunting down terrorists and dismantled many terrorist networks. Regarding the Baghdad security plan, it is controlled by security partners, and that is why you do not see us in some sectors of Baghdad. But we are coordinating activities and operations in every step of the process.

We play a team with one of the worst pass defence and what do we do, we run it over and over, and with only one person, J Lewis. So what do we get?

Baltimore vs.
Cincinnati
7 – 13

We deserved to lose.

I blame Brian’s play calling!

The chance that in­fi­del­i­ty will in­trude on a ro­man­tic re­la­tion­ship may be part­ly writ­ten in the cou­ple’s genes, a stu­dy has found. The re­sults sug­gest a DNA test could tell a man the rough chances his fe­male part­ner will cheat on him, though it would­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly work the op­po­site way.

The study found that wom­en act less pas­sion­ate­ly toward—and are like­li­er to cuck­old—part­ners who share genes with them in a spe­cial part of the ge­nome. This may in part re­flect an ev­o­lu­tion­ary mech­a­n­ism to re­duce in­breed­ing, the in­ves­ti­ga­tors spec­u­lat­ed.

The clus­ter of genes is termed the ma­jor his­to­com­pat­i­bi­li­ty com­plex, or MHC. The genes, on hu­man Chro­mo­some 6, are in­volved in im­mune re­sponses. The study is the first “to test the hy­poth­e­sis that MHC sim­i­larity pre­dicts as­pects of ac­tu­al hu­man sex­u­al re­la­tion­ships,” the re­search­ers wrote. The find­ings ap­peared in the Oc­to­ber is­sue of the re­search jour­nal Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence.
from WorldScience

by Robert

S&M clubs, nude parties, porn, X-rated romps rule at Columbia

Chris Kulawik (r.), head of the College Republicans, says he’s outraged by slide in science class comparing President Bush with a monkey. Marine reservist Matt Sanchez (l.) says he was called a ‘baby killer’ for pro-war views.

Famed as a hotbed of debate over academic freedom, New York’s most elite school is also a playpen for sexual hijinks, sophomoric antics and the wacky indulgences of the children of the rich.
While their parents shell out $33,246 a year in tuition, Columbia University students doff their clothes at naked parties, flock to sex toys workshops, broadcast porn on campus TV, bake anatomically correct pies for the “Erotic Cake-Baking Contest” and heat up the steps of the Low Library in a mass makeout session called the “Big Kiss.”

And of course, there’s always the stimulating game, “Guess the Number of Condoms in the Jelly-Bean Jar.”

Others volunteer for the bullwhip at Conversio Virium, the university-sanctioned S&M club that means “exchange of power” in Latin. It calls itself a “discussion group” that provides “education and peer support” and promotes “safe, sane and consensual play.” But the club doesn’t just talk.

Late on the night of Nov. 13, a Daily News reporter sat in room 303 of Hamilton Hall, a venerable classroom building where Columbia students have studied Poe, Plato and Plutarch for nearly 100 years.
As a female student volunteer stood facing the blackboard, and two dozen Columbians watched, a lecturer who identified himself only as Dov flogged her repeatedly with leather whips, rubber hoses – and a cat-o’-nine-tails.

“I’m Dov, and these are my toys,” he said, and for the next 14 minutes he demonstrated lashing techniques. The activity was consensual, but the squeals of delight mingled with the occasional yelps of pain.

Columbia would make no specific comment on the club or the flogging incident. Ivy Leaguers were unaware the reporter was in attendance. Dov is not employed by the school, which doesn’t police or censor club activities.

Referring only to student organizations generally, spokesman Robert Hornsby said the “university has a limited role in regulating student speech or private conduct.”

The result: Columbia Gone Wild.

New York’s Smartest still dream of winning a Nobel Prize. And bookworms still pull all-nighters in the Butler Library. But the 2 million-volume monument to the mind, which stays open 24 hours a day, doubles as a temple of earthier desires.

“Having sex in the stacks of Butler Library is one of the ultimate Columbia experiences,” said Miriam Datskovsky, the sex columnist for The Spectator, the student newspaper.

“There’s very little dating. It’s predominately a hookup scene,” said the 21-year-old, a senior from an Orthodox Jewish background who writes the “Sexplorations” column.

“Everything is so much easier and so much quicker – you go to dinner and then have sex,” she added.

Consider the party scene. But it’s no reason to get dressed up. In fact, there’s no reason to get dressed at all: The merrymakers of Morningside Heights host naked parties, lingerie-only parties – and the more bourgeois “clothing-optional parties with naked rooms.”

And taxpayers indirectly foot a chunk of the tab because bond offerings and loans from the state Dormitory Authority and federal Department of Education partially fund the renovation of dorms where naked frolickers muster.

Columbia wouldn’t comment on this use of university space. Lee Bollinger, the school’s $779,673-a-year president and a world-class expert on free speech, wasn’t available.

The soirees aren’t exactly orgies: “It’s more like naked students sitting around drinking martinis, defying societal conventions and trying to act nonchalant at the same time,” said Birk Oxholm, a religion major who graduated last year.

“They’re trying to act like it’s not about sex. But they’re not really succeeding,” he added.

One hostess, who staged a Halloween-themed “Naked Witches & Warlocks Party” last month, called it a “great unshackling from the clothing that so defines and imprisons us.” But it was a “sex-neutral event,” she said.

The same cannot be said of several X-rated campus happenings:

“Sex Toys 101.” The university’s Health Services division teamed up with Toys in Babeland, a SoHo sex shop, to host a sex toys workshop in John Jay Hall on Feb. 15.
Though it was part of “Safer Sex Week,” the playthings on display on W. 114th St. included bondage and S&M tools like whips, paddles, “floggers” and “slappers.”

“Sexhibition.” The annual campus sex fair, held in April, featured phallic ring toss games, orgasm-for-beginners workshops and discreet liaisons in the “Tent of Consent.”

“Thug Play with Princess Wendy.” Another session of the S&M club, taking place Oct. 30 in Hamilton Hall, was advertised as “beating, punching and slamming boys into lockers, and why bullies are so so so much fun!”
The speaker discussed “boot service,” the “fine art of humiliation” and how a $5 meat mallet can be used as a toy. But “Princess Wendy” also provided safety tips, counseling students to avoid kicking one another in the kidneys and spine.

“I like to hurt people,” she said. “I don’t like to send them to the hospital.”

She also advised some 30 devotees, “If you’re new to kicking and trampling, start out slow.”

Conversio Virium’s officers declined to address questions. Columbia’s student activities coordinator, a university employee who advises the club, didn’t respond to an e-mail.

“Smut TV.” CTV, Columbia’s in-house, student-run TV station, has a faculty adviser, uses school equipment and space, gets $5,021 a year in student activity fees – and is hungry for new viewers.
So at 10 p.m. on Oct. 17, it entered the hard-core porn business: Broadcasting into scores of dorms and lounges, it aired a five-minute clip, downloaded from the Internet, of a naked couple engaged in sex.

The footage ran during a sex advice show called “Sexiled” – which is student slang for getting kicked out of one’s room so a roommate can have sex – and even some jaded Columbians who’d tuned in said they were offended.

CTV, which isn’t edited, censored or monitored by the administration, said in a statement that airing porn was a “lapse of judgment.” It was “inconsistent with broadcast standards” and won’t happen again, said Alisa Gross and Nihar Shah, CTV’s student co-presidents.

from the New York Daily News

I wonder if these are any of the values that the Muslims hate and consider immoral and unislamic? You bet!And who are these liberals worry about more, radical Muslims or the U.S. soldiers protecting Democracy?

So if other schools follow this school’s example and promote sex and immorality while demonizing our soldiers, how long do you think our country will last?

by Curt at Flopping Aces

MAJOR UPDATE BELOW

IRAQ GOVERNMENT TO ANNOUNCE CAPT. HUSSEIN IS NOT WHO HE SAYS HE IS

First of all I apologize for the late response to the AP’s rebuttal on this Burning Six story. Loooong day and night at work last night so had no idea this was all taking place yesterday.

Secondly, please go check out Michelle’s latest Vent broadcast for a rundown of the latest happenings on this story.

On to the rebuttal:

The Associated Press rejects unfounded attacks on its story about six Sunni worshippers burned to death outside their mosque on Friday, November 24.

AP reporters who have been working in Iraq throughout the conflict learned of the mosque incident through witnesses and later corroborated it with police.

The AP received an email communication late Monday signed by a U.S. military public affairs officer, Navy Lt. Michael B. Dean, alleging that the police captain cited in our story “is not a Baghdad police office or MOI (Ministry of Interior) employee’’ and raising questions about whether or not he actually exists.

In fact, that captain has long been know to the AP reporters and has had a record of reliability and truthfulness. He has been based at the police station at Yarmouk, and more recently at al-Khadra, another Baghdad district, and has been interviewed by the AP several times at his office and by telephone. His full name is Jamil Gholaiem Hussein.

After the AP story was questioned by the U.S. military, Hussein was contacted again and confirmed that the incident took place. The AP also located additional witnesses outside the mosque in the al-Hurriyah district.

According to the witnesses interviewed by the AP, there was no U.S. military present at the time of the incident Friday, and the subsequent U.S. military statement about it cited only reports the U.S. military had received later from the Iraqi army.

If this Capt. has been a police officer for sometime why is there no record of him being employed by the Police nor the MoI? The AP believes him because he has provided information before? That’s it? That’s their whole basis for trusting this source?

Out of those 10 stories I dug up where he has provided information before how many of the allegations were independently verified? How do we know he didn’t make up other “atrocities” in the past?

I mean if he indeed lied about being a police officer how in the world can they say he is a trusted source?

Due to my tardiness it appears many have already fisked this rebuttal thoroughly. Dan from Riehl World View:

In looking at the revised AP story on the six Sunnis allegedly burned, a couple questions.

It says:

One witness said he and other people from the neighborhood took the six immolation victims to the Sunni cemetery near Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib suburb and buried them after the gunbattle. That witness said one of the victims was the Mustafa mosque muezzin or prayer caller, Ahmed al-Mashadani. He did not know the names of the five others, but said they were all members of the al-Mashadani tribe.

Would that be the same Sunni, Ahmed al-Mashadani who was, according to sources, kidnapped sometime in August? It’s a Spanish language story. I’ll include the translated graph and the one above.

To these deaths it is possible to add the kidnapping of a brother of the president of the Iraqian Parliament, the suní Mahmud al Mashadani, by a group of men armed in Bagdad, informed sources into the ministry into Interior.

According to the sources, Amhed al-Mashadani was kidnapped yesterday at night while he lead by the district of chií majority of Hurriya, in the northwest of the capital.

[…]The AP says:

The Associated Press first reported on Friday’s incident that evening, based on the account of police Capt. Jamil Hussein and Imad al-Hashimi, a Sunni elder in Hurriyah, who told Al-Arabiya television he saw people who were soaked in kerosene, then set afire, burning before his eyes.

Is that the same Imad al-Hashini who infamous quote of Nov 3 was:

“This is America spitting in our face,” said Imad al-Hashimi, a Baghdad paediatrician. “The sheer arrogance of it is unbelievable.”

And if it was him, as a doctor, could, or did he do anything to help any of the alleged victims?

Good questions.

Jim Hoft from Gateway Pundit also did some fact checking and found some interesting facts:

Here is the original report from the AP published in the Jerusalem Post on the Six Torched Sunnis that was republished in hundreds of papers:

Revenge-seeking Shi’ite militiamen grabbed six Sunnis as they left Friday worship services, doused them with kerosene and burned them alive near an Iraqi army post. The soldiers did not intervene, police Capt. Jamil Hussein said.

The savage revenge attack for Thursday’s slaughter of 215 people in the Shi’ite Sadr City slum occurred as members of the Mahdi Army militia burned four mosques and several homes while killing 12 other Sunni residents in the once-mixed Hurriyah neighborhood, Hussein said.

Here is the Multi National Forces Iraq press release the next day on April 25, 2006 in response to this original AP report:

Contrary to recent media reporting that four mosques were burned in Hurriya, an Iraqi Army patrol investigating the area found only one mosque had been burned in the neighborhood.

Soldiers from the 6th Iraqi Army Division conducted a patrol in Hurriya Friday afternoon in response to media reports that four mosques were being burned as retaliation for the VBIED attacks in Sadr City on Thursday.

The Soldiers set up a checkpoint near the Al Muhaimen mosque at approximately 2 p.m. and found the mosque intact with no evidence of any fire at the location.

So the AP later transformed their account of events slightly in their November 25, 5:45 PM report:

The U.S. military said Saturday that Iraqi soldiers securing Hurriyah found only one burned mosque and were unable to confirm residents’ and police accounts that six Sunni Arabs were dragged from Friday prayers and burned to death.

