Crossposted from Flopping Aces

What a change in France.  Electing Sarkozy is turning out to be one of the best things the French have done in quite sometime.  Now he is standing up to Syria:

France is to suspend diplomatic contacts with Syria, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has announced.

Links will be restored only when France has proof that Syria is not blocking progress towards installing a consensus president in Lebanon, Mr Sarkozy said.

Lebanon has been without a president since November, as rival pro- and anti- Syrian factions argue over who should fill the post.

“I ask Syria to… work to create agreement,” said Mr Sarkozy.

France “will not make any more contacts with Syria… as long as there is no proof of Syria’s willingness to let Lebanon choose a consensus president,” he told reporters, during a visit to Egypt.

It appears there is a finally a real leader in Europe.  

also:

What Time Magazine Should Have Done

It took a media outlet from a country other then ours to name the man who IS, without a doubt, the Person Of The Year – General David Petraeus.  The UK Telegraph has crowned him:

Today, we put him in the spotlight again by naming Gen Petraeus as The Sunday Telegraph’s Person of the Year, a new annual accolade to recognize outstanding individual achievement.

He has been the man behind the US troop surge over the past 10 months, the last-ditch effort to end Iraq’s escalating civil war by putting an extra 28,000 American troops on the ground.

So far, it has achieved what many feared was impossible. Sectarian killings are down. Al-Qaeda is on the run. And the two million Iraqis who fled the country are slowly returning. Progress in Iraq is relative – 538 civilians died last month. But compared with the 3,000 peak of December last year, it offers at least a glimmer of hope.

~~~

But the reason for picking Petraeus is simple. Iraq, whatever the current crises in Afghanistan and Pakistan, remains the West’s biggest foreign policy challenge of this decade, and if he can halt its slide into all-out anarchy, Gen Petraeus may save more than Iraqi lives.

A failed Iraq would not just be a second Vietnam, nor would it just be America’s problem.

It would be a symbolic victory for al-Qaeda, a safe haven for jihadists to plot future September 11s and July 7s, and a battleground for a Shia-Sunni struggle that could draw in the entire Middle East. Our future peace and prosperity depend, in part, on fixing this mess. And, a year ago, few had much hope.

To appreciate the scale of the task Gen Petraeus took on, it is necessary to go back to February 22, 2006. Or, as Iraqis now refer to it, their own September 11. That was when Sunni-led terrorists from al-Qaeda blew up the Shia shrine in the city of Samarra, an act of provocation that finally achieved their goal of igniting sectarian civil war.

A year on, an estimated 34,000 people had been killed on either side – some of them members of the warring Sunni and Shia militias, but most innocents tortured and killed at random. US casualties continued to rise, too, but increasingly American troops became the bystanders in a religious conflict that many believed they could no longer tame.

Except, that is, for Gen Petraeus. Despite his well-documented obsession with fitness – he starts his 18-hour days with a five-mile run – he is the opposite of the brawn-over-brain image that has dogged the US military mission in Iraq.

Top of the class of 1974 at West Point Military Academy and the holder of a PhD in international relations, he is the co author of the US military’s manual on counter-insurgency, a “warrior monk” for whom the messy intrigues of asymmetric warfare hold more interest than the straightforward challenges of 2003′s invasion.

Simply being the best and brightest soldier of his generation, however, would not be enough for Iraq in 2007, where a major part of the “surge” involves reconciling Iraq’s warring political tribes.

When the White House called, confirming him for the job, President Bush was looking not just for an outstanding leader but also a diplomat, a politician and a negotiator. It seems he got them all.

~~~

he has given another last chance to a country that had long since ceased to expect one. And for that, Gen Petraeus is Person of the Year.

Time Magazine should hang its head in shame but at least someone got it right.

Crossposted from Conservative Thoughts

Jerusalem Post – Islamic militants said Saturday they had no link to Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, dismissing government claims that a leader of pro-Taliban forces in Pakistan orchestrated the suicide attack on the opposition leader. With Bhutto’s supporters rampaging across the country, Pakistan’s election commission called an emergency meeting Monday to discuss the impact on upcoming parliamentary elections. Nine election offices in Bhutto’s home province of Sindh in the south were burned to the ground, along with voter rolls and ballot boxes, the commission said in a statement. The violence also hampered the printing of ballot papers, training of poll workers and other pre-election logistics, the statement said.

I’m sure I read reports earlier that Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for this, looking at them again, I get the feeling the western media yearns to believe Al-Qaeda, scumbags who butcher women and little children every day, over Musharraf. I think Al-Qaeda is getting cleverer now, they’ve learned from their experience with the drive-by media and the lazy westerner. Sure, taking responsibility has benefits like improved status and showing that they can still strike at the hearts of their enemies. On the flip side by keeping quiet about the whole thing, the authorities will know the real deal, which is what they want, and there is much more blood to be shed if they can blame Musharraf for this and blur the battle lines on the ground. (more…)

Crossposted from Red Maryland

A lot of the other Red Maryland contributors do a better job than I do covering current events, so I sometimes skip some ‘reporting’ posts, especially if I am a couple of days late or if the news is about the state or county, which is usually covered very quickly by people a lot more knowledgeable than myself.

I had planned on watching football tonight, while sipping a mug of hot tea and enjoying a nice fire in my fireplace. However, when I lit the wood, my house started filling with smoke–and not because the flue was closed, because I don’t have a flue. With my master plan ruined, I had to revert to plan B: here I stand before you, lonely and desolate, with my laptop humming and the Patriots game on a low-def television in the background. Confident that my information will be useful, I shall proceed.

