will to exist archives

Yes, President Bush is here in Baghdad’s Green Zone. The surprise visit was concealed from us just as it was from the press and everyone else, for obvious security reasons. And the security the President gets  is extraordinary. Much better than what I get.

The visit wasn’t a surprise though. Military life is a long series of routines. It is very clear when something out of the routine is happening, if you are paying any attention. Today was one of those days. We could all tell that something big was happening.

I think the President made a wise decision by paying Iraq’s Prime Minister a personal visit. Iraqis have a love/hate relationship with us, and understandably so. Those Iraqis who want their country to improve and join the world markets understand that they need us. Iraqis who want peace and security know that Iraq isn’t quite ready yet to send America home. Many Iraqis are worried that we will cut and run. We’ve done it before.

President Bush’s visit is a symbolic and