Notice, this wasn’t a correction.

Flopping Aces has the letter from Centcom that says that the Multi-Natinoal Forces Iraq cannot verify that the AP stringer actually works for the police.

[…]So, where does this leave the original report so far?

So far we know that there were not 4 Sunni mosques torched as originally reported. There was one mosque that suffered fire damage to its doorway. That part of the story is not being disputed by the AP.

So the AP story is already bogus! We’re just not sure how much of their story is bogus.

The AP stringers could not find 4 torched mosques but they found “witnesses” days later who said they saw six Sunnis torched.

Great questions! The AP believed the witnesses about the FOUR burned mosques, printed the story, then changed it when they found that not one of them burned to the ground. In fact, just as Centcom stated, only one was burned and extinguished.

So Centcom got that one right.

Now the AP says they are sure the Burned Six was a real event, but all they have is three witnesses who wont be named, one “Police Capt.” who is not a Police Capt. and one imam who has been quoted as spewing anti-American rhetoric, who incidently has recanted his story:

The Iraqi Defense Ministry later said that al-Hashimi, the Sunni elder in Hurriyah, had recanted his account of the attack after being visited by a representative of the defense minister.

Way to go there AP…..great job your doing over there.

Want this story to go away? Then produce the damn Capt. if he is indeed a Police Capt. It is not that hard to do since he is supposedly a public official. Also, if six were burned there should be six bodies. Where did they bury them? Where is the morgue paperwork showing that they received six burned bodies.

This is all something any reporter worth his salt could do in one afternoon.

But instead we get three unnamed witnesses.

Sure thing.

UPDATE
An important update, Jim Hoft has found this story in which the imam at the “burned” mosque has been accused of working with Saddam’s secret police:

Update: (Wed. AM) The imam at the “attacked mosque”, Ahmed Al-Dabash, is accused by his own congregation of being a member of Saddam’s secret police. And, Sunni thugs were previously caught trying to smuggle arms into his mosque:

At the cement-rendered Ahbab Al-Mustafa mosque, the imam, Ahmed Al-Dabash, with the trademark straggly beard associated with pro-Sunni extremism, blamed Tuesday’s bombing on Shiite militias and denied that a day later his congregation had attacked the Shiites’ Al Tuheed mosque.

Amjad Jazim Mohammed, a member of the Shiite congregation, said that he and fellow worshippers went to help the dead and injured Sunnis, but that the explosion was not a Shiite attack – rather an accidental detonation as the Sunnis prepared car-bombs for use against local Shiites.

The story is as murky as that, but word that the two mosques are at war spread like wildfire. Iraqi security forces, backed by US tanks, now guard the Shiites, and attempts by the Sunnis to smuggle arms into their mosque were foiled by a vehicle search.

Amjad Jazim Mohammed, who said he saw the invasion, told the Herald: “The Sunnis blamed us for the attack on their mosque because they knew that the Americans would investigate the explosion and they did not want their bomb-making to be discovered.

At the Al Tuheed mosque, congregation members accused Dr Al-Dabash of having served in Saddam Hussein’s secret police, and of having recently studied in Saudi Arabia, where, they said, he was imbued with the Saudi’s extremist Wahabi Islamic doctrine.

Things get murkier and murkier.

UPDATE II

Even better, a LGF reader has received a email from Centcom confirming that the Iraqi government will announce this Capt as bogus:

From: MNC-I PAO Victory Main JOC
[mailto:MNF-IPAOVictoryMainJOC@iraq.centcom.mil]
Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2006 9:14 AM
To: [deleted]
Cc: MNC-I PAO Victory Main JOC
Subject: RE: [U] RE: Could you confirm that the letter below was sent
by CENTCOM

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED

Sir:

I have just learned from Mr. Costlow, mentioned below, that Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the official Ministry of Interior spokesmen, will begin his regularly scheduled press conference at noon tomorrow with a statement that Capt. Jamil Hussein, is not a Baghdad police officer or an MOI employee.

Yesterday, coincidently, the Iraqi Ministry of Interior issued a press release warning of spreading propaganda aimed at broadcasters. The text of this statement follows:

A Statement from the Ministry of Interior

After media became free in Iraq and expressed the will of all without the government interfering, unfortunately, some satellite TV channels began misleading public opinion and disclosing chaos for a particular political agenda, by broadcasting propaganda that harms people and tries to shake the trust in security forces.

Such satellite channels are trying to affect Iraqi unity and claim that information was stated by a security source without mentioning the source. Information sources should be well-known and reliable, and to avoid repeating such unfair actions, MOI warns the media and insists on defending the people’s security and safety. MOI will take all immediate preventive procedures against media that broadcast propaganda, because such media intend to repress the will of Iraqis in fighting terror and crime.

We would like to mention that such procedures we do not consider as chaining true free media, but it is a legal defense for Iraqi security and the safety of our people.

If you have any additional questions, please let us know.

Vr,
LT Dean

Michael B. Dean
Lieutenant, U.S. Navy
MNC-I Joint Operations Center
Public Affairs Officer

michael.dean@iraq.centcom.mil
MNCI-PAO-VictoryMainJOC@iraq.centcom.mil
Multinational Corps – Iraq
Public Affairs Office

Again, good job there AP!

You claimed to have met this Capt in his office but the Iraqi government will now go on record as saying he is not who he says he is…..

Sounds to me like your reporters wanted to believe this story so badly they believed a bogus source and continued to dig yourself a hole.

UPDATE IV 1100hrs PST

Austin Bay has an excellent editorial up at Townhall:

So who is Jamil?

At this point we really don’t know. The AP hasn’t provided definitive details. Jamil’s “burning Sunnis” story now appears to be rather dubious smoke. However, its horrifying headline has magnified a perception of sectarian terror, one advantageous to Saddam’s “former regime elements” and al-Qaida terrorists.

MNCI could be wrong, but the distinct possibility exists that the AP has been misled by its own stringers or duped by an enemy propaganda operation. If Jamil is another “Jimmy,” the AP’s story — as a weapon in a war of perception — is far more damaging than Janet Cooke’s Washington fiction.

A must read.

Also check out Michelle Malkin’s latest in which she wondered about the same things as me:

Two unnamed Associated Press reporters get new acounts from three unnamed witnesses (who, of course, refuse to be identified by name–although the AP has no problem describing some weirdly specific details about their ages, occupations, ethnicity, and religions) about six burned-alive Sunnis, five of whom no one can name and whose bodies can’t be disinterred in an investigation because it would violate Islamic law. And of the two original sources who claim the incident happened, one has recanted and the other is someone whom the military and Iraqi officials maintain is not who he says he is.

Contrary to the AP’s assertion that it’s all over it now appears to be even more certain that the AP relied on a insurgent stringer who gave them enemy propaganda.

And they bought it hook, line and sinker.

I’m sure it’s not because they WANTED to believe it right? Or that they want to create the same impression as the enemy does right?

Sigh…

UPDATE V 1130hrs PST

Uncommon Misconceptions is curious about this Capt. Hussein. He cites this AP rebuttal:

The police captain cited in our story has long been known to the AP reporters and has been interviewed in his office and by telephone on several occasions during the past two years.

He is an officer at the police station in Yarmouk, with a record of reliability and truthfulness. His full name is Jamil Gholaiem Hussein.

and asks:

So here’s my question: Yarmouk is a wealthy Sunni neighborhood in western Baghdad. Hurriyah, the slum where the burnings allegedly occurred, is in northern Baghdad. And since the Shiites basically took over Hurriyah and are strongly affiliated with Moqtada al Sadr, it is unlikely that many Sunnis would be visiting. Or patrolling there.

That is indeed strange. How is it that this “Capt.” from a station that is quite some distance from the “burning” is the only supposed Iraqi official to announce this burning?

More evidence he is full of it.

UPDATE VI 1155hrs PST

Using Google Earth I was able to plot the distance from the two districts:

Over 5 miles separates the two districts…..

UPDATE V 1230hrs PST

The AP has sent me a response to the latest news that the Iraqi Government will be announcing that Police Capt. Hussein is not a Police Capt:

AP has reported this attack thoroughly and diligently, speaking to police, witnesses and others who would know about the attack. We sent reporters to the area later and found additional eyewitnesses whose stories were consistent. AP’s television crew videotaped the entrance to the mosque that showed evidence of an explosion and fire. Our reporter spoke with an officer who had provided AP with reliable information in the past and he confirmed three times that the incident happened. As stated in AP’s November 28 news story, this captain “has been a regular source of police information for two years and had been visited by the AP reporter in his office at the police station on several occasions.” When the U.S. military raised questions about the incident and the officer, we reported their comments, even though they were not at the scene.

Navy Lieutenant Dean’s statement seems to suggest that the news media should work solely from a government list of ‘authorized sources.’ But a free press cultivates a wide range of sources. That’s what AP did in this case, as it always does.

Linda M. Wagner
Director of Media Relations and Public Affairs
Associated Press, Corporate Communications

Lt. Dean’s statement was that the Iraqi Government was announcing that this Capt. Hussein was not employed by the Police Department nor the MoI….period. The Iraqi Government was the one asking the MSM to at least check with them first before printing unsubstantiated rumors.

The fact that this “Capt.” has commented about prior incidents does not make him a legitimate source if he has indeed lied about his employment.

UPDATE VI 1300hrs PST

Rusty from The Jawa Report has found the following comment from a Shia commenter who is loyal to the Mahdi Army (so take it for what it’s worth):

Yet again, lies lies lies lies and some more lies!

The Huriya Area in Baghdad, have seen attacks back and forth ever since the so caled “Omar Brigade” a fraction from the AL-Qaida´enteres the aread, and started threatening the Shiaat living, there and killing them.

Al-Mahdi army quickly mobilized their forces and entered the area and started deporting all sunni’s suspected of working together with the wahabi’s of ALQAIDA to kill shiaat in that area.

Ever since hitting’s, killing’s attack’s have bin going on back and forth in that area, with no clear winner.

This incident of 6 men and 4 mosques being burned is all nonsense, and the reports spreaded by some filthy people about these incidents were all rejected by the Iraqi defence minister (A Sunni arab) and the americans, because they entered the area wanted to see if these incidents really happened.

What really happened was that a molotov cocktail was thrown into a sunni mosque which burned the carpet, and it was quickly estinguished after a known “Sunni terrorist leader” had attacked several shiaat’s in that area wounding them with sniper weapons from that mosque.

People in that area responded to the wahabi engagement, and after they fled they through a molotov cocktail into the mosque which was used as a base for that attack.

Yet again bull is spreaded to try and cover over the massacre that happened in Sadr City.

UPDATE VII 1515hrs PST

This may be a good time to go back and read Mudville Gazette’s post on the fact that Al-Qaeda knows how to work our media:

You probably haven’t heard much about the efforts of the Global Islamic Media Front – al Qaeda’s “public relations” team. The group is well known to those who monitor terrorist web sites, but rarely reported on by the mainstream media.

But another recent effort from the group won’t likely be reported anywhere in the western media – at least not directly. Titled “Working Paper for a Media Invasion of America”, the recently translated document was originally posted on a known jihaddist web site, but has received scant public attention from it’s target audience. No full translations of the treatise are currently available, but a brief description of some of the content can be seen here.

Najd al-Rawi, the document’s author, begins by noting that although they’ve been successful in many ways, the jihaddists haven’t fully exploited the opportunities presented by the US media. Inspired by a video from bin Laden addressing the American people with subtitles in English, the author notes that “It seemed the Shayk wanted to send a clear message to his brother mujahadeen to pay more attention to this part of the mission.” He points out that videos from the “Shayks of jihad” are in great demand in the western media.

Such videos are readily available – but for the most part translation to English is left to the media outlets that elect to broadcast them. The plan suggests a remedy for this oversight, and the paper calls for talented professionals to join the jihad – specifically, translators, and people with journalistic or literary talent who can provide a “ringing and powerful style that will have impact on the American people.” Other desirable recruits are computer graphics experts, “with experience in Photoshop, 3d Studio Max, and other programs”, and finally “Sharia experts” who can review the projects for materials prohibited by Islamic law, “such as pictures of women”.

[…]In Iraq, many Anbar residents have reached a point of sufficient outrage at the al Qaeda terrorists to take up arms against the foe. Lacking the motivation of continued bloodshed on American soil, few Americans are so inclined, and that’s fine, so far. But like it or not, Mr and Mrs Average American are“to throw fear into the American people’s hearts”, divide and conquer, weaken resolve, and defeat America. Be aware of the plan to reach that goal, and recognize it for what it is when next you see it in action, as you undoubtedly will.

This latest dustup over Capt. Jamil Hussein and the Burning Six story just illustrates the need for the American public to be aware of this propaganda. We now know the AP, and have for sometime, is printing what these propagandists say and passing them off as facts when most or all of the stories cannot be corroberated.