The content of today’s musings is a factual update on a constitutional challenge to the recent special session. The problem is as follows. According the Maryland Constitution, one chamber of the legislature cannot stand in recess while the other is convened, without having a vote to specifically allow an extended recess, and a message to the convened chamber informing them of what’s going on.

The Senate adjourned on November 9. House records show that the Speaker received notification that day that the Senate would be adjourned until Nov. 15, which would have been fine. However, the timestamp on that notification document was dated Nov. 14! Furthermore, Senate records show that they only planned to adjourn until Nov. 13! (more…)

By Frederick Meekins

Over the course of the past decade or so, leftist malcontents have set their ideological sites against Christmas no doubt as the holiday points to the birth of the Savior Jesus Christ who can often help or motivate the individual to work through many of their own problems without an over reliance on government aide and because many of the celebrations if not taken to extremes provide the individual with a sense of well being that undermines liberalism’s basic assumption that things are so miserable that the only hope of fixing things is handing control over to a state imbued with almost God-like powers.

Initially, many of these challenges and objections were couched in terms of the canard of the Separation of Church and State and all that other pluralistic mumbo jumbo about not offending other cultures even though the rest of us have the other cultures jammed down our throats the rest of the year to the point where if anyone objects to allowing hordes of radical Muslims or swarms of illegal aliens to settle here without question now you are the one likely to be labeled a troublemaker or a threat to national security.

But now that the average American has had just about enough of the efforts to banish the foundations of American culture even if they do not embrace the underlying worldview of these foundations, more crafty subversives are beginning to come out from beneath their dank rocks like cunning serpents to play on those abridgements of freedom already accepted by the good-natured but slightly dimwitted desiring status as progressive members in good standing with the COMMUNITY.

Beloved by all but the most puritanical or revolutionary from either extreme of the socioreligious spectrum, even Santa Claus is no longer immune to postmodernist deconstruction.

In years past, some have sought to eradicate him as a symbol of the Christian ethos in which the icon either sprang up in or was grafted onto. However, rather than outright obliteration, the more crafty now want to alter his fundamental nature in such a way that most of us will no longer recognize him once our politically correct overlords have their way with him.

Those following the news first caught wind of this in a story from Australia where Santas from Downunder were forbidden from uttering “ho ho ho” because it might be “offensive to women” since other than a jolly greeting it is also slang for a woman of ill repute.

Though I’ll have to admit I have also used it as a double entede for comedic effect in a column about a strip club participating in a toy drive, frankly, if you are going to sit around and raise a fuss over this jovial phrase apparently the plight of women is so good here in the civilized lands of the West that there is nothing left to complain about. (more…)

By Blair Lee

Gov. Martin O’Malley is on a roll. In last year’s elections he led a Democratic sweep, ousting the Republican incumbent by 100,000 votes and returning Maryland to one-party rule.

This year he triangulated the state legislature, forcing lawmakers, against their will, to adopt a regressive tax hike and slots referendum in special session. O’Malley emerged the undisputed statehouse strongman and state party boss.

Thanks to Maryland’s constitution, his control over the legislative branch is now complete. Flush with billions in new revenues and armed with near-dictatorial budget power, Governor O’Malley controls the state’s purse strings. Any lawmaker seeking a new school, bridge or spending program must lie prostrate before the governor. That goes for county officials, too.

More importantly, after O’Malley’s 2010 re-election (no Democratic governor has lost re-election since 1950), he has sole power to draw the next legislative redistricting map. All 47 state legislative districts must reflect the census changes. By gerrymandering the new boundaries, O’Malley has life and death power over all 188 state legislators and they know it. Former Gov. Parris Glendening used to keep a redistricting map on his office wall as a not-so-subtle reminder to visiting lawmakers.

By the way, Maryland’s governor also writes the boundary changes for Maryland’s eight congressional districts. So O’Malley has the congressional delegation eating out of his hand as well.

Nor is this governor reluctant to exercise power. In less than one year he’s reconstituted the Public Service Commission, instituted a de facto death penalty moratorium and already run afoul of the courts by repeatedly exceeding his executive authority.

By the end of his first term, O’Malley will have shaped the third branch of government to his image, too. Due to age limits, three judges on Maryland’s highest court, the seven-member Court of Appeals, will be replaced by O’Malley. He also gets to replace three judges on the second-highest tribunal. And like any smart politician, he’s staircasing his appointments — moving up judges from lower courts thereby creating even more judicial vacancies that he gets to fill.

By the time he’s done, O’Malley will appoint almost half of Maryland’s 20 appellate judges and a host of lower courts, as well. And just to make sure his appointments stick, he’s been delaying his nominations until after the filing deadline for anyone to run against them — cynical but effective. (more…)

We will be off until December 30th!

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

(and for my liberal readers, Happy HaunaKawanaChristmaSolsticeNonDenominational Winter Holiday!)

Crossposted from Flopping Aces

What a great story for Christmas:

Cinnamon was a military camp mascot on a US Military Base in Afghanistan. Just a puppy, she had found her way into the hearts of many of the service men and women stationed there. One in particular, LCDR Mark Feffer worried for her future when most of the troops who cared for her were due to rotate out of the region. Who would care for her then?

