The Rest of the Camel

06/09/2007 13:50 – (SA) Khar – Suspected militants blew up a tailor’s shop on Thursday in northwest Pakistan for making Western clothes, an official said, in the latest attack on un-Islamic habits along the Afghan border.

The pre-dawn blast also damaged two other nearby shops in Kasi, a village in the tribally governed Bajur region, said Mohammed Khan, a local government official. No one was hurt.

Khan said militants recently warned the tailor to stop making Western-style clothes, which they view as un-Islamic.

I’ll tell you this: That’s the kind of hold they want over OUR society… and the camel’s nose is already under the tent flap. Take a look at the story coming in from Pakistan; that’s what the rest of the camel looks like.

Phil Brennen at News Max:

A video taped from a Scan Eagle unmanned aerial vehicle purported to show the action that took place in Haditha when 24 Iraqi civilians and insurgents were killed was heavily edited by government investigators, a NewsMax investigation reveals.

The reason, according to an inside source: to avoid showing anything that exonerates the Marines who were accused of murdering the victims.

…

According to CNN, the video appears to show that, throughout that day, Marines engaged in fierce firefights and called in air strikes to level buildings – often with no definitive idea of who was inside.”

Had the entire video been shown it would have revealed that the Marines knew exactly who was inside – insurgents were clearly shown entering the target buildings before the structures were bombed. If CNN had been able to review the whole video, they would see that we did indeed have a definitive idea of who was inside,” an intelligence officer told NewsMax.

Gee… I wonder if anyone will care?

Harry Reid, call your office.

I don’t know what to say, Billy, except that if you’re going to go, it may as well be with family and friends, a few beers, and a few smiles. Too often, it goes the other way.. suddenly, painfully, and alone.

And yes, I see no reason to change your opening number.  Somehow, I think of all the people at that party, the one having the best time will be Bill himself.  And isn’t that the point of the party, in a way?

In case I’m not making this clear, that post touched me… and I didn’t even know the dude.

Please pass along my best thoughts to his lady, will you?

First of all, I will say up front that I do not believe Osama BinLaden is still alive. The illness that he is known to have, and the captures of the vids released supposedly just recently, and again back and 2004, tell the tale: Either someone’s rolling old tapes, yet, or Osama’s been hitting the Grecian Formula 16.
However, here’s the good news:

In looking at the transcript, I think I have a pretty good idea of who is in that get up: Howard Dean.

Face it; the text of the transcript could only have been written within the walls of the DNC. The Democrat- generated subprime credit scare, global warming, Noam Chomsky, Richard Perle, all of it… comes right out of the Democratic party playbook. I’ll tell you; the only thing missing is the scream.
My guess is that the movement OSM started before he died knows who their friends are, here in the states.

Allah has more.

So do Power Line, Stop The ACLU, Right Wing Nut House, Cold Fury,  NewsBusters.org, small dead animals, Wizbang, Sister Toldjah,  Atlas Shrugs, bRight & Early, Classical Values, Redstate, QandO, Roger L. Simon, and Don Surber, 

Don Surber has the latest on the pervert Charles Rust-Tierney about whch we wrote last February.

so desperate are they to prevent any idea of our actions in Iraq being the correct ones to take, that democrats are preemptively dismissing the report to be issued by General Patreus.

Joyner says:

Democratic leaders are dismissing the “Petraeus Report” as the “Bush Report,” S.A. Miller reports on the front page of today’s Washington Times.

Congressional Democrats are trying to undermine U.S. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus’ credibility before he delivers a report on the Iraq war next week, saying the general is a mouthpiece for President Bush and his findings can’t be trusted.

“The Bush report?” Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin said when asked about the upcoming report from Gen. Petraeus, U.S. commander in Iraq. “We know what is going to be in it. It’s clear. I think the president’s trip over to Iraq makes it very obvious,” the Illinois Democrat said. “I expect the Bush report to say, ‘The surge is working. Let’s have more of the same.’ ”

The top Democrats — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California — also referred to the general’s briefing as the “Bush report.”

Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Gen. Petraeus’ report was potentially compromised by the White House’s involvement in drafting it. “If the same people who were so wrong about this war from the start are writing substantial portions of this report, that raises credibility questions,” he said.

Republicans bristled at the pre-emptive strike against the report. “Are these leaders asking the American people to believe that the testimony of a commanding four-star general in the U.S. Army should be discarded before it’s even delivered?” said Brian Kennedy, spokesman for House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican.

So let me understand this, here.

What Dick Durbin and Harry Reid are saying, here, is that so bereft of honor is Petreus, that he’s sending men to fight a battle he knows is lost. And why? to Curry favor with a lame duck administration with approval numbers in the 30’s?

Sorry, but I don’t buy it.  One does not get to his position of importance by being that blind to the political conditions surrounding them.  That he is quite so tone deaf , simply does not ring true.

Further, as Joyner says:

…questioning Petraeus’ integrity is simply stupid. They confirmed his appointment with fanfare mere months ago; to accuse him of being a shill for the administration at this point is sure to backfire.

McQ agrees, saying in part:

How political has this war become? Well I think this sort of an attempt to destroy the credibility of someone who has taken a very difficult job with the unanimous backing of the Senate and who has apparently done his level best to implement a new strategy and make it succeed is, frankly, despicable, and points to how sick party politics have become in this country.

Those who have preemptively attacked Gen. Petraeus and impugned his character before ever hearing a single word the man has to say aren’t statesmen, aren’t leaders and aren’t worthy of the title of “representative”. They’re small minded political hacks more interested in the welfare of their party and the power they can gather for it and themselves than the best interests of the nation they claim to serve. They are intending to willfully ignore obvious progress in Iraq for the sake of political gain.

…
I think what is going on is both shameful and disgusting, and for those engaged in such, yes, I do question their “patriotism” for whatever good that will do. I also question their intelligence, judgment, credibility, ethics and most of all their principles.

I’m in full agreement, here… and believe me when I tell you, that it will, next week when the General delivers that report.  If he comes at this thing, in his usual style, which is to simply whose with credibility, the democrat leadership is going to find its credibility seriously damaged with the American people. But perhaps, there’s the rub; can it possibly be more damaged with non democrats ? I doubt it. And that’s the reason behind this action.

McQ also points, perhaps without meaning to, at the reason the Democrat leadership is so whacked on all this…

In a post entitled “New Twist In Saga Over ‘Petraeus Report’: There Will Be No Report”, Think Progress says (while faithfully plugging the Durbin characterization):

In the latest twist to the ongoing saga over the Petraeus White House report, a senior military official tells the Washington Times today that there will actually be no report at all:

A senior military officer said there will be no written presentation to the president on security and stability in Iraq. “There is no report. It is an assessment provided by them by testimony,” the officer said.

The only hard copy will be Gen. Petraeus’ opening statement to Congress, scheduled for Monday, along with any charts he will use in explaining the results of the troop surge in Baghdad over the past several months.

To recap, first the public was incorrectly led to believe that Gen. David Petraeus would issue his own report about the situation on the ground in Iraq. Then the Los Angeles Times reported that the so-called “Petraeus report” would “actually be written by the White House.”

Hello!? Where have you freakin’ people been? This all became common knowledge quite some time ago. Heck we even wrote a post on August 27th explaining it for those who still didn’t understand the point. There isn’t a “Petraeus Report”. There never was a “Petraeus report”.

Yet we have “progressive” blogs which still haven’t figured that out.

What I’m suggesting here, is that Durbin and Reid and the rest of them, are attempting to respond to their whacked out leftie base. Let’s face it; Looking at the lay of the political landscape, it would be relatively easy to conclude that there is nothing that could damage the credibility of the democratic party’s leadership with non democrats.  It’s already been thoroughly destroyed enough that no amount of care and common sense is going to resurrect it. There is no one, outside of Democrat nutjobs, IE; their base, who would vote for them if they were the last people on earth.  These are people who know the only possibility they have for retaining power, is if they can whip their base up enough to get the votes needed. And they really don’t care about anyone BUT that Leftie base.