Be aware.

Additionally Bruce Kessler from the Democracy Project suggests some ways to get this story corrected.

UPDATE VIII 1600hrs PST

SeeDubya at Junkyard Blog noticed that the rebuttal states this fictional Capt. most recently worked in the al Khadra’ district of Baghdad which according to Google Maps would put him approx. 2.5 miles away from al Hurriyah district.

Not as great a distance as first thought. But still a bit out of the way for this Capt. since I would figure every district has there own station. Not sure about that tho.

Either way, with the Ministry of Interior set to announce this guy is a fake the AP doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
I mean the AP could solve all of this with one fell swoop by producing Capt. Hussein at the MoI during the press conference with his bonafides.

I have a feeling that wont be happening tho.

by Larwyn

THE DAY after the 9/11 attacks, MIT professor Noam Chomsky wrote of the need “to understand what may have led to the crimes, which means making an effort to enter the minds of the likely perpetrators.” What struck Daveed Gartenstein-Ross about Chomsky’s response was that “Chomsky made no real effort to enter the minds of the perpetrators. Instead he simply projected his own grievances against the United States onto them.”

Gartenstein-Ross had a much stronger idea as to what motivated the 9/11 attackers. After converting to Islam in college, he held a job at the Ashland, Ore., office of Al Haramain, a Saudi-funded charity that sent money to al Qaeda.

In a fascinating memoir due in stores in February, “My Year Inside Radical Islam,” Gartenstein-Ross describes how he was drawn to Islam because he saw it as a religion of peace.

Over time, however, he watched himself and those around him seduced into a fanaticism that required them to loathe not only non-Muslims, but also Muslims who belonged to the wrong sect, listened to music or shaved. He had expected an open, accepting religion, only to hear sheikhs arguing that Muslims who leave the religion should be killed, that it is acceptable to kill civilians for jihad and that good Muslims should work to replace democratic governments with Shariah law.

The hate chased Gartenstein-Ross from Islam, but only after it sucked him into believing that unacceptable actions were holy.

The book’s message is not that Americans should distrust all Muslims. “The message is the exact opposite of that,” he told me over the phone. Gartenstein-Ross understands that America needs to enlist moderate Muslims to fight the extremists. More important, in the course of his journey he saw the many benign stripes of Islam as he befriended good people whose faith made them stronger, better human beings.

He believes Americans need a more fact-based understanding of Islam, which requires the media to do a better job of reporting what Muslims think and say — instead of papering over radical rhetoric. Once when a local reporter visited Al Haramain to write a piece on Ramadan, a co-worker refused to shake her hand, launched a defense of sorts of Algerian terrorists and lambasted a French policy that prohibited schoolgirls from wearing the hijab in class. The comments never made the story. Gartenstein-Ross writes, “And so, as I often did, the reporter chose not to acknowledge that a real clash of values existed here.”

Islam’s approach to homosexuality is another area that the left ignores in deference to multiculturalism. (Think of Bay Area liberals who voice outrage at the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, but are silent about the Shariah policy on homosexuals — 100 lashes or death.) Ditto the status of women.

Gartenstein-Ross also takes issue with those rose-colored-glass wearers who deny that there is any theological basis for Islamic extremism. “It’s important to note that they do have an argument,” he told me, if only to be able to engage them in argument and understand where they get their ideas.

Gartenstein-Ross is a strong storyteller, who enables the reader to feel the ineluctable draw to fanaticism, as well as the anguish and disillusionment that led him to support violent jihad, but ultimately reject it. He has no use for those who, a la Chomsky, pat themselves on the back for having the intellectual fortitude “to enter the minds of the likely perpetrators.”

There are forces in this world that would kill these elites for the apostasy, but elites are so blinded with their sense of superiority over their political enemies — like President Bush — that they can’t even see the dagger pointed at their throats.
by SFGate

Don’t you wonder sometime, if the left understands English. I don’t care if the left want to committ suicide, I just don’t want them to get me killed in the process.

By Frederick Meekins

For years, whispers have ebbed and flowed across the currents of cyberspace that the U.S. government had plans on the drawing board for the establishment of detention and relocation camps to heard massive swaths of the population into during times of declared national emergency.

Haughty sophisticates regularly dismissed such nuggets of information, claiming such warnings were the ravings of kooks and the paranoid. However, at last more mainstream news sources are willing to admit such holding pens of dubious constitutionality are in the works.

According to a FoxNews.com report titled “Critics Fear Emergency Centers Could Be Used For Immigration Round-Ups”, a contract has been granted to a subsidiary of Halliburton no less for the establishment of emergency relocation centers for use during a national disaster or immigration crisis. Though marketed as a way to house illegals as they are processed back to their countries of origin, the American people need to be warned this might not be the only purpose for such facilities.

For starters, as Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi points out in the FoxNews.com story, “An emergency is basically anything DHS (the Department of Homeland Security) deems an emergency.” Thus Americans could theoretically be herded into such facilities over reasons far less ominous than natural disasters and calamities.

This is especially dangerous in light of rulings such as the Kelo decision that imbue the rich and powerful with a nearly unimpeachable infallibility. What’s to stop some unscrupulous developers from getting their puppets in government from declaring an “aesthetic emergency” or something just as ridiculous in a less than picturesque area and cart the residents off to some holding area while their houses are torn down? Or since feigned concern over obesity is all the rage, what is to prevent the government from declaring a “nutritional emergency” and haul the chronically gluttonous off to mandatory fat camp?

Don’t laugh. When he was drug czar, Bill Bennett toyed with the idea of snatching kids from their parents in drug-plagued neighborhoods. And at this very moment, the United States is in the middle of any number of declared national emergencies.

Basically, most of the Executive Orders — regulations promulgated by the President with dubious legality since they were not authorized by Congress — are already on the books permitting authorities to seize your property, drop you in a camp, and force you to perform slave labor. All that has to be done is to set up facilities and for the President (or whoever might be running the show on that dark day for our country) to give the go-head.

Secondly, shouldn’t the American people be concerned that this so-called “civil defense” matter is being farmed out to the private sector. Many so-called Conservatives kneel so worshipfully at the altar of big business that they claim that protections such as the Bill of Rights and other legal niceties should not apply in a private sector context.

From the tone of the FoxNews.com article, one gets the impression that these proposed facilities will be administered along the lines of a for profit enterprise. As such, are there any guarantees that those corralled into these slaughterhouses will be guaranteed the fundamental liberties and protections we currently enjoy as Americans? Or will the first occupants, when they arrive, be told that they are no longer under the jurisdiction of the United States but rather under the authority of what amounts to the monster offspring of a prison and an out-of-control homeowners association.

Have a complaint about the food. Get back handed across the face. Object to the guards pawing at your buxom wife or teenage daughter, and you get a broom handle up your rectum.

“You’re out of your mind,” the mentally delicate will respond. Am I?

Such abuses already take place by rogue elements of law enforcement. Won’t such behaviors be even more widespread when that annoying Constitution and Bill of Rights are finally done away with once and for all?

Frankly, these kinds of places are hardly run properly when theoretically subject to public scrutiny. Americans would do well to follow the ongoing saga of Katrina recovery as it serves as a kind of experimental case study of the kind of future being planned for the vast majority of us.

According to a WorldNetDaily story titled “FEMA Lifts Reporter Ban”, it has been discovered that until exposed FEMA was forbidding those living in trailer parks set up by the government relief agency from talking with the press without having a Homeland Security handler present. FEMA goons kicked a reporter out of a trailer to which the reporter had been invited by the resident and ordered — ordered mind you — another resident back into her trailer that dared to speak to a reporter through a chainlink fence. The last time I checked, losing one’s home in a natural disaster did not make one a felon that had forfeited his rights.

Perhaps the most disheartening thing about the Fox News story bringing this neglected issue to the attention of a more generalized segment of the news-consuming public is that of all the sources researched are prominent names on the left side of the political spectrum such as AlterNet, The Progressive, and two Democratic members of Congress. Claiming to have a political philosophy taking into account the depravity of man unlike their progressivist counterparts given over more to utopian delusions, shouldn’t Conservatives be the ones warning of the dangers to human liberties posed by these detention facilities. For aren’t some of the most fearful words in the English language, “We’re from the government and we’re here to help”?

Conservatives backing these facilities because their guy is currently in office should be ashamed of themselves. Shouldn’t they realize that their man won’t always be in office. And even if the party of your choice held power now through the end of time, why does a proposal under consideration suddenly become immoral based upon which party backs the policy? Conservatives wouldn’t countenance plans openly plotting to establish civil detention camps under Clinton, then why accept such a measure under Bush?

By Frederick Meekins

by Brujo Blanco

I find it interesting when I hear this mantra about the people have a right to know. My question is what do they have a right to know? They have a right to know how government works and how it is working. They do not have a right to know everything. In fact is there a right to know in the constitution? My answer that there is not a right to know. There is a right to a free press and a right to free speech. Keep in mind that no right is unlimited. You can swing your arms violently but you cannot do so in such a manner that you hit your partner in the face. You do not have a right to yell “fire” in a crowded theater.

The purpose of this writing is to proffer the concept that there are government secrets that need to be kept secret. It seems that it makes sense to everyone but a number of Democrats. They feel that because of their position as senators or representatives that they should have unfettered access to state secrets. They also feel that they are the judges of what secrets they will have.

There are two problems with this concept from my perspective. First off if one has knowledge of a secret one might accidentally disclose that secret. Second I do not trust politicians to keep their big mouths shut. Some politicians (and people in general) suffer from loose lips.

Now that the Democrats have made some serious inroads through the election they are moving to access more and more information to which they did not have access in the past. It is unfortunate but there are those in our government that seem to want the military and GWB to fail in the War on Terror even at the risk of losing lives and maybe even the war. There are those in government that have clearly demonstrated that if it is politically expedient they will release information to the press.

Having worked in a trade involving serious secrets I understand full well what damage can be done if some of the Democrats have their way. If they have their way and they access certain types of classified information disclosure could end up identifying methods of collecting information. If these methods are disclosed the enemy will change their activities to evade the collection effort. Also, any information leaked will end up in the files of the enemy.

One of the main movers in this matter is Patrick Leahy. This guy, alias Leaky Leahy, was forced to resign his past position on the Senate Intelligence Committee because he leaked information regarding the Iran-Contra Investigation. He carelessly and with malice leaked the committee’s draft report to the media. Leahy claimed that he did not leak the information but he did allow the media to examine the report. If you believe that is not leaking information I know of this very busy bridge in Brooklyn that I can sell you so you can charge tolls to cross over. This guy, who has demonstrated that he cannot be trusted with secrets, wants access to information on CIA and their detentions of enemy combatants. This is highly dangerous grounds. These characters want to treat these combatants as criminal suspects with rights not extended to POWs under the Geneva Convention.

Leahy has stated in the past that he would not keep a secret if there was a greater need to release the information. What makes this guy an authority on what is to be released and what is not to be released?

We need to keep in mind that the CIA consists of spies. They go to other countries and commit espionage on our behalf. They have a duty to collect foreign intelligence. We have a duty to protect them and allow them to do their jobs without risk of being killed or compromised. Make no mistake this request for information about the CIA is purely political.

Another weenie to be watched in this matter is “Dirty” Harry Reid. This guy recently got caught lying on his ethics report. When he was caught he was permitted to amend the report. This guy released classified information on a judicial nominee. This established his skill at keeping a secret.

John Kerry is another guy on my list. I do not trust a guy who has his photo posted in a museum in a communist country (North Vietnam) as one of their heros. This BS artist also rubbed elbows with a communist dictator Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua. Ortega who sponsored murder and mayhem in his own country. One incident that comes to mind was when he was questioning John Bolton regarding his nomination Kerry carelessly asked Bolton about a covert CIA agent whom he identified by name. This provides me with two points. First these guys (even the good guys) do not need to know the names of covert agents. Second is that if they do know the names they will disclose them either on purpose or by accident.

Ron Wyden (D-Or) is another on the hit parade of people who cannot keep a secret. He openly criticized and disclosed a classified spy program because it was in his opinion too expensive and unnecessary. Apparently, Wyden does not want to have any spy programs without public debate. Guess what? If you have a public debate the enemy will be informed and they will evade the collection effort.

Let us not forget John D. Rockefeller (D-WV) who negligently disclosed information regarding a spy program that he declared was totally unjustified, very wasteful, and dangerous to national security. Apparently, in this instance my man Jay was the danger.

Joe Biden (D-DE) has repeatedly voted against measures to strengthen anti-leak laws. His justification was that it would inhibit whistle blowers in the wake of the Watergate Scandal and revelations of CIA misconduct. From my perspective there is a distinct difference between whistle blowers and traitors. Another thing Watergate was a criminal act not a classified project.