Getting ready to rotate out himself, Mark decided to adopt her and take her home. He went through all the right channels to get her ready to travel. Cinnamon was on her way home. She had been taken care of for 7 months. She had her vet exam and her shots. Her health certificate was ready, and her transportation was arranged. Cinnamon was ready to head to her new life in the US with Mark and his wife, Alice, who had both fallen in love with her. An experienced dog handler was to accompany Cinnamon home.

She was due to arrive at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport at 4:30 PM on Friday afternoon. But when Cinnamon’s flight landed in Chicago she wasn’t on it. No one knew where she was. The dog handler entrusted to bring her home, had abandoned her in a foreign country, without contacting anyone. Was Cinnamon alone without food and water? Was she injured and in need of medical attention? Or was she lying lifeless on an airport tarmac somewhere? Would anyone ever know what happened to her?

The book is available here, and for some live footage of Cinnamon take a look: 

Next to Mark Levin’s book, Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover’s Story of Joy and Anguish, this is a must have book for dog lovers.

Gov. [Martin] O’Malley is Maryland’s Gov. [Eliot] Spitzer of New York. The residents in the state of Maryland do not condone giving licenses to illegal immigrants no more than the residents of New York did. We are incensed that Lou Dobbs (CNN) put us on the map and told the nation how we are the only state on the East Coast that is breaking the law.

Gov. O’Malley had better listen to his own advice, ‘‘Let the people decide,” because I can assure you that come election time, the governor and all of our elected officials, Albert Wynn, Barbara Mikulski, Ben Cardin, Joe Biden, Ike Leggett and the rest will answer to us.

We, the residents of [Prince George’s] and Montgomery counties, say ‘‘no” to giving licenses to illegal immigrants, we say ‘‘no” to CASA of Maryland!

We have a deficit of $400 million in revenue and we do not need to give any of our taxpayer dollars to anything but the law-abiding citizens of these United States of America. We are the people, for the people, by the people, and the people have spoken. Now we want to be heard!
(more…)

Crossposted from Red Maryland

We know that Mayor Moyer fancies shuttling herself to the far reaches of the contiguous country whilst climate crusading, and now we have a new manifestation of her green ideas:

Annapolis Mayor Ellen Moyer is examining the future of training workers from the City’s at-risk neighborhoods in the rapidly growing “Green Collar” jobs sector.

While attending the recent U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Summit in Seattle, Mayor Moyer heard many speakers discuss the rapid growth of Green Industries. The sector is growing so fast, there is a critical shortage of entry-level workers.

The Mayor sees this need for workers in an expanding industry as a source of opportunity for those needing good jobs in the City,

“Unemployment is a serious problem in some City Neighborhoods. There is a real need for good jobs for low income residents,“said the Mayor.“Young people, adults with limited skills or education, even those that have been incarcerated and are looking to get their lives back on back can all benefit from solid, living wage Green Collar jobs.”

Mayor Moyer has already met with Martha Smith, the President of the Anne Arundel Community College about the possibility of bringing some pilot Green Collar training programs to the City of Annapolis in 2008.The Mayor has also approached the Annapolis Community Foundation about raising scholarship funds for the proposed programs. (more…)

Crossposted from Conservative Thoughts

Here’s something worth reading! An American picked by a MSM publication, IBD picks General Petraeus for Man of the Year over Times’ selection of Vladimir Putin as Person of the Year.

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY

The newsweekly’s [Time Magazine] 2007 honor went to the Russian leader because of Putin’s “extraordinary feat of leadership in taking a country that was in chaos and bringing it stability,” according to Managing Editor Richard Stengel.

If returning a nation said to be on the road to democracy to its militaristic and autocratic past is a criterion, Putin is certainly a valid candidate. He has presided over Russia’s rise from a shattered remnant of the Soviet Union to a player on the world stage flush with oil revenue and a military returned from the dead.

Our preference is not for tyrants, but for those who defeat them. We prefer those who advance the causes of peace and democracy and who make the world freer and safer.

In other words, we prefer Petraeus, especially by Stengel’s criteria. Petraeus has indeed turned in an “extraordinary feat of leadership” by taking Iraq, another country in chaos, and bringing it more than stability. He has brought it true democracy from the grass roots up, and he’s done it by transforming a country full of Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis into a nation of Iraqis.

When Petraeus testified before Congress in September on the progress of the surge he planned and was chosen to execute, most refused to believe his realistic but optimistic report. Those who equated Iraq with the Vietnam “quagmire” thought we were being told again about the light at the end of the tunnel.

A few short months later, even Rep. John Murtha, one of the war’s loudest critics, concedes “the surge is working.” The Iraqi people think so too. Millions who fled are now returning in droves to rebuild their lives, open businesses and raise children in a free and democratic Iraq.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had proclaimed the war to be “lost.” And despite the drafting of a constitution and the election of a government, Baghdad had yet to assert control or leadership of a country consumed with sectarian and jihadist violence.Enter Petraeus, who changed the playbook at halftime. No longer would coalition forces leave their camps, beat up the jihadists and return to base. Now they’d go in greater numbers into the provinces and no longer win and leave, but “clear and hold.”

They’d convince Iraqis they weren’t going anywhere and neither was America. And under that umbrella of security, remarkable things began to happen. Sunnis and Shiites realized the enemy was not the Americans or each other. It was jihadists who brought nothing but violence, tyranny and oppression.

The uniting of Sunnis and Shiites against al-Qaida’s mindless barbarism, coupled with a U.S. surge where troops came and this time stayed, have turned the tide in our favor. In Anbar, once said to be hopelessly lost, tribesman do most of the policing, as 70,000 tribal fighters assist coalition forces inside Baghdad and out.