Update: Linked by the WSJ’s Washington Wire. 

Thanks, gang.

On waking up, just about the first thing that happened was a power spike… which was a complete power loss in many areas… which wiped out the cable TV Telephone and Internet connections for about 38000 folks around here. Made a mess of the morning drive, too.

Everything’s back, now… but my morning posts were just being sent when it happened. which means, of course, they no longer exist.  Going to have to work on a better system for that.

Toward the end of the first clip, O’Reilly questioned whether Romney had characterized Hillary Clinton’s position on Iraq accurately, when he said that her position is that we should depose Maliki and then leave. I did a little fact-checking, and while Clinton has never put the two ideas together the way Romney did for her, yes, they do accurately reflect her positions on Iraq.

Depose Maliki. And then leave Iraq.

Breathtaking, ain’t it? So much for Hillary Clinton being the smartest woman in the world.

Byran Preston, Hot Air.

A Bitsblog PSA, Mary Katherine Ham, Townhall, has a multipart consersation with Bradley Smith, formerly of the FEC.   It says something, not altogether nice, aboiut the state of our republic, when politicians who write, vote and pss laws with the names attached, do not understand the very laws they passed.

Patrick Healy, New York Times:  

Update: Blake Zeff, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, just e-mailed to say that Mayor Rivera stepped down from Mrs. Clinton’s Mayors Council today.

Among the 11 public officials arrested in an F.B.I. corruption sting in New Jersey today was a leading Democratic supporter of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign in that state, Mayor Samuel Rivera of Passaic.

Expect yet another round of Mrs. Clinton saying, “But I didn’t know.”    If Mrs. Clinton is not corrupt,she is simply the unluckiest person in the World.

I’m getting really tired of opening my mailbox, and coming up with the massive load of cow feces, that is commonly referred to as leftist thought.  I had three different messages, supposedly from different people, today ; interestingly enough my server advises me they all came from the same computer.  All of them, preceded to advise me in as many four letter words as possible that because I am concerned about Islamic terrorism I have no courage.  I am also advised, again, in as many four letter words as possible, that I am a cultural baguette, because I insist on assimilating people who come to live in our country.

Well, I’m going to pass along to you a quote.

The third thing I want to talk about very briefly is the genuine danger of terrorism, in particular terrorists using weapons of mass destruction and weapons of mass murder, nuclear and biological weapons. And I want to suggest to you that right now we should be impaneling people to look seriously at a level of supervision that we would never dream of if it weren’t for the scale of threat.

Let me give you two examples. When the British this summer arrested people who were planning to blow up ten airliners in one day, they arrested a couple who were going to use their six month old baby in order to hide the bomb as baby milk.

Now, if I come to you tonight and say that there are people on the planet who hate you, and they are 15-25 year old males who are willing to die as long as they get to kill you, I’ve simply described the warrior culture which has been true historically for 6 or 7 thousand years.

But, if I come to you and say that there is a couple that hates you so much that they will kill their six month old baby in order to kill you, I am describing a level of ferocity, and a level of savagery beyond anything we have tried to deal with.

And, what is truly frightening about the British experience is they are arresting British citizens, born in Britain, speaking English, who went to British schools, live in British housing, and have good jobs.

This is a serious long term war, and it will inevitably lead us to want to know what is said in every suspect place in the country, that will lead us to learn how to close down every website that is dangerous, and it will lead us to a very severe approach to people who advocate the killing of Americans and advocate the use of nuclear or biological weapons.

And, my prediction to you is that either before we lose a city, or if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us to stop them from recruiting people before they get to reach out and convince young people to destroy their lives while destroying us.
This is a serious problem that will lead to a serious debate about the first amendment, but I think that the national security threat of losing an American city to a nuclear weapon, or losing several million Americans to a biological attack is so real that we need to proactively, now, develop the appropriate rules of engagement.