It becomes more and more apparent that it is more important that the dems solidify their power than to have GWB succeed in the War on Terror. When a person is running for office that is when that person should be a political animal. Once elected this individual should forget politics and govern and do what they believe to be best for the country. We have heard the mantra regarding Republicans and corruption. The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that when a Republican is caught breaking the law the other Republicans kick him to the curb as they should. When it is a Dem the Dems circle the wagons. If anyone intentionally and maliciously discloses classified information that person needs to be prosecuted.

by Curt at Flopping Aces

The big story, or one of them today, is the fact that a few MSM outfits have decided to deem Iraq a civil war, because as we all know…they are experts on this sort of thing.

Sigh….

Here is the NYT’s take:

“After consulting with our reporters in the field and the editors who directly oversee this coverage, we have agreed that Times correspondents may describe the conflict in Iraq as a civil war when they and their editors believe it is appropriate,” Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, revealed in a statement. “It’s hard to argue that this war does not fit the generally accepted definition of civil war. (See Ed Wong’s story on the subject in Sunday’s paper.)

“We expect to use the phrase sparingly and carefully, not to the exclusion of other formulations, not for dramatic effect. The main shortcoming of “civil war” is that, like other labels, it fails to capture the complexity of what is happening on the ground. The war in Iraq is, in addition to being a civil war, an occupation, a Baathist insurgency, a sectarian conflict, a front in a war against terrorists, a scene of criminal gangsterism and a cycle of vengeance. We believe ‘civil war’ should not become reductionist shorthand for a war that is colossally complicated.”

Puhlease! As many have already noted this is the media’s attempt to gain some acceptence in the news business since their reputations have taken a plunge into the gutter over the past few years. Here is Steven Spruiell’s take:

Let’s cut right to what this “civil war” fanfare in the media is really all about: It has nothing to do with the ongoing violence in Iraq, and everything to do with the fact that these media organizations, which are struggling to maintain their relevance in a rapidly changing industry, feel the need to assert themselves and remind the public of their importance, and what better way than by calling the war for the insurgents and starting a push to solidify public opinion in favor of immediate withdrawal?

The MSM played a huge part in forcing the US out of a war we were winning, a war called Vietnam, and now they believe they can be just as important in ensuring Bush’s legacy goes down in flames. Consequences be damned.

As my recent posts have shown, our media will take any witness, any informant, any warm blooded mammel as a source for a story as long as they produce visions of chaos and bloodshed. All to propagate a view that Iraq is doomed. As Steven notes with this headline, it’s already begun:

Mark Finkelstein has really zeroed in on this. Check out his screen cap from NBC’s Today show: “Civil War: How Can the U.S. Get Out of Iraq?” really says it all.

That’s it in a nutshell folks. The MSM has consistently used stringers sympathetic to the enemies cause to fill stories of bloodshed. All to produce despair in the minds of the American people.

They can feel how important they will be once again if they force a withdrawal…they can feel it so bad they can taste it.

It doesn’t matter that cutting and running from Iraq will give Al-Qaeda a whole nation in which to run their terror operations worldwide. It doesn’t matter that cutting and running will make the sacrifices made by our troops to have for nothing. It doesn’t matter what will happen to the millions of Iraqi’s who will once again suffer because we didn’t have the balls to do what was right and just….to finish the job.

Go ahead MSM, pat yourself on the back. We are all so proud.

Getting The News From The Enemy, Update II

by Curt at Flopping Aces

Another big update from Centcom. Recall my Update I where I link to this article by the AP: (big h/t to Riehl World View for unearthing the story)

Separately, police and witnesses said U.S. soldiers shot and killed 11 civilians and wounded five on Sunday night in the Baghdad suburb of Husseiniya. The U.S. military said it had no record of any American military operation in the area.

“We were sitting inside our house when the Americans showed up and started firing at homes. They killed many people and burned some houses,” said one of the witnesses, a man with bandages on his head who was being treated at Imam Ali Hospital in the Shiite slum of Sadr City. The police and witnesses spoke with Associated Press Television News on condition of anonymity to protect their own security.

On Monday, about 250 people attended a memorial service outside the hospital’s morgue for the 11 victims, saying it was being conducted in the slum because the dead had been followers of the radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The cleric and his Madhi Army militia are both based in Sadr City.

Centcom just sent me this update:

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

Sir -

Reference the clarification requested on the story by AP below.

Anti-Iraqi Forces opened fire, targeting civilians in the al-Husseiniya area. 10 civilians were killed and six wounded at 11 p.m. Nov. 26. The incident was reported by the Iraqi Police through the Joint National Operations Center (a civilian matter relayed to the Coalition for tracking purposes). There was no Coalition involvement.

v/r

Capt. J. Elaine Hunnicutt (USAF)

Multi-National Corps – Iraq
Joint Operations Center
PAO OIC Nights

So the AP prints a report in which “police” are quoted as saying the US fired on the civilians but the Iraqi police reported NO coalition involvement to the MoI.

Another example of attempting to make news by our MSM.

UPDATE 2200hrs PST

Dan from Riehl World View has done some great workup on the writer of this bogus AP piece, one SAMEER N. YACOUB, and boy does he have a history. He was writer who wrote glowingly about Saddam and was present when the contractors were hung years ago:

Dan is all over it, check it out.

Getting The News From The Enemy, Update

Ok, I broke down and started a new thread for updates. The original one is just getting waaaayyyy too long. If your just coming into this story go here to get all the facts on how a bogus Iraqi Police Officer has been supplying quotes to the AP.

I found this transcript from MSNBC in which they refer to the Burning Six bogus story as one reason why they have now decided to call the Iraq situation a “civil war”: (via ThinkProgress, a lefty site)

The news from Iraq is becoming grimmer every day. Over the long holiday weekend bombings killed more than 200 people in a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad. And six Sunni men were doused with kerosene and burned alive. Shiite muslims are the majority, but Sunnis like Saddam Hussein ruled that country until the war. Now, the battle between Shiites and Sunnis has created a civil war in Iraq. Beginning this morning, MSNBC will refer to the fighting in Iraq as a civil war — a phrase the White House continues to resist. But after careful thought, MSNBC and NBC News decided over the weekend, the terminology is appropriate, as armed militarized factions fight for their own political agendas. We’ll have a lots more on the situation in Iraq and the decision to use the phrase, civil war.

And there you have it. It has begun. The MSM has been using bogus officials to supply chaos to their stories and based on those same stories has decided Iraq is now a official civil war.

Make sense?

UPDATE 1355hrs PST

A fresh AP report is out in which they allege that US soldiers shot up a bunch of civilians (h/t Riehl World View)

Separately, police and witnesses said U.S. soldiers shot and killed 11 civilians and wounded five on Sunday night in the Baghdad suburb of Husseiniya. The U.S. military said it had no record of any American military operation in the area.

“We were sitting inside our house when the Americans showed up and started firing at homes. They killed many people and burned some houses,” said one of the witnesses, a man with bandages on his head who was being treated at Imam Ali Hospital in the Shiite slum of Sadr City. The police and witnesses spoke with Associated Press Television News on condition of anonymity to protect their own security.

On Monday, about 250 people attended a memorial service outside the hospital’s morgue for the 11 victims, saying it was being conducted in the slum because the dead had been followers of the radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The cleric and his Madhi Army militia are both based in Sadr City.

Let me sum this up. The military states that there was no operations going on in that area at that time but the AP decides to print unsubstantiated facts based on anonymous sources.

Now based on what I have found out about their other “source”, one Capt. Jamil Hussein, should we now believe these allegations?

I think not.

I have a email into my contact at Centcom for their reaction….stay tuned.

UPDATE II 1420hrs PST

The Jawa Report has an important update. They have found a guide printed by ‘The Jihad Media Battalion” (linked to Al-Qaeda) in which they give detailed instructions on how to use Google for their own benefit:

According to the authors of the guide, the purpose of learning how to properly use Google is to

The jihadis understand that the most important battleground in this war is that of propaganda. Unfortunately, very few of our leaders understand this. Or, if they understand it, are unwilling to fight it.More evidence that the enemy understands how to work the media with photoshopped pictures and bogus stories. And the MSM is swallowing it whole.

UPDATE III 1515hrs PST

Decided to do some more digging on this Jamil Hussein before I head out to the gym and came up with four more stories. Two I had to get from Lexis-Nexis.

This one is from April 27th of this year, the very first mention of him in any newspaper story I can find. If you can find one earlier then this please let me know:

Mayson Ahmed Bakir al-Hashimi, 60, whose brother, Tariq al-Hashimi, was appointed by parliament as vice president on Saturday, was killed by unidentified gunmen in a BMW sedan as she was leaving her home Thursday morning with her bodyguard in southwestern Baghdad, said police Capt. Jamel Hussein. The bodyguard, Saad Ali, also died in the shooting, Hussein said.

It was the second recent killing in Tariq al-Hashimi’s immediate family. On April 13, his brother, Mahmoud al-Hashimi, was shot while driving in a mostly Shiite area of eastern Baghdad.

On Thursday, two of the vice president’s brothers, one an army officer, raced to the scene to recover the body of their sister, Hussein said. She had worked on the government’s audit commission and was married with two grown children.

Then I found 3 more in June. The first one is dated June 2nd: (via Lexis-Nexis)

Mortar Barrage Kills 9 Civilians, Wounds 40 In Southern Baghdad.

The Associated Press, INTERNATIONAL NEWS
June 2, 2006
53 words

Mortar barrage kills 9 civilians, wounds 40 in southern Baghdad. BAGHDAD Iraq

A mortar barrage Thursday killed nine civilians and wounded 40 in southern Baghdad, police said.

The attack occurred in south Baghdad’s predominantly Sunni Arab Dora district and involved seven mortar rounds landing on four houses, said police Capt. Jamil Hussein.

The houses were located in Dora’s Abu Dishir area, he added

Then another one June 11th: (Lexis-Nexis again)

Gunmen Ambush Minivan Carrying Sunnis From Abu Ghraib, Killing 4 And Wounding 1

Associated Press Worldstream, INTERNATIONAL NEWS
June 11, 2006
88 words

Gunmen ambush minivan carrying Sunnis from Abu Ghraib, killing 4 and wounding 1BAGHDAD Iraq

Gunmen stopped a minivan carrying Sunni passengers on a highway near Baghdad on Saturday, killing four people and wounding one, police said.

The gunmen ordered the passengers off the bus and opened fire on them, police Capt. Jamil Hussein said. The van was carrying the Sunni back to Baghdad after a visit to Abu Ghraib, a town on its western outskirts that also is the site of the notorious prison.

The attack occurred about 2:30 p.m. on the highway between Abu Ghraib and the western Baghdad neighborhood of Ghazaliyah, Hussein said.

And finally this one dated June 22nd:

Nine days into the security crackdown on Baghdad that includes hundreds of checkpoints and an expanded curfew, the capital was relatively quiet. Police reported only two deaths related to insurgent or sectarian attacks.

The victims died when a bomb strapped to a motorcycle exploded in a market. At least 25 people were wounded, police Capt. Jamil Hussein said.

The trail to this guy goes cold before April 27th. I’m hoping either Michelle Malkin, Centcom, or myself can get a response from the AP about this guy before days end. We shall see.

UPDATE IV 1715hrs PST

SeeDubya at Junkyard Blog has done some research on the writers who have mentioned this Capt. Jamil Hussein and found one common denominator:

It’s looking like AP Baghdad correspondent Qais al-Bashir is the only one who can see this mysterious, non-existent “Captain Jamil Hussein”. Well, it’s not for certain yet, but al Bashir is the common element in four stories involving Captain Snuffleupagus. Er, Jamil Hussein:

I’ve already linked to this AP story from May 27th, bylined Kim Gamel and Qais al-Bashir. It quotes “Capt. Jamil Hussein” and another spokesman named Rassaq, whom CENTCOM said is bogus.

Here’s one from July 11th, by Qassim Abdul-Zahra, in which Capt. Hussein makes a brief cameo appearance to relate a drive-by shooting in the Mansour neighborhood. Contributing to the report: Sameer N. Yacoub, Qais al-Bashir and Bassem Mroue.

The Nov. 24th article which quotes “Capt. Hussein” describing the burning of four mosques–whereas CENTCOM insists there was only one–as well as the hideous tale of burning Sunni worshippers alive–is the one that started this whole inquiry. It’s bylined Steven R. Hurst, but contributing correspondents listed are Thomas Wagner, Bassem Mroue and Qais al-Bashir.

Now the question is, who is Qaid al-Bashir?