Violence and casualties, civilian and military, are down dramatically. Iraqis can now stroll the streets of Baghdad even at night, cruising the shops and stopping at cafes in increased safety.

The war is not over, but it is no longer “lost.” Al-Qaida in Iraq is on the run, wondering what hit them. Terrorism has suffered a major defeat. Gen. David Petraeus — our Person of the Year.

By Brujo Blanco

I was reading somewhere last week and some liberal pundit claimed that the war on Christmas was the War on Christmas was a conservative myth. That is probably true if all you read is left wing propaganda. A good article containing evidence to debunk this is as follows:

Kristen Fyfe: Christmas Clashes 2007

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/KristenFyfe/2007/12/21/christmas_clashes_2007

Apparently, the left is not doing well in this War on Christmas but the problem is that they are trying. What is particularly disturbing is when local and state government agencies acknowledge Muslims and other faiths and blatantly exclude Christians. In many instances they bring up the fictitious Wall of Separation Between Church and State. For some reason the left feels that the 1st Amendment permits government to place controls/restrictions on religious activities. If one bothers to read the 1st Amendment it actually prohibits government from initiating any type of restriction.

There have been attempts, some successful, to morph this idea of separation of church and state into the commercial sector. Some retail organizations tell their employees not to say Merry Christmas bit to say Happy Holidays. One organization has people calling Santa Claus father winter. Christmas trees are being renamed holiday trees.

The ACLU is a major player in this war on Christmas. More an more they are going after the Christmas symbols and Christian beliefs. The problem is that they are being reimbursed for expenses regarding “civil rights” cases from public funds. The ACLU has motivation therefore not to stop doing what they are doing. I suspect that they are turning a profit because of their litigation. It would really be nice if the IRS would take a look at their non-profit status with the same zeal they use when they go after churches. Many small jurisdictions and Christian organizations do not have the funds to fight a powerful organization such as the ACLU so they compromise or knuckle under so they do to suffer economic ruin.

One tune that I keep hearing sung on this subject is that people are offended by Jesus Christ or anything that brings him up. I really do not like being told that my religion is offensive. I know that if the shoe was on the other foot Muslims would be up in arms (literally and figuratively). One does have the right to say such things, however, one should not expect not to be criticized over such comments.

Crossposted from Flopping Aces

Curt writes:

Brutally Honest wonders why this isn’t front page news. I think we all know the answer to that one

Yes, and the latest Pew Research Center findings, based upon a study of more than 1,100 news articles from January through October of 2007, confirms what we’ve pointed out on a regular basis:

Through the first 10 months of the year, the picture of Iraq that Americans received from the news media was, in considerable measure, a grim one. Roughly half of the reporting has consisted of accounts of daily violence. And stories that explicitly assessed the direction of the war have tended toward pessimism, according to a new study of press coverage of events on the ground in Iraq from January through October of 2007.

In what Defense Department statistics show to be the deadliest year so far for U.S. forces in Iraq, journalists have responded to the challenge of covering the continuing violence by keeping many of the accounts of these attacks brief and limiting the interpretation they contain.

As the year went on, the narrative from Iraq brightened in some ways. The drumbeat of reports about daily attacks declined in late summer and fall, and with that came a decline in the amount of coverage from Iraq overall.

This shift in coverage beginning in June, in turn, coincided with a rising sense among the American public that military efforts in Iraq were going “very” or “fairly well.”

Amy Proctor cites a Pew research poll that charts how Americans have had a sense of improvement on Iraq. Although this seems to contradict a recent Gallup poll that states “Americans are generally negative on the status of the war right now”, And that 6 in 10 Americans still want a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, the survey also reveals that 71% of Americans believe Iraq will be better off as a result of the U.S.-led invasion and overthrow of Saddam’s regime.

35% of Americans say the troops should stay until the job is done or until the United States wins, while 29% say the troops should be removed immediately. Eleven percent say the troops should be withdrawn as soon as possible, and 5% endorse a gradual withdrawal. About one in six Americans advise a specific time period — 11% within the next year, 4% between one and two years, and 1% three years or longer.

Republicans and Democrats differ significantly in what they would advise the president and Congress to do about U.S. troops in Iraq: the vast majority of Republicans say the troops should stay until the job is done or until the United States wins, while Democrats most frequently say the troops should be removed immediately.

Amy Proctor also makes the following observation:

Essentially, as public opinion of the war shifted from a negative opinion to a more positive one by September 2007, the overall media coverage declined along with terrorist attacks.

You would expect the opposite to happen. That is, with a safer environment, more embedded reporters would be able to travel with the troops and more reporting made available to the public, whereas a volatile environment would accomodate fewer embedded journalists resulting in fewer stories. In reality, the opposite occurred.

Recall, from Michael Totten’s Anbar Awakening PtII:

Violence has declined so sharply in Ramadi that few journalists bother to visit these days. It’s “boring,” most say, and it’s hard to get a story out there – especially for daily news reporters who need fresh scoops every day. Unlike most journalists, I am not a slave to the daily news grind and took the time to embed with the Army and Marines in late summer.

There is no good excuse for the way in which the media has reported, misreported, and misrepresented the story on Iraq. They, as much as the news itself, have shaped the war (and public opinion and perceptions of it) and become active participants in the course of events. 

In Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts, Robert Kaplan writes:

[Robert] Sherrod [Time-Life war correspondent], like other correspondents of the era, keeps using the words “we” and “our” when referring to the American side, for although a journalist, he was a fellow American living among the troops. Back in Honolulu a week after the battle, he found the naivete of the home front toward Tarawa “amazing”. The public saw the killing of so many troops in so few days as scandalous. There were rumblings in Congress about an intelligence failure, and vows that such a thing must not happen again. But as Sherrod argues, there was no easy way to win many wars (in fact, eight months later, the first day of fighting on Guam would claim nearly seven hundred marines dead, wounded, or missing). Thus, “to deprecate the Tarawa victory was almost to defame the memory of the gallant men who lost their lives achieving it.” He concludes that on Tarawa, in 1943, “there was a more realistic approach to war than there was in the United States.” [Chapter One, Pg. 27]

Instead of the Sherrods of yesteryear, we get this and this.

Other findings in the Pew Research Center study:

• Daily accounts of violence made up 47% of all stories studied during the first 10 months of 2007. But because many of these stories were short, that represented just 27% of the time and space-or newshole-of the coverage studied.
• Through June, more than half of all stories studied were about violent incidents, but that number fell to roughly one third in September and October.
• Just more than half (56%) of the stories that offered a clear assessment of where things in Iraq were headed were pessimistic, but that coverage was more skeptical of the Iraqi government and the stability of the country than it was of U.S. policy.
• Stories assessing the effectiveness of U.S. policy-including the surge-more often than not were neither distinctly positive nor negative in the message they conveyed. Four in ten offered a mixed assessment, while a third were pessimistic and a quarter saw things as improving.
• A separate analysis of coverage in November, beyond the time frame of the main study, indicates that during that month positive assessments of the surge began to rise.
• The coverage overall was U.S. centric in subject matter. About half of all the coverage from Iraq was about the American military and U.S. officials. Roughly another 10% was about private contractors, mostly Blackwater.
• Coverage of Iraqi civilians, by contrast, made up far less, 3% of stories and 5% of overall newshole.
• Despite enormous difficulty in getting access to sources, Americans did get a wide range of perspectives. Fully 40% of stories (representing 61% of the newshole) carried the views of multiple of types of stakeholders.

Also blogging:
American Thinker
Bottomline Upfront

also:

al-Qaeda Feeding On Itself?

Brutally Honest wonders why this isn’t front page news.  I think we all know the answer to that one:

One of Al Qaeda’s senior theologians is calling on his followers to end their military jihad and saying the attacks of September 11, 2001, were a “catastrophe for all Muslims.”

In a serialized manifesto written from prison in Egypt, Sayyed Imam al-Sharif is blasting Osama bin Laden for deceiving the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, and for insulting the Prophet Muhammad by comparing the September 11 attacks to the early raids of the Ansar warriors. The lapsed jihadist even calls for the formation of a special Islamic court to try Osama bin Laden and his old comrade Ayman al-Zawahri.

The disclosures from Mr. Sharif, also known as Dr. Fadl and Abd al-Qadir ibn Abd al-Aziz, have already opened a rift at the highest levels of Al Qaeda. The group’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, a former associate of the defecting theologian in Egypt, personally mocked him last month in a video, remarking that he was unaware Egyptian prisons had fax machines. Meanwhile, leading Western analysts are saying the defection of Mr. Sharif indicates the beginning of the end for Al Qaeda.

The author of “Inside Al Qaeda,” Rohan Gunaratna said in an interview this week, “There is nothing more important than a former jihadist as important as Dr. Fadl criticizing the jihadist vanguard.”

~~~

Mr. Sharif, currently serving a life sentence in an undisclosed Egyptian prison, wrote in the 1980s two of the modern seminal texts for Sunni jihadism and in particular Al Qaeda, in “Fundamental Concepts Regarding Jihad” and “The Five Ground Rules for the Achieving of Victory or Its Absence.” Those books are scholarly justifications, citing the Koran and Hadiths, for joining a war against Muslim apostates such as the Egyptian ruling class and for a broader jihad against the far enemy of America.

~~~

Of his old associates he writes, “Bin Laden, al-Zawahri, and others fled at the beginning of the American bombing [in Afghanistan], to the point of abandoning their wives and families to be killed along with other innocent people,” according to a translation provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute. It goes on, “I think that a sharia court should be established, composed of reliable scholars, to hold these people accountable for their crimes — even if in absentia — so that those who are ignorant in their religion do not repeat this futility.”

Mr. Sharif also says Mr. Zawahri informed on his friends after he was arrested following the Sadat assassination in 1981. “I don’t know of anyone in Islamic history having committed such deceit, fraud, falsification, and betrayal of trust with such hostility to someone else’s book, and perverted it – no one before Ayman al-Zawahri,” he wrote.

We all know that the MSM cannot allow anything that would remotely suggest that Bush’s policies have helped to destroy al-Qaeda.  That would be blasphemy.

But we also know, it’s all Bush’s fault.

Thankfully.

UPDATE

While your busy blaming Bush take a look at something else Bush is too blame for at Gateway Pundit.

Crossposted from Conservative Thoughts

A farmer who sold goats and lambs to families to kill has been accused by N.C. officials of operating an illegal slaughterhouse.

PRINCETON, N.C. — For six years, it has been a tradition for Muslims in the Research Triangle: After morning services on the first day of Eid al-Adha — the “festival of sacrifice” — scores of families leave the tweedy environs of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill and head toward an obscure plot of land on a two-lane country road.