And, I further think that we should propose a Geneva convention for fighting terrorism which makes very clear that those who would fight outside the rules of law, those who would use weapons of mass destruction, and those who would target civilians are in fact subject to a totally different set of rules that allow us to protect civilization by defeating barbarism before it gains so much strength that it is truly horrendous.

This is a sober topic, but I think it is a topic we need a national dialogue about, and we need to get ahead of the curve rather than wait until actually we literally lose a city which could literally happen within the next decade if we are unfortunate.

The speaker is Newt Gingrich, although, for the purposes of this discussion that he originally made the comments is pretty much nonessential information.

He is quite correct when he says this is a serious situation, and requires serious discussion.  However, where he errs is when he starts talking about putting together a convention for fighting terrorism.  That’s the relative equivalent of establishing rules of engagement for chaos.  It can’t be done.  What needs be done, is to eliminate the restrictions imposed on fighting against such individuals.  We need to recognize, that this is in fact a life or death situation, for literally millions of people.

The central issue here, as I’ve said previously, is one of culture. Notice the bit of quote here again:

But, if I come to you and say that there is a couple that hates you so much that they will kill their six month old baby in order to kill you, I am describing a level of ferocity, and a level of savagery beyond anything we have tried to deal with.

And, what is truly frightening about the British experience is they are arresting British citizens, born in Britain, speaking English, who went to British schools, live in British housing, and have good jobs.

Notice, please, that at no time does he say that they have adopted British culture.  Merely that they are born there went to the school’s lived in British housing and so on.  This would seem to be an argument for making sure that immigrants are assimilated into the culture of the country they move to.  We’ve discussed that here, before.

I submit to you that the kind of anger involved would not be likely, or even possible, were such cultural isolation not tolerated.
We hear constantly about how insisting on cultural assimilation for our immigrants, he’s not respecting their rights.  We also keep hearing from the usual suspects about how the kind of enforcement required to keep this kind of thing in check is going to trample the rights of the individual.

My friends, I’ve said it here often enough; rights are a cultural construct. And as for courage, I submit courage is standing up for what is right.  But right and wrong, are also cultural concepts.  Morality itself, is a cultural construct.  It takes courage to stand up and insist that immigrants to our country become a part of our culture. Courage which the American left does not have, and insists on this attributing that lack of courage to a love of “freedom” .

The people who would use such weapons against us are not a part of our culture, and wish to see our culture… on which our freedom is based, destroyed.  What will happen to the rights, the freedoms recognized by our culture, when our culture is destroyed by these people ?

.

“Michelle Malkin is the most vile, hateful commentator I’ve ever met in my life,” he says. “She actually believes that neighbors should start snitching out neighbors, and we should be deporting people.

“It’s good she’s in D.C. and I’m in New York,” Rivera sneers. “I’d spit on her if I saw her.”

Geraldo Rivera, in his own words.   He just doen’t know when to shut-up.

Hat tip: Michelle Malkin.

Will someone please explain to me of what use the Federal election commission is?

As an example; The Norman Hsu matter… the likelihood is that the commission will not make any rulings or Levy any fines against any one of the mariad of Democrats we listed here yesterday as having received money from this criminal.  And yet, the democrats listed are just as criminal as the elusive Mr Hsu.

The commission, indications are, will not take any action until such time as the election is already well past.  So, again please explain to me, what function the Federal election commission serves, when the people they would charge in this case, are by that time either bankrupt, having spent all their money trying to get elected, or are now in a position of power, which would logically be able to quash any FEC investigation and the consequences thereof.

Yes, I saw the debate last night.  My opinion about who won?  Hands down, Fred Thompson.

TRENTON, N.J. —  Eleven public officials across New Jersey were arrested Thursday morning as part of a corruption investigation, a law enforcement official said.

Democratic state Assemblymen Mims Hackett Jr. and Alfred E. Steele were among those arrested, along with Passaic Mayor Samuel Rivera. The chief of staff to Newark City Council President Mildred Crump, Keith Reid, was also arrested, the official said.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to upstage a formal announcement.

Had enough, yet?