Additionally, SeeDubya has found another interesting factoid. Recall Patterico’s recent post in which he takes the LA Times to task for their shoddy reporting of a airstrike that wasn’t. Well SeeDubya found 3 names in the AP’s version of that same story that are quoted. All 3 were on the Centcom list I posted earlier as being under investigation:

Hey, I just noticed something. The suspicious Ramadi medic shows up in [edit] the AP version of Patterico’s story–about how the LA Times manufactured an “air strike” in Ramadi (and dozens of casualties) that CENTCOM denies ever happened. [EDIT] In the AP version,The bogus medic says:

Meanwhile, Ali al-Obaidi, a medic at Ramadi Hospital, said those killed were civilians who died in shelling by U.S. tanks. A police spokesman said 20 people were killed, but gave no information about their identities or how they died.

Hey, I just noticed soemthing else: Ali al-Obaidi isn’t the only red-flagged name in that AP article. Also appearing: “police spokesman Mohammed Kheyoun“, “police Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razzaq“, and “police Brig. Abdul-Karim Ahmed Khalaf“. All of those are

Oh, hey, I just noticed something else. The by-line on that AP report of the Ramadi attack, the one that uses all these questionable or fictitous sources?

(OK, I didn’t just notice this, though it wsn’t the first thing I noticed. I’m trying to build a little suspense here.)

Of course.Qais Al-Bashir.

I have an email into the AP and Centcom about this Qais al-Bashir, hopefully I will have their response soon enough. (not holding my breath on the AP since they haven’t gotten back to me about this original story…surprise surprise)

UPDATE V 1840hrs PST

Figured I would put together a handy bullet list of the articles in which our mysterious Capt. Jamil Hussein is mentioned:

April 27th – Baghdad – Parliment family member gunned down (Sunni victims)
April 30th – Baghdad (Dora District) – 6 men tortured and killed (Sunni victims)
May 27th – Baghdad – Car bomb kills 4 (unknown victims)
June 2nd – Baghdad (Dora District) – Mortor attack kills 9 (Sunni victims)
June 11th – Baghdad (Ghazaliyah District) – Minivan attacked killing 4 (Sunni victims)
June 19th – Baghdad – Two car bombs kill 7 (unknown victims)
June 22nd – Baghdad – Suicide bomber kills 2 (unknown victims)
July 10th – Baghdad (Amariyah district) – Van attacked killing 6 (Sunni victims)
September 20th – Baghdad (Dora district) – Car bomb kills 7 (unknown victims)
November 25th – Baghdad (Hurriyah district) – 6 burned to death (Sunni victims)
I would have to surmise that the ones where I could not discern if the victims were Sunni or not probably involved Sunni’s. Does this matter, as Allah at Hot Air asked? I’m not sure, but you would think a “police Captain” would see some Shia victims now and then wouldn’t you?

UPDATE VI 1930hrs PST

Gateway Pundit has done some research on that other name mentioned by Centcom:

Also, we definitely know, as we told you several weeks ago through the MNC-I Media Relations cell, that another AP-popular IP spokesman, Lt. Maithem Abdul Razzaq, supposedly of the city’s Yarmouk police station, does not work at that police station and is also not authorized to speak on behalf of the IP. The MOI has supposedly issued a warrant for his questioning.

He found six stories since may where this Lt. is mentioned as the source. All of them involve Sunni’s being massacred in the Baghdad Dora district…sound familiar?

I wonder who authored these reports involving this Lt. Razzaq? Qais al-Bashir?

**Want to take a moment to thank Michelle Malkin, LGF, Lucienne and Lorie Byrd for some great help getting this story out into the blogosphere. With the help of those great bloggers and the following blogs I hope the MSM and the AP specifically can’t ignore us for too long and we can get some answers from them about their use of propagandists to fill stories.

What can I say about this other than I second the call? All those that say aye?

The National Commander of The American Legion called on Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) to apologize for suggesting that American troops would not choose to fight in Iraq if they had other employment options.

“Our military is the most skilled, best-trained all-volunteer force on the planet,” said National Commander Paul A. Morin. “Like that recently espoused by Sen. John Kerry, Congressman Rangel’s view of our troops couldn’t be further from the truth and is possibly skewed by his political opposition to the war in Iraq.”

According to Rangel, “If a young fellow has an option of having a decent career, or joining the Army to fight in Iraq, you can bet your life that he would not be in Iraq. If there’s anyone who believes these youngsters want to fight, as the Pentagon and some generals have said, you can just forget about it. No bright young individual wants to fight just because of a bonus and just because of some educational benefits,” Rangel said.

Rangel was responding to a question during an interview yesterday on Fox News Sunday about a recent study by the Heritage Foundation which found that those enlisting in the military tend to be better educated than the general public and that military recruiting seems to be more successful in middle-class and wealthy neighborhoods than in poor ones.

According to the study, 97 percent of military enlistees were high school graduates versus 80 percent of Americans in general. The study also concludes that the average reading level of military personnel is a full grade level higher than that of the general population.

“I’m not sure I understand what is unfair about letting adults make their own career choices,” Morin said as he visited troops in Korea this week. “Troops serving today have a higher education level than the overall population. Why another member of Congress is insulting our troops’ commitment and education level is beyond me.”

Morin said the American Legion applauds and appreciates the great sacrifices of those who serve — many of whom have put civilian careers aside, college on hold or given up high paying jobs to enlist.

More and more troops say it’s duty and honor before college fund that motivated them to join. Recruiting numbers have been met this year, but more importantly, servicemembers are reenlisting so retention within the armed forces is great, Morin explained. Not everyone holds the view that we should wait to be attacked again as a nation.

“These brave men and women lay it on the line every day for each and every one of us, for which I am very grateful,” Morin said. “Their selfless commitment for the betterment of our world from radical extremists is beyond commendable. It’s time for members of Congress to stop insulting our troops.

“While the American Legion shares the congressman’s appreciation for education, the troops in Iraq represent the most sophisticated, technologically superior military that the world has ever seen,” Morin said. “I call on Congressman Rangel to not only apologize to our troops but to also fight for pay increases and make significant improvements to the current GI Bill — reserves and guard included, as he prepares for a party chairmanship in the 110th Congress.”

Well said, and Amen! I applaud! I only hope they are not holding their breath for an apology. American Pundit makes my case for me on this.
by Stop the ACLU

And who would think our enemies are not encouraged by these remarks? Is it any wonder Bin Laden is happy the Democrats won?

by Haider Ajina

The following is my translation of a headline and article, which appeared in Iraq’s ‘Almuatin’ of November 28th.

“Iraq’s Basra has not been affected by occurrences in Sadar City, Sunnis live with their Shiites brethren in peace”.

“Sheik Khalid Almulah, Imam and speaker at Alaabanchi (Sunni) Mosque in Basra, said that what happened in Sadar city lately did not affect Basra. He urged the rebuilding of the Al-Askariah shrines in Samara. He added, ‘we live here in the coddle of our Shiite brethren, and there are no large reactions to what happened in Baghdad. Shiites & Sunnis must quickly rebuild the Askariah shrine in Samara. This will rebut the strife the terrorists are using to divide and create sectarian fighting. Alqaida wants its attack on Al-Askariah shrine to build conflict between Iraqis. Thus it is our responsibility, Sunni & Shiite, to put out this fire by rebuilding the Shrines to protect our unity’. He then commented about Muqtada Alsadar’s request of Sheik Hareth Althari (Head of the Sunni ‘Muslim Schollars’) to declare it a sin to kill Shiites and to announce that the ‘Muslim Scholar’s’ have no affiliation with Alqaida and denounce Alqaida. He added, ‘to all those who are attacking the political and religious process in Iraq. You must first examine yourselves. Are you with Iraq, are you with peace, are you defending Iraq and are you against the spilling of blood? Or are you with the terrorist or the ‘Takfirien’ (religious extremists)? ’We must issue decrees against terrorism and I hope the ‘Muslim Scholars’ will respond to Sadar’s request”.

My comments,

Basra has, for some time now, been focusing on its growth and infrastructure improvement. Because it is relatively peaceful and stable. Not only in Basrah do Sunnis & Shiites live peacefully together but in most if not all the southern provinces. Of course, Sunnis are a minority in the south and that could be pat of the reason. I remember translating a piece after the bombing of the ‘Al-Askariah Shrine in Samara, when Shiites stood guard at Sunni Mosques so the Mosques did not get attacked in retaliation. This is very similar to the Iraq I grew up in, in the 60’s and 70’s. The Baathists (most if not all of whom are Sunni in Iraq) have ruled Iraq with violence during Saddam. They are trying to destabilize Iraq by attacking Shiites. Sadar city attack, Al-Askariah shrine attack, evicting Shiites from Sunni neighborhoods, planting car bombs in Baghdad and surrounding areas, planting bombs in Nejaf and other areas with much civilian traffic etc… These constant attacks and retaliation to these attacks and the inability of the security forces to protect all its citizens has brought about the growth of the militias. Iran & Syria are supporting these militias to keep Iraq destabilized. Iraq is far from being hopeless. Over 70% of the provinces live in relative peace and are busy with building and infrastructure improvement, commerce booming and healthcare improving. They are living with a provincial government they elected and rule of law, which protects them.

A Sunni Imam in Basra is calling on Shiite leader (Muqtada Alasdar in this case) to look at himself as well as the head of the Muslim Scholars (Harith Altahri) to also look at himself, and ask the question, are they for Iraq or are they for terrorism and ‘Islamic extremism’? This is a bold and courageous question, which many Iraqis in leadership and security forces need to ask them selves.

Over the last 3 weeks, I have lost an Uncle and two Cousins in two separate violent incidences in Baghdad. A home-style invasion killed my Uncle and my cousin who live near the airport ( they were asked to leave the neighborhood because they are Shiites even though my Uncles wife is Sunni) and two weeks before that a cousin was kidnapped and killed near Felujah. Their deaths and the deaths of other Iraqis and Americans will not be in vain, when we stabilize central Iraq and defeat the terrorist fueling the revenge killings in central Iraq.

The New York Times is endorsing the latest privacy-invading idea from the Mothers Against Drunk Driving, breathalizer “interlocks” that require drivers to blow into a tube before they can start their car. For the moment, MADD is proposing that these devices only be required in cars to be driven by people with a DUI conviction, but it is an obvious ploy to require them in every car. Rental car companies will need to install them so that DUI convicts can rent cars and families with a DUI convict will find it very inconvenient not to have them in every car they buy. Pretty soon, we’ll all be blowing into tubes before we can start our engines.

The slippery-slope to ultra safety is not a paranoid fantasy. It is obvious that driver breathalizer interlocks are only the first step for the safety-Nazis and their friends on the Times editorial board:

For the future, safety advocates hope to develop passive devices that unobtrusively test all drivers for alcohol, without requiring every soccer mom to blow into a tube every time she gets into a car. Even better would be devices that flash warnings and slow cars at any sign of erratic driving, whether the cause be drink, distraction, fatigue, recklessness or sheer incompetence.

There are all sorts of problems with requiring interlocks in all cars, starting with this: It is a very intrusive intervention to solve a problem that is of diminishing significance to the public health. Current regulation and enforcement (which we owe to MADD), has reduced alcohol-related traffic fatalities from roughly 26,000 per year to less than 17,000 and from 60% to 39% of all traffic fatalities, and that during a time when all driving has become tremendous safer. While 17,000 deaths sounds like a lot, it is a drop in the bucket for a country that has more than 130,000,000 automobiles and which drives well over 1.5 billion vehicle miles per year. The number of alcohol-related traffic fatalities is now roughly comparable to deaths from liver cancer, a middling cancer which causes only 3% of all cancer deaths. Thanks to MADD, we have reached the point of diminishing returns in the regulation of drunk driving.

It is not even clear that we should require interlocks even if it were free to do so. It is not hard to imagine situations in which it would be a reasonable risk to drive a car even if one’s blood alcohol limit is over the legal limit. Three men go camping in the woods, and they all have a few beers because they assume that they will not be driving again until the next morning. One of them suffers a heart attack, so they drive him out of the woods to a hospital and save his life. In a MADD world, the man would die. A purist would argue, of course, that one of them should have avoided alcohol so as to hedge against just that eventuality, but what if the designated driver had the heart attack? I can envision enough situations like that to be against breathalizer interlocks.

The Times claims that it would be “even better” to have devices that “slow cars at any sign of erratic driving, whether the cause be drink, distraction, fatigue, recklessness or sheer incompetence.” Huh? With all the incompetent driving in my home state, in the Grey Nanny’s preferred alternative universe the Garden State Parkway would slow to a crawl on a Sunday morning. And what about the scary risk in a car that suddenly slows down because it arbitrarily decides I’m “erratic” when I’m passing some blue-hair on a two-lane rural highway? This, gentle reader, is the asinine future envisioned by the semi-official mouthpiece of blue state liberalism.