They come to visit Eddie Rowe, a hog farmer.

The children typically run around among Rowe’s loose chickens. The women prepare picnic sandwiches. And the patriarch of each family awaits his turn to slit the throat of a lamb or a goat that Rowe has sold him.

To Muslims around the world, this is an important ritual — a tribute to Allah and to the prophet Abraham, who in both the Koran and the Bible is said to have offered his son as a sacrifice to God. […]

Last week, the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services obtained a restraining order alleging that Rowe was operating an unsanitary and illegal slaughter facility.

This case raises a big question on freedom of religion in this country, doesn’t it? Which takes precedent? Animal sacrifice as proscribed by your faith or state officials stopping a practice that many in this country would equate to animal abuse?

Crossposted from Red Maryland

So Isaac Smith, who of refused to accept my challenge to a debate, challenged me to cut the budget:

But as you surely know, it’s one thing to talk in generalities, and quite another to get down to specifics. So what, Brian, would you cut? Here’s the FY2008 budget; have at it. And of course, it’s not just enough to propose budget cuts, but you have to demonstrate that these cuts will not impair the ability of the state to carry out its duties in education, in health care, in public safety, etc. You may not think the state has such duties, and that perhaps is the difference between you and me.

Of course, I have the size to actually respond to such a challenge. So read it and weep. And I actually went further than just cutting the budget by reallocating some of the money to where it was actually useful, and by privatizing certain state assets. So what you see here is a net savings of over $3.6 billion. And yes, public secondary education, public safety, and health care are not impacted at all.

I know in fact that the FSP people (who have called me delusional incidentally) will cry and scream that a lot of these things that I am cutting or privatizing are part of the role of government. Except government either should not be doing it in the first place, or certainly is not doing it well right now….

Crossposted from Flopping Aces

This guy is unbelievable. 

Remember the report Mike posted on yesterday about the 400 scientists who dismiss the man-made global warming hysteria.  Here is Gore’s answer: (h/t Newsbusters)

After a quick review of the report, Gore spokeswoman Kalee Kreider said 25 or 30 of the scientists may have received funding from Exxon Mobil Corp.

Exxon Mobil spokesman Gantt H. Walton dismissed the accusation, saying the company is concerned about climate-change issues and does not pay scientists to bash global-warming theories.

In typical Clintonian fashion he attempts to discredit those who disagree with him to deflect the attention away from the real story.  That being the fact that the debate is NOT over, nor should it ever be over.   Science doesn’t work that way.

Even more disturbing, as Noel Sheppard brings up, the man has made a ton of money off of the global warming hysteria:

Pretty amazing coming from a man that likely has made what some estimate is $100 million in the past seven years selling this canard to the public

But lets look at those who agree with Gore’s position.  You think any of them are funded by some big liberal organizations like the Soros Foundation, Think Progress, Media Matters, Greenpeace and the like?

You bet your ass they are funded by these groups.

also:

Hiding The Retraction.

Byron York noticed that no attention was being paid to what most editors would call a retraction in the New York Times:

This was not exactly bannered across the front page of the New York Times yesterday. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I saw it in my paper at all. But on the Times‘ website, dated December 20, there is this headline: “Giuliani’s Office Shifted Money Around? Yes. To Hide Hamptons Trips? Unlikely.”

In fact Byron was right.  Its a multimedia article, and checking the “todays paper” link there is no sign of the story. (more…)

Crossposted from Conservative Thoughts

PRICE, Utah – An apparent paperwork error by state officials has resulted in a jail threat to a Utah homeschooling family. Denise Mafi must enroll all her children in a state school immediately or face the state seizing them and even a possible jail sentence for truancy.

State officials told Mafi that she had not filed the necessary paperwork but had expected to have truancy charges dismissed because of the clerical error. Instead, World Net Daily reports that Judge Scott N. Johansen threatened to take the children into state custody because Mafi had failed to file an affidavit saying her children would be schooled at home through an online state curriculum programme.

Under Utah law, a child “shall be excused from attendance” at the public school if the parents file an annual signed affidavit with the minor’s school district saying the child will be instructed in the subjects that the State Board of Education requires in public schools. It must affirm that the child will be instructed for the same length of time as children receiving instruction in public schools. Failure to comply with the affidavit requirement can result in up to six months in jail.

Utah does not require that the State Board of Education monitor curriculum or even supervise testing.

Mafi said she had submitted the required affidavit for the 2006-2007 school year by fax but, although a source inside the District affirmed that Mafi had come to pick up the forms, the state officials lost her paperwork. Now officials are claiming that she did not file the affidavit and when Mafi appeared in court, a plea agreement arranged with the prosecutor was thrown out by the judge.

Mafi told WND, “He threw out the plea and we go to trial on January 9th. I have no chance with this judge. He will find me guilty. He already has. So I will probably be spending some time in jail.”

Mafi has been homeschooling her children for nearly ten years without problems. Although she has already received the go-ahead from state officials for the 2007-2008 school year, the judge ordered all the children to be enrolled in school this year.

“If it was any other person in the state, they can put their children in an online public school and it’s acceptable,” she told WND. “I can’t do it. I cannot pull my children out and put them in a private school of my choice.”

The Virginia-based international Home School Legal Defence Association (HSLDA) told LifeSiteNews.com, however, that this judge has a bias against homeschooling and “a history of being overturned” on these kinds of rulings.

The group’s spokesman said the situation is “irregular at best”. “Judge Johansen took jurisdiction and has ordered that all the children in the family must be in school for the coming year.” Mafi is expected to appeal.