Yes, drunk driving is an emotionally challenging public health problem and I suppose I might feel differently about it if I had ever been close to somebody killed while driving drunk or because somebody else was. However, the law enforcement we have now works. According to MADD’s own statistics, drunk driving fatalities have plummeted in both absolute terms and as a percentage of all traffic fatalities during the last quarter century. Yes, I am sure they can be reduced further, but at what cost to our wallets and our liberty? We should keep doing what we are doing, but we should not disable all automobiles just to reduce further the miniscule number of alcohol-related traffic fatalities. And if the problem is “erratic” or incompetent driving, how about handing out some tickets to the inconsiderate people who drive below the pace of traffic in the left goddamned lane?

from TigerHawk

Debra Bolton had a glass of red wine with dinner. That’s what she told the police officer who pulled her over. That’s what the Intoxilyzer 5000 breath test indicated — .03, comfortably below the legal limit. She had been pulled over in Georgetown about 12:30 a.m. for driving without headlights. She apologized and explained that the parking attendant must have turned off her vehicle’s automatic-light feature.

Bolton thought she might get a ticket. Instead, she was handcuffed, searched, arrested, put in a jail cell until 4:30 a.m. and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol.

Bolton, 45, an energy lawyer and single mother of two who lives in Alexandria, had just run into a little-known piece of D.C. law: In the District, a driver can be arrested with as little as .01 blood-alcohol content.

As D.C. police officer Dennis Fair, who arrested Bolton on May 15, put it in an interview recently: “If you get behind the wheel of a car with any measurable amount of alcohol, you will be dealt with in D.C. We have zero tolerance. . . . Anything above .01, we can arrest.” Neither the police department nor the attorney general’s office keeps detailed records of how many people with low blood alcohol levels are arrested. But last year, according to police records, 321 people were arrested for driving under the influence with blood alcohol levels below the legal limit of .08. In 2003, 409 people were arrested. . . .

There is something about liberal philosophies that are utterly deviod of common sense. There is now a point .01 alcohol level limit in DC now. You have a murder rate in the city as high as a casuality rate in a infantry division in wartime and they arrest a women who was not even drunk.

by Curt at Flopping Aces

Yesterday there were two incidents that I wrote about involving the use of enemy propagandists by our MSM. Now take a look at the latest “all hell is breaking loose” report on Iraq, from the AP of course:

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Gunmen broke into two Shiite homes and killed 21 men in front of their relatives in an Iraqi village, police said Saturday, as Vice President Dick Cheney sought Saudi Arabia’s help in calming

Iraq after an especially violent week of sectarian violence. U.S. and Iraqi forces also killed 58 insurgents during fighting north of the capital, they said.

Baghdad remained under a 24-hour curfew two days after suspected Sunni insurgents killed 215 people in Baghdad’s main Shiite district with a combination of bombs and mortars.

Another 87 people were killed or found dead in sectarian violence across Iraq on Friday. The chaos cast a shadow over the summit next week between Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and President Bush in Amman, Jordan.

[…]In Diyala province, a hotbed of Iraq’s Sunni-Arab insurgency, gunmen raided two Shiite homes Friday night. The attack targeted members of the al-Sawed Shiite tribe in the village of Balad Ruz, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad, according to a police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect his own security, as officials often do in the increasingly volatile province.

Earlier that day, rampaging militiamen burned and blew up four mosques and torched several homes in the capital’s mostly Shia neighborhood of Hurriyah, police said. Iraqi soldiers at a nearby army post failed to intervene in the assault by suspected members of the Shiite Mahdi Army militia or subsequent attacks that killed a total of 25 Sunnis, including women and children, said police Capt. Jamil Hussein.

The U.S. military said Saturday that Iraqi soldiers securing the Hurriyah area had found only one burned mosque and could not confirm reports that six Sunni civilians had been burned to death with kerosene.

As we have learned quite well over the years the enemy will try to stir the pot with doctored photo’s or outright lies as Patterico documented. Now the story about those Sunni’s being burned alive appears to have been a fairy tale also.

You think we will hear that this raid on two houses maybe embellished also?

I mean the only think I can take away from this report that has a ring of truth to it is the fact that the US and Iraqi forces engaged the enemy north of town killing up to 60 more of the enemy.

In Diyala, Iraqi police killed 36 insurgents and wounded dozens of others during in clashes on Saturday in different areas of the province, police said.

And U.S. and Iraqi forces killed 22 insurgents and an Iraqi civilian, and destroyed a factory being used to make roadside bombs, during several raids north of Baghdad.

During three of the coalition raids, soldiers killed 10 insurgents near the city of Taji, 12 miles north of Baghdad and home to a major U.S. air base. An Iraqi teenage boy also was killed and a pregnant Iraqi woman was wounded in the crossfire, the military said.

[…]In another area north of Baghdad, coalition forces attacked three vehicles carrying 12 insurgents, including one they were searching for because he allegedly was involved in the manufacture of car bombs, the coalition said.

But it appears that our MSM is getting the “anarchy” stories from the enemy themselves. That cannot be trusted. I mean the big story yesterday was these six burned alive and now no one can find any evidence that this happened except the word of the enemy.

How many more of these stories are embellished?

UPDATE

Doing a search via Google I began reading the stories printed about the burned six and each and every one had one thing in common. The only person stating that this incident happened was one Capt. Jamil Hussein. Every news report printed this man as the source of the information.

If you do a search for this name you come up with ten pages of pretty much the same article describing the burning six.

Trying to dig up some information on this man as we speak.

UPDATE II

Since this guys name is in every single story printed about the burning six I have to dig way down to get to older stories involving this guy.

This one from April:

In yesterday’s worst violence, the bodies of six handcuffed, blindfolded and tortured men were found in the Baghdad neighborhood of Dora, said police Capt. Jamil Hussein.

This one from May:

Violence resumed Saturday as a bomb in a parked car exploded near a busy bus station in southern Baghdad, killing at least four civilians and wounding seven, police Capt. Jamil Hussein said.

[…]Elsewhere, a policeman was killed and an officer wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their convoy in Baghdad’s western district of Mansour, Razzaq said. He also said three policemen were wounded when gunmen ambushed a convoy of Interior Ministry commandos in the southern neighbourhood of al-Bayaa in the capital.

Gunmen in three speeding cars also ambushed a patrol in western Baghdad, wounding 10 people, including six policemen, and two other policemen were injured in drive-by shootings in a nearby neighbourhood, police Capt. Jamil Hussein said.

Two other policemen were injured Saturday in drive-by shootings elsewhere in western Baghdad, when gunmen in two speeding cars attacked their patrol in Amiriya neighbourhood of western Baghdad, police Capt. Jamil Hussien said.

Here is one from June:

Two explosions struck an Interior Ministry patrol and a market in the Baghdad area on Monday evening, killing at least seven people and wounding 16, police said. The first attack was a car bomb that struck an Interior Ministry patrol in western Baghdad, killing four commandos and wounding six, Capt. Jamil Hussein said. About 30 minutes later, a bomb exploded in a market in Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, killing three people and wounding 10.

July:

Gunmen also ambushed a bus in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Amariyah in western Baghdad, killing six passengers, including a woman, and the driver, police Capt. Jamil Hussein said.

September:

A suicide truck bomb slammed into a Baghdad police headquarters on Wednesday, killing seven and wounding at least double that many, in a deadly 24 hours that saw more than 45 killings in Iraq, including two American soldiers, authorities said.

The truck bomb attack in the southern Baghdad neighbourhood of Dora came at 07:45 as policemen were coming on duty and the blast razed the building, said captain Jamil Hussein. He said the number of casualties was expected to rise.

His name is mentioned quite a bit when Sunni’s are attacked it seems.

Now all I have to go on is the earlier AP report in which Iraqi and American forces say they cannot find evidence that these six were burned alive, no proof yet that the incident didn’t happen. But if it turns out that this story is a fairy tale how much more of the information given from this Capt is suspect?

UPDATE III

Here is the office press release from the military:

Contrary to recent media reporting that four mosques were burned in Hurriya, an Iraqi Army patrol investigating the area found only one mosque had been burned in the neighborhood.

Soldiers from the 6th Iraqi Army Division conducted a patrol in Hurriya Friday afternoon in response to media reports that four mosques were being burned as retaliation for the VBIED attacks in Sadr City on Thursday.

The Soldiers set up a checkpoint near the Al Muhaimen mosque at approximately 2 p.m. and found the mosque intact with no evidence of any fire at the location.

While investigating the Al Meshaheda mosque, the patrol received small arms fire from unknown insurgents. The patrol returned fire, and the insurgents broke contact and fled the area. A subsequent check of the mosque found the mosque intact with no evidence of a fire.

At approximately 3:50 p.m., a local civilian reported to the patrol that armed insurgents had set the Al-Nidaa mosque on fire by throwing a gas container into the mosque. The patrol pursued the insurgents but lost contact with them.

The Soldiers called the fire department and set up a cordon around the mosque. Local fire trucks responded to the scene and extinguished the fire at approximately 4:00 p.m. The mosque sustained smoke and fire damage in the entry way but was not destroyed.

An alleged attack on a fourth mosque remains unconfirmed. The patrol was also unable to confirm media reports that six Sunni civilians were allegedly dragged out of Friday prayers and burned to death. Neither Baghdad police nor Coalition forces have reports of any such incident.

So the Baghdad police had not received reports fo this burning either? Who in the hell is this Capt. Jamil Hussein then? Is he part of the Iraqi police or an insurgent stringer for the AP?

UPDATE IV

Jeff from Protein Wisdom took a stab at my question on whether this Capt. Hussein is the Police or a insurgent:

Well, Curt. He could, perhaps, be both. After all, allowing one’s ideology to color one’s behavior toward one’s own country seems to be one of those universals that crosses the bounds of Otherness with little or no need for cross-cultural translation.

Very true Jeff. He indeed could be one and the same. Every news report I have found mentioning this guy is always quoting him about Shiite violence against Sunni’s. Coincidence? I doubt it.

And now the violence this guy alleges yesterday may in fact turn out to be fabricated which will call into question many of his quotes.

UPDATE V

Got an update from Centcom. I sent them an email asking if they had any information on this Capt and I received:

We are checking with the Iraqi Government to verify that Capt. Jamil Hussein is a legitimate Iraqi Government spokesperson. We haven’t heard back yet. Unfortunately, people posing as government officials often do call the media to make statements.

We have no confirmation that this event happened; so it is very likely that this is not a legitimate source. In addition, of the four mosques that were suppose to have been burned/destroyed at that time; we only confirmed one mosque was damaged by a fire that lasted an hour and then was extinguished with no casualties.

Getting fishy.

UPDATE VI

Now the NYT’s has their own piece with hysteria written all over it:

Defying a government curfew, Shiite militiamen stormed Sunni mosques in Baghdad and a nearby city on Friday, shooting guards and burning down buildings in apparent retaliation for the devastating bombings that killed more than 200 people the day before in the capital’s largest Shiite district, residents and police officials said.

Militia fighters drove through neighborhoods in Baghdad and the provincial capital of Baquba, firing at mosques with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades on the Muslim day of prayer.

Wow…sounds pretty bad huh? But how much of this can we believe when they print this a few paragraphs down:

From morning until afternoon, at least four mosques were attacked in Hurriya, a mixed neighborhood in the capital. Two were destroyed, and at least 5 Sunnis were killed and 10 wounded, an Interior Ministry official said. A hard-line Sunni Arab group, the Muslim Scholars Association, said 18 people had been killed when one of the mosques burned down.

Iraqi security forces were absent, unwilling or unable to stop the attackers.

“I live near Akbar al-Mustafa Mosque, which came under attack by gunmen around 7 this morning,” said a man who gave his name as Abu Ruqaiya and lives in Hurriya. “Around 3 in the afternoon, those gunmen bombed this mosque and destroyed part of it. They left only after American and Iraqi soldiers arrived.”

We already know that four mosque’s were not burned to the ground nor were their any casualities. So how much of this reporters reporting is from these insurgent stringers? The whole basis for much of this story is this man:

“My daughter lives near Mishhada mosque in this neighborhood, and she says gunmen killed and wounded some people there,” Abu Ruqaiya said in a phone interview. “There were clashes with the guards of the mosque.” Another resident of Hurriya said militiamen burned down the empty home of a former member of the Baath Party.

Which in law enforcement circles is called hearsay.

And then they quote another source who said more kerosene burning took place:

Fanned by fear, rumors spread quickly throughout the day. In the evening, a resident named Imad al-Hashemi said in a telephone interview on Al Jazeera, the Arab news network, that gunmen had doused some people with gasoline and set them on fire. Other residents contacted by telephone denied this.

Get that? One person said a burning took place while other residents (plural) denied this. But hey, why not print it anyway. We have hysteria to drum up people!

Geez.

UPDATE VII

Not to be outdone The WaPo decided to get into the hysteria act with this report:

In the mixed Hurriyah neighborhood, Shiite militiamen torched at least five Sunni mosques on Islam’s holiest prayer day, police and residents reported. Other mosques were attacked by gunmen spraying bullets from the rooftops of nearby houses, witnesses said.

In one mosque, militiamen detonated a cooking gas cylinder. In another, they declared that it was now a husseiniya, a Shiite mosque, and posted pictures of Sadr, whose stronghold of Sadr City was attacked Thursday. At least 18 people were killed Friday and 24 injured in the mosque attacks in Hurriyah, said Adil Mahmoud, a physician from al-Nouman Hospital in the nearby Adhamiyah neighborhood.

“They started attacking with grenades and RPGs,” said Abu Abdallah, the imam at one of the attacked mosques, referring to rocket-propelled grenades. “Then shooting started from nearby houses. Then they entered and burned the mosque before they left.” Abdallah, interviewed by telephone, asked that his mosque not be named. “I might be killed,” he said.

More intelligence from those who are probably are a bit biased. As you can tell from all the reporting, none of it has been seen firsthand by those writing the articles. They are all relying on secondhand information from supposed witnesses, or those who know somebody who knows somebody who saw it.

Pulitzer prize here they come.

I decided to google the name of the physician above and only came up with this hit:

In the nearby town of Samarra — another bastion of Sunni militancy — Sheik Adil Mahmoud of the influential Sunni Association of Muslims Scholars delivered a more tempered sermon. “I will go to the polls and vote ‘no,’ but I leave the choice to you,” he said.

Is he one and the same? Who knows. But if this doctor is indeed a Sunni scholar who was telling those who would listen that he would vote no on the Constitution vote last year then I would say his reporting of the number of casualities is not to be trusted.

But either way these reporters seem to be relying on stringers and others to do their reporting for them instead of going to the scene and gathering real facts.

But at least this time a MSM outfit admitted the burning six may not have happened:

Throughout Friday, rumors of new atrocities committed against Sunnis floated across Baghdad, including one in which six Sunnis were doused with kerosene and torched to death in Hurriyah. But two local imams, in an interview, denied such an attack took place.

In the next few paragraphs the reporter gives us all the information that HAS been confirmed:

But there was no shortage of confirmed incidents. In Hurriyah, militiamen Friday morning expelled Sunni families who were living near tea warehouses, and more than 90 Sunni families received letters threatening them if they did not leave their houses within 72 hours, authorities said.

In the Amiriyah neighborhood, Sunnis started to form neighborhood militias under the guidance of local clerics to protect themselves. By Friday evening, 25 volunteers signed up, and those without weapons were handed AK-47 rifles, residents said.

By nightfall, the imams of mosques in three Sunni neighborhoods — Ghazaliya, Amiriyah and Adhamiyah made a joint announcement to their followers.

So after all the hysteria all they can confirm is that some Iraqi’s are showing up to help protect mosques.

Yup, that’s a civil war.

Sigh….

UPDATE VIII 2320hrs PST

Just received another email from Centcom in Iraq from a Lietenent at the MNC-I Joint Operations Center. Pretty important stuff in this email: (MOI = Iraqi Ministry of Interior)

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED

Sir:

Unfortunately, we do not have a direct contact into the MOI so we cannot provide you with that. We have to work through a CF organization called the CPATT (Coalition Police Assistance Training Team), an MNFI organization that seems to be made up of retired police officers.

Since September we have been engaging CPATT to verify the legitimacy and employment status of various MOI/IP spokesmen. Our contact at CPATT has been quite helpful, however, I know helping us is not his full-time job. Interestly, MOI has apparently issued an edict that no one below the level of Chief can speak to the media. We have reminded AP of this but without proof that these spokesman are not employees, they have pretty much ignored us. (If you were a reporter, would who give up a primo source because of rank? Probably not.)

I personally engaged CPATT about Capt. Jamil Hussein’s legitimacy within an hour of seeing the burning alive story — which we cannot verify from any source, but how do you prove a negative.

Of note, we definitely know that one IP spokesman – Lt. Maithem Abdul Razzaq of the city’s Yarmouk police station (a.k.a. police Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razaq) is not authorized to speak on behalf of the IP and the MOI supposedly issued a warrant for his questioning. That happened a couple of weeks ago and I haven’t seen his name recently.

Below is an incomplete list of MOI spokesmen we are tracking since the middle of November and trying to verify.

Very respectfully,

LT XXXXXXXXX

MOI/IP spokesman (mostly AP)

police Lt. Ali Abbas
police Capt. Mohammed Abdel-Ghani.
Police Brigadier Sarhat Abdul-Qadir
Mosul police Director Gen. Wathiq al-Hamdani
police Lt. Bilal Ali
Ali al-Obaidi, a medic at Ramadi Hospital, police Maj. Firas Gaiti said.
Police Captain Mohammed Ismail
Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the Interior Ministry spokesman (a.k.a. Police Brigadier Abd al-Karim Khalaf, Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, Brig. Abdel-Karim Khalaf)
Mohammed Khayon, a Baghdad police lieutenant
police spokesman Mohammed Kheyoun. (a.k.a. Police Lieutenant Mohammed Khayoun)
Lt. Thaer Mahmoud, head of a police section responsible for releasing daily death tolls
police Lt. Bilal Ali Majid said
police Lt. Ali Muhsin.
police 1st. Lt. Mutaz Salahhidine. (a.k.a. Lieutenant Mutaz Salaheddin)
Col. Abbas Mohammed Salman policeman Haider Satar

I added the bullets so that the email read a bit easier.

So what we now know is that not one person in the Iraqi police below the rank of Chief is supposed to talk to our media but of course they all ignore this. Our MSM would rather get some hysterical lies that sound good, that sound like anarchy, rather then getting their facts straight.

Sad state of affairs our MSM is in, and the gullible (read Liberals) keep on buying it.

UPDATE IX 11/26/06 1030hrs PST

SeeDubya at Junkyard Blog took a look at my post and ran with it, he has a great analysis of the situation:

In both stories, the worst scenario is that the Western press is negligently or carelessly (I’m not ready to believe knowingly) passing along terrorist propaganda disguised as news. But even the best case scenario in each one involves some notable journalistic malfeasance. With Patterico, the LA Times story quite clearly refused to include CENTCOM’s denial that the Ramadi airstrike ever happened. At FA, an e-mail from a CENTCOM media guy explains that the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior has recently cracked down on unofficial spokesmen within the national police, and that no one below the rank of Chief may speak with the media.

Now a good reporter won’t let that stop him; if he has an eyewitness who will give an account–especially an on-the-record one–of what went down, that’s certainly preferable to some sanitized official version. And this AP reporter got his incorrect information from an Iraqi Captain named Jamil Hussein. Hmm…so maybe he was supposed to be an eyewitness to these (mythical) mosque-burnings in Hurriya? That’s what one might infer from the article. At the very least one might think this was a policeman who was tasked to investigate this particular incident and thus would have some knowledge of what occurred. But the value of Curt’s investigation here is that he sheds a little light on Jamil Hussein’s background–this guy comments on Iraq stories all the time, usually reporting chaos and mayhem in Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods all over Baghdad–Sadr City, Dora, Mansour, and others.

In other words, it looks less like Capt. Hussein is an eyewitness to this event, and more like he’s just an unofficial spokesman. But a spokesman for whom?

[…]As you see in FA’s last update,Centcom tells FA that they’re investigating who the hell Jamil Hussein is…if there even is a Jamil Hussein. For all we know this could be Ayman Al-Zawahiri calling up the AP to give his version of events. After all, the Centcom guy points out that there was another “volunteer” spokesman in another police department unmasked quite recently, and there’s a warrant out for him to be questioned. There are several more being verified now, most of them quoted in the AP

And sure enough I took a look at some of the other names given by the Centcom LT. in the news and lookie lookie:

In Thursday’s deadliest attack in the capital, gunmen opened fire on a bakery, killing nine people, including employees and customers, police Capt. Mohammed Abdel-Ghani said. Such attacks are usually carried out by Sunni militants since most of the bakeries in the city are run by Iraqis from the country’s Shiite majority.

and:

New checkpoints popped up on major roads, including within the heavily fortified Green Zone that houses Iraqi government offices and the U.S. and British embassies.

A heavy police presence and larger than normal numbers of U.S. troops patrolled the streets.

“We received orders to tighten security measures and to use any available policemen to tighten the security,” police Lt. Ali Abbas said. The U.S. military refused to discuss specific measures planned for Sunday.

and:

Fighting involving US forces also left nine Iraqi gunmen dead in Kirkuk, 288km north of Baghdad, police Brigadier Sarhat Abdul-Qadir said, without giving details. The American military had no comment on the report.

and:

Brig. Gen. Wathiq al-Hamdani, deputy to Mosul’s police chief, said the people of Mosul owe much to the Wolf Brigade, which helped restore order in the city, and said individual mistakes shouldn’t be used against the whole force.

and:

A car bomb exploded in a parking lot in central Baghdad on Wednesday, killing 11 people and wounding 32, police said. The car exploded near a gasoline station in the Bab Shargi neighborhood, police Lt. Bilal Ali said. A series of car bombs exploded around Iraq Tuesday, killing and wounding scores.

You get the picture. Every name mentioned by Centcom has been quoted by the MSM for their stories. It’s dishonest reporting basically. They are relying on secondhand and sometimes thirdhand information to state a fact. Namely that Iraq is going to hell in a handbasket. But if the reporters would leave their comfy hotel rooms and actually go out and survey the scenes themselves then I am sure we would get a completely different picture.

UPDATE X 1350hrs PST

PH in the comment section found some more evidence that this Capt. Hussein is nothing but mouthpiece for the insurgency. This article was printed in June of this year:

There were also unconfirmed reports that gunmen may have killed at least 11 college students in Baghdad’s southern Dora district.

According to Capt. Jamil Hussein of the al-Yarmouk police station, gunmen opened fire on a minibus in Dora’s predominantly Sunni Arab Mahdiya neighborhood. He said 11 people were killed, but Al-Yarmouk hospital reported receiving only two bodies from a shooting. It was unclear if the victims were Sunni or Shiite. There was no one available at Baghdad’s main morgue to confirm if it had received any bodies.

Wonder if this guy is regular at KOS? His attempts to spread disinformation would fit in quite well with that crowd.

Also I have to pass on a few quotes that a commentor at LGF posted about our media. Our media from 100 years ago:

Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far better that you fear the media, for they will steal your HONOR. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.

- Mark Twain

I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are.

- William T. Sherman

I think the difference 100 years later may be that many in this country hold the media up on a pedestal and believe everything these biased reporters print. In fact we should look at our media nowadays with an even more pessimistic eye because they have shown themselves to be a very biased profession.

“diversity” is not meant to actually be diverse.

Larwyn

Arbour escapes injury in Palestinian rocket attack

Palestinian militants fired rockets into the Israeli town of Sderot, critically wounding one man on Tuesday, as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour was touring the community.

Arbour, a former Supreme Court of Canada justice, was not hurt when rockets landed a few hundred metres away from her entourage at a factory, but a worker at the facility was seriously injured.

After Arbour’s group heard a loud explosion and saw plumes of smoke, Israeli rescue officials immediately rushed to the scene.

“I was on the outskirts of a factory immediately after it was hit,” Arbour said.
from CBS News

You couldn’t plan such irony.

by Larwyn

As many have noted it is prior “realist” policies that have gotten up to where we are today. So a Bakerite replaces the non-realist Rumsfeld and Colorado sends their AG to sooth and keep that famous “stability” going, hinting this 20 yr sentence is just a one-off and that we still respect”traditional Muslim behaviors”.

Wondering how many of you share my feeling of dread…..

Praying today, that we are not giving thanks for what is now passing from our America. May God please continue to bless our country.

David Harsanyi has written on the pressure from the Saudis regarding the criminal conviction of one of their citizens who owned a slave in the US. (HT: Powerline) The ridiculous kowtowing of the American government to Saudi Arabia in this case is a perfect miniature of what is wrong with US’s approach to our current war:

Luckily, Colorado Attorney General John Suthers isn’t Jewish. Or a woman. Or gay. The clown princes and oligarchs of Saudi Arabia don’t take kindly to those kinds of people in their midst. Then again, Christians, Hindis, Buddhists, atheists, etc. … aren’t typically welcomed either. Nope, not even when they’re “explaining.” Like our attorney general was asked to do when he was shuttled over to Saudi Arabia by the feds to “explain” why a Colorado resident named Homaidan Al-Turki was sentenced to 20 years to life.

Surely a brief e-mail could have done the trick and saved taxpayers thousands: “Guys, you simply can’t keep slaves over here … nope, not even sex slaves.”