During the proceedings, Judge Johansen told Mafi that homeschooling had been “a failure”.

To express concerns:
Judge Scott N. Johansen
Carbon County Juvenile Court
149 East 100 South
Price, UT 84501
Phone: (435) 636-3401
Fax: (435) 637-7349

Crossposted from Red Maryland

Considering I am a declared candidate for delegate to the GOP Convention in Minneapolis this summer, its high time I declare who I support in the primary.

It has taken this long because, quite frankly, the Republican field has been lackluster and none of them are the perfect candidate espousing all the right conservative stances. Then again, to conservatives, the perfect is the enemy of the good. Samuel Huntington wrote, “No political philosopher has ever described a conservative utopia.” We should heed this advice when choosing who to support for the nomination.

However, the choice itself can be difficult. For example, John McCain, a patriot who I deeply respect, is a pro-victory and far sighted supporter of the Iraq War and the fight against Islamo-fascism. However, he voted against the Bush tax cuts, championed campaign finance reform that restricts speech, sponsored disastrous CO2 cap and trade schemes, and was on the wrong side of the amnesty bill.

That is the conundrum many conservatives face in evaluating and choosing among the GOP field.

Having said that, I find myself agreeing with the conclusions of the editors of National Review in endorsing Mitt Romney: (more…)

by Haider Ajina

Concrete, barbed wire barriers removed off Diwaniya’s streets

Diwaniya, Dec 20, (VOI) – Diwaniya’s municipalities department removed all the concrete barricades, watchtowers and barbed wire barriers off two main streets in the centre of the province, an official source said on Thursday.

“Under instructions from Diwaniya Governor Hamid al-Khudari, the municipalities department removed all concrete barricades and watchtowers off the streets where the old provincial council building and the police department are located,” the head of the department, Jawad Kadhem Gharkan, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq.

The step aims to end traffic jams and ease the flow of traffic, especially after the recent improvement in the security situation and the move of local authorities to a new building, al-Khudari indicated.

Speaking to VOI, Diwaniya Mayor said that order returned to the province following the wide-scale security operation Lion’s Leap, conducted by Iraqi police and army personnel more than a month ago. The Shiite province of Diwaniya lies 180 km south of the Iraqi capital Baghdad . (more…)

Crossposted from Flopping Aces

So why the alarmism? Hint: It’s not to save the planet!

• Former Vice President Al Gore (November 5, 2007): “There are still people who believe that the Earth is flat.” (LINK) Gore also compared global warming skeptics to people who ‘believe the moon landing was actually staged in a movie lot in Arizona’ (June 20, 2006 – LINK
• CNN’s Miles O’Brien (July 23, 2007): The scientific debate is over.” “We’re done.” O’Brien also declared on CNN on February 9, 2006 that scientific skeptics of man-made catastrophic global warming “are bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry, usually.” (LINK)
• On July 27, 2006, Associated Press reporter Seth Borenstein described a scientist as “one of the few remaining scientists skeptical of the global warming harm caused by industries that burn fossil fuels.” (LINK)
• Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC view on the number of skeptical scientists as quoted on Feb. 20, 2003: “About 300 years ago, a Flat Earth Society was founded by those who did not believe the world was round. That society still exists; it probably has about a dozen members.” (LINK)
• Andrew Dessler in the eco-publication Grist Magazine (November 21, 2007): “While some people claim there are lots of skeptical climate scientists out there, if you actually try to find one, you keep turning up the same two dozen or so (e.g., Singer, Lindzen, Michaels, Christy, etc., etc.). These skeptics are endlessly recycled by the denial machine, so someone not paying close attention might think there are lots of them out there — but that’s not the case. (LINK)
• The Washington Post asserted on May 23, 2006 that there were only “a handful of skeptics” of man-made climate fears. (LINK)
• ABC News Global Warming Reporter Bill Blakemore reported on August 30, 2006: “After extensive searches, ABC News has found no such [scientific] debate” on global warming. (LINK)

Why make such absolute statements? It’s because the wheels of the global warming express are coming off. Every year, more and more people are learning that the alarmist and absolutist statements of the global warming zealots are nothing more than scaremongering and political cover for an effort to hamstring the U.S. economy and give more power to the U.N.

Earlier this week Curt pulled another skin off the onion of the great global warming hoax. And if I can toss in another cliche, that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Here’s the iceberg, and it isn’t melting:

excerpts from:
U.S. Senate Report: Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007
Senate Report Debunks “Consensus”
December 20, 2007

UN IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri urged the world at the December 2007 UN climate conference in Bali, Indonesia to “Please listen to the voice of science.”

Background: Only 52 Scientists Participated in UN IPCC Summary

The over 400 skeptical scientists featured in this new report outnumber by nearly eight times the number of scientists who participated in the 2007 UN IPCC Summary for Policymakers. The notion of “hundreds” or “thousands” of UN scientists agreeing to a scientific statement does not hold up to scrutiny. (See report debunking “consensus” LINK) Recent research by Australian climate data analyst Dr. John McLean revealed that the IPCC’s peer-review process for the Summary for Policymakers leaves much to be desired. (LINK)

Proponents of man-made global warming like to note how the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the American Meteorological Society (AMS) have issued statements endorsing the so-called “consensus” view that man is driving global warming. But both the NAS and AMS never allowed member scientists to directly vote on these climate statements. Essentially, only two dozen or so members on the governing boards of these institutions produced the “consensus” statements. This report gives a voice to the rank-and-file scientists who were shut out of the process. (LINK)

The most recent attempt to imply there was an overwhelming scientific “consensus” in favor of man-made global warming fears came in December 2007 during the UN climate conference in Bali. A letter signed by only 215 scientists urged the UN to mandate deep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. But absent from the letter were the signatures of these alleged “thousands” of scientists. (See AP article: – LINK )

The science has continued to grow loud and clear in 2007. In addition to the growing number of scientists expressing skepticism, an abundance of recent peer-reviewed studies have cast considerable doubt about man-made global warming fears. A November 3, 2007 peer-reviewed study found that “solar changes significantly alter climate.” (LINK) A December 2007 peer-reviewed study recalculated and halved the global average surface temperature trend between 1980 – 2002. (LINK) Another new study found the Medieval Warm Period “0.3C warmer than 20th century” (LINK)

A peer-reviewed study by a team of scientists found that “warming is naturally caused and shows no human influence.” (LINK) – Another November 2007 peer-reviewed study in the journal Physical Geography found “Long-term climate change is driven by solar insolation changes.” (LINK ) These recent studies were in addition to the abundance of peer-reviewed studies earlier in 2007. – See “New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears” (LINK )

With this new report of profiling 400 skeptical scientists, the world can finally hear the voices of the “silent majority” of scientists.

….
Over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called “consensus” on man-made global warming. These scientists, many of whom are current and former participants in the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), criticized the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore.

The new report issued by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s office of the GOP Ranking Member details the views of the scientists, the overwhelming majority of whom spoke out in 2007.

This blockbuster Senate report lists the scientists by name, country of residence, and academic/institutional affiliation. It also features their own words, biographies, and weblinks to their peer reviewed studies and original source materials as gathered from public statements, various news outlets, and websites in 2007. This new “consensus busters” report is poised to redefine the debate.
…
The distinguished scientists featured in this new report are experts in diverse fields, including: climatology; oceanography; geology; biology; glaciology; biogeography; meteorology; oceanography; economics; chemistry; mathematics; environmental sciences; engineering; physics and paleoclimatology. Some of those profiled have won Nobel Prizes for their outstanding contribution to their field of expertise and many shared a portion of the UN IPCC Nobel Peace Prize with Vice President Gore.

Additionally, these scientists hail from prestigious institutions worldwide, including: Harvard University; NASA; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR); Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the UN IPCC; the Danish National Space Center; U.S. Department of Energy; Princeton University; the Environmental Protection Agency; University of Pennsylvania; Hebrew University of Jerusalem; the International Arctic Research Centre; the Pasteur Institute in Paris; the Belgian Weather Institute; Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute; the University of Helsinki; the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S., France, and Russia; the University of Pretoria; University of Notre Dame; Stockholm University; University of Melbourne; University of Columbia; the World Federation of Scientists; and the University of London.

The voices of many of these hundreds of scientists serve as a direct challenge to the often media-hyped “consensus” that the debate is “settled.”

400 Scientists who insist that the “science” of man made global warming is NOT settled. They can’t all be wrong. So again, why the rush to impose a socialist and one world government solution to a problem that may not exist?

and:

The “Silly Hat” Hit Piece & Journalist Ethics

It appears the reporting done by Roger Simon (not the bloger Roger L. Simon) is a bit more then a simple hit piece against Fred.  It may just violate some serious journalistic ethics: (via Confederate Yankee)

Simon quoted Thompson as stating that “I’ve got a silly hat rule.”

As the CBS video clearly showed, that was only part of Thompson’s statement.

What Thompson actually said was, “I’ve got a silly hat rule that I’m about to violate.“

Thompson then takes the Chief’s helmet and starts to raise it if he is going to put it on, and then says, while laughing, “I ain’t gonna do it… I ain’t gonna do it.”

At this point Jeri Thompson steps in and Fred puts the helmet on her. Throughout the video, you can hear those assembled laughing, including Chief Dan McKenzie, who handed Thompson the helmet to begin with. McKenzie is shown smiling widely at the end of the clip.

We don’t know if the entire Politico article is grossly unfair in the way it characterized Senator Thompson’s swing through Waverly, Iowa, but we do know, thanks to the CBS News video, that not only was Simon’s editorializing of what occurred in the Waverly Fire Department mischaracterized, but that he doctored a quote to make his article appear all the more damning.

(more…)

Crossposted from Conservative Thoughts

During an interview on IsraelNationalRadio’s with Tovia Singer about the recent Bush Administration intelligence report on Iran’s nuclear capabilities Bolton and Singer had this interesting exchange about BDS in the State Department..

When Singer said he wanted to bring up the recent American intelligence report that downplayed the Iranian nuclear capabilities and brought great joy to Iran and to the left, Bolton said, “I don’t think we should call it an intelligence report, but rather a document of the Executive Branch. It was a highly-politicized document, written by some who are not even intelligence community professionals, but rather from the State Department… In theory, they all work for the President, but they don’t like his policies and they think that he’s too belligerent towards Iran – though my own personal view is that the President was not tough enough – and this paper was intended to undercut the Bush position. This report has put Bush’s policy on the bottom of the ocean.”

This report has succeeded in exactly that. There is no way President Bush can effectively lobby the United Nations to deal with Iran and its nuclear program. Thanks to someone’s shortsighted, politically motivated actions, no action will be made against Iran for non-compliance with multiple United Nations resolutions.