And that’s exactly what an unfortunate 24-year-old Indonesian woman, brought to the U.S. by Al-Turki to be family nanny and housekeeper, was: a slave. Al-Turki had confiscated her passport, paid her less than two bucks a day, kept her in a basement and sexually assaulted her. Even his high-priced lawyers – likely paid for, as was his $400,000 bail, by the Saudi government – couldn’t save Al-Turki from richly deserved jail time.

At sentencing, Al-Turki refused to apologize but did claim that prosecutors were attacking his “traditional Muslim behaviors.” Not exactly a feminist, then.

Suthers’ task couldn’t have been easy over there. This “no slaves” business was probably tough to digest for folks who not so long ago may have owned a couple of humans themselves. Saudi Arabia only officially outlawed the practice of slavery in 1962. According to human rights organizations, the country still has plenty around – especially women.

So why was our newly elected attorney general mollifying some of the world’s biggest gangsters? Having spoken to Suthers, I have a better understanding of why he believes it was a good idea. Gov. Bill Owens, Suthers says, had called him on behalf of some higher-ups at the U.S. State Department. Al-Turki, you see, comes from a powerful Saudi family.

“I wasn’t really excited about this. The election had just ended. This was not something I was eager to do. But James Oberwetter, the ambassador in Saudi Arabia, said that he was shocked at the amount of adverse publicity being generated as a result of this case,” Suthers explains. “The influence of this particular family was tremendous. His father is an imam … and the family has a lot of clout with the press over there.”

When the history of our time is written, many judgments will be rightly second-guessed. One of those will be George Bush’s decision following 9-11 to incorrectly call Islam a “religion of peace” (9/17/01). President Bush owed it to the nation, over time, to begin the national dialogue on Islam as a system of government in sharia societies in the Middle East and elsewhere.

He did not have to say, immediately following 9/11, that Islam is “a religion whose achievements include glorious military conquests” or to say that Islam is a politico-religious project which seeks the universal rule of sharia law. But he owed the country some basic straight talk (not using the word “caliphate”) about Islam and sharia over the last half decade. Instead, he abdicated his role as leader on this all-important matter.

If the President had fulfilled his responsibility of forthrightness and leadership on the central issue of our time, we would not be having the degrading spectacle of Colorado’s attorney general kowtowing to the slave-owner’s relatives in Riyadh.

We understand that great issues are in play, that the US buys a lot of Saudi oil, that these Sunnis are helpful sometimes regarding terrorism and Iran and Shiism, etc. However, the American government and American politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike, owe their countrymen the duty of honesty, forthrightness, and full disclosure.

This behind-the-scenes maneuvering by the Saudi government, and the acquiescence in this disgusting enterprise by the Federal and State governments is a miniature of much of what is wrong in America’s prosecution of the war. The army wins battles, but nations win wars. As divided and Democrats and Republicans are today, surely there is still some common ground in outrage against owning slaves as “traditional Muslim behavior.” We believe that many such bridges could be built between and Left and the Right on human rights and other issues where sharia societies prove themselves daily to be the enemies of the Western concept of freedom.

Given the indignation and noteriety of the al-Turki case in Saudi Arabia, there seems to be little doubt that the slave-owner is correct in his assertion that his right to keep this girl is “traditional Muslim behavior.” The refusal to shine the light of day on sharia societies around the world is the greatest single failure of the Bush administration, and has rendered much of its talk about our current war to be like a long, tedious sentence without a verb.
from Dinocrat

by Curt at Flopping Aces

Need anymore proof that Al-Qaeda is enjoying the Democrat victory on November 7th?

The latest audio by al Qaeda’s Iraq commander — posted 48 hours after the midterm elections — sends a clear signal to the readers of the jihadi strategic mind: Al Qaeda and its advisers around the world want to provoke an “American Madrid.” Portraying the United States as a bleeding bull in disarray, the war room projects its wish to see America’s will crippled. The video attempts to do the following:

1. Convince the jihadists that the United States is now defeated in Iraq and beyond. While no reversal of the balance of power has taken place on the ground, the jihadi propaganda machine is linking the shift in domestic politics to a withdrawal from Iraq. It projects the change in Washington as a crumbling of the political process in Baghdad and America’s foreign policy. Interestingly, others in the region are also “announcing” the upcoming defeat of America in the war on terror. Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah declared: “The Americans are leaving, and their allies will pay the price.”

2. Spread political chaos at home. Jihadists portray the Democratic takeover of Congress and the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (and maybe others) as signs of American weakening in the resolve to fight jihadism. The video had a potential to frustrate U.S. citizens if it is not accurately interpreted by experts.[…]

3. The terminology used in the videotape is a powerful indicator that al Qaeda’s political network relies on Western-educated minds, familiar with political processes in the United States and serving as advisers to the jihadists.[…]

So what do the speechwriters want to achieve with these kinds of tapes? They aim at sapping American public morale during a time when reorganization is taking place in the U.S. government. Reading from the jihadi wishful thinking, the audiotape of al Muhajir and the statements made by other radical Islamists send the following message: Americans are being thanked for removing Mr. Bush’s party from the leadership of Congress, which the jihadists attribute to the war on terror rather than U.S. domestic problems. Al Qaeda’s audio tells citizens in the United States that they were wise for having responded positively to the previous messages by Osama bin Laden. Al Masri’s words aim at convincing the American public to pressure their newly elected legislators to pull U.S. forces hastily from Iraq.

In short, al Qaeda wants an American Madrid: it wishes that a change of power in January would be accompanied by a change of national determination, not just a change of course within Iraq.

In the Salafis chat rooms, the commissaries explained to their audiences, that the Democratic Party victory in Congress means that America is now divided and al Qaeda can push to create more cracks in the system — as it has successfully done in Spain. The masters of the forum, emulating al Masri’s audiotape, said not only that “we got their soldiers on the run in Iraq,” but “we got their citizens on the run on their own soil” referring to the November electoral outcome. They promised that with more killings in Iraq, they will break the will of Americans at home; and that the new Congress, seeking to fulfill one of its electoral promises will force the Bush administration to pack up and leave the Middle East.

I named this post after the quote from one of the terrorists for the simple reason that this quote should send chills down your spine. Will the Democrats now understand that running from a fight only emboldens the enemy? Will they understand that since they ran the election on the “Iraqi war bad” message and won our enemy can now see the fruits of their efforts? Their whole strategy was to wait us out. To create so much violence that the weak amongst us (Democrats) will demand a withdrawal. And it worked on November 7th.

But they had one small hitch in their plan. President Bush. I cannot believe Bush will run from Iraq. He understands the big picture while all the Dem’s and even some of the Rep’s do not. This is ONE front on our World War against terror, and a important front. If we don’t back down, if we finish the job, this will send the message to our enemy that we cannot be pushed around.

Of course we fight not only the enemy abroad but the enemy on our soil, ie. the MSM and the left, but as long as we have a strong leader such as President Bush maybe, just maybe, we can win this thing.

I shudder at what may happen after 2008 tho.

by the Belmont Club

If the Cedar Revolution came on the coat-tails of Operation Iraqi Freedom, on the crest of the wave of belief in the “purple stained fingers” of voters, then the assassination of Lebanese Minister Pierre Gemayel comes upon its ebb. The results of the November election have sent the clear message that America is in retreat. Barack Obama recently said:

These are serious times for our country, and with their votes two weeks ago, Americans demanded a feasible strategy with defined goals in Iraq – a strategy no longer driven by ideology and politics, but one that is based on a realistic assessment of the sobering facts on the ground and our interests in the region. …

It may be politically advantageous for the President to simply define victory as staying and defeat as leaving, but it prevents a serious conversation about the realistic objectives we can still achieve in Iraq. Dreams of democracy and hopes for a perfect government are now just that – dreams and hopes. We must instead turn our focus to those concrete objectives that are possible to attain – namely, preventing Iraq from becoming what Afghanistan once was, maintaining our influence in the Middle East, and forging a political settlement to stop the sectarian violence so that our troops can come home. …

Shorn of its rhetoric, Obama’s message is simple. It is not a formula for winning. It is a formula about how to get the hell out of Dodge. The obvious question is what signals this sends to the struggle between democracy and dictatorship within the region. The Cedar Revolution was all about attempting to establish a genuine Lebanese Democracy by evicting the Syrian occupiers. The Cedar Revolution, according to Wikipedia was:

the most commonly used name for the chain of demonstrations and popular civic action in Lebanon (mainly Beirut) triggered by the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on February 14, 2005. The primary goals of the original activists were the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, the establishment of an international commission to investigate the assassination of Prime Minister Hariri, the resignation of security officials, and the organization of free parliamentary elections. The demonstrators requested the end of the Syrian influence in Lebanese politics.

Current events in Lebanon are all about the process of dictatorship regaining its imperium in the backwash of an American withdrawal. Syria, along with Iran is regarded the victor in Iraq, a defeat that is openly ceded by men like Barack Obama who foreign observers see as an indicator of which way the wind is blowing in Washington. In the last few days, Syria and Iraq have strengthened their relations, or more accurately put Iraq has come to Daddy. Richard Beeston of the London Times describes why they are “friends again”. America wants out, and Iraq must mend fences with the new regional victors while America begs them to let it go.

What makes this week’s meeting different is the political context. Both Washington and London are openly discussing the need to engage Syria and Iran and enlist their help in resolving the turmoil in Iraq. …

If President Talal Jalabani, the Iraqi leader, can bring about rapprochement between the Bush Administration and its foes in Damascus and Tehran then there could be an opening worth pursuing.

The US military in Iraq believes that 100 insurgent fighters cross the border into Iraq from Syria each month and that Damascus is hosting many ex-Baathist Iraqis who actively engaged in organising attacks across the border. Similarly, American and British officials believe that Iran is supporting Shia Muslim militia groups in Iraq.

Both countries could play an important role in helping to stabilise the situation in Iraq. But their support would come at a cost. Iran wants Washington and London to stop their campaign to impose sanctions on Tehran for its controversial nuclear programme.

Michael Totten sees the recent assassination of Pierre Gemayel as a bald-faced attempt to change the voting composition of the Lebanese cabinet by subtraction. And there is no secret about who is behind it. It is our new friends the Syrians, the ones we are about to ask to let us go. And it’s goal is seems simple, to alter the political calculus until Hassan Nasrallah, the stooge of our other new “friend” Iran, can take over.

The Syrian regime cannot restrain itself from butchering its Lebanese enemies …

UPDATE: Just spoke to a friend of mine in Lebanon. I did not realize until now that Gemayel was a member of the Lebanese cabinet. The Hezbollah/Syrian axis has been trying to bring down the government by pressuring three more members to resign. One down, two to go. Looks like the coup d’etat is in progress.

UPDATE: Abu Takla in the comments says “one more to go, not 2. If they assassinate one more minister, the cabinet is automatically dissolved, because it would lack the two-thirds + 1 it needs to be constitutional.”

UPDATE: Another member of Lebanon’s political cabinet, Michel Pharaon was targetted with assassination today. He survived. But if the bastards had gotten him, the government would have fallen and stage one of the coup would be over.

UPDATE: Hezbollah is planning massive street “protests” on Thursday. Tony Badran notes: “This assassination will likely ensure that if such street rallies do take place, clashes would erupt, as it’s clear that the Syrians are set on that. (Just another reminder for the idiots who believe Syria is a force of “stability.”) Syria has a primary objective that outweighs everything else: kill the Hariri tribunal, and redominate Lebanon at any cost. This is nothing short than a fight to the death for the Syrians. And, as these thugs have done throughout their bloody history, they will kill anyone.”

The most comical aspect of this whole rout is the way the diplomats will continue to prepare for the big meeting with Syria and Iran to broker a regional peace, something they believe “only a Superpower” can achieve. Alas, the habits of self-importance die hard. The countries are already making their own arrangements with the new victors, because those countries realize better than Barack Obama that you cannot charge a price for what you have already given away. And what will come of it all won’t be peace. It will be war on a scale that will either draw America back into a larger cauldron or send it scurrying away behind whatever line of defense it thinks it has the will to hold. More than 60 years ago, Winston Churchill told the appeasers they had a choice between war and dishonor. They had chosen dishonor, and added that now they would have both war and dishonor.

Update
Christopher Hitchens, writing in Slate says recent events make it plain that “the Bush administration, or large parts of it, is now cutting if not actually running, and it is looking for partners in the process” and presiding over it is “Baker, who supported the Syrian near-annexation of Lebanon. In order to recruit the Baathist regime of Hafez Assad to his coalition of the cynical against Saddam in the Kuwait war”. As I’ve said, whatever the coming conference to create a regional solution to the war is intended to be, it may be perceived as a buffet an which little pieces of Iraq are fed to Syria, Iran and Turkey in order to buy Washington’s ass out of a tight electoral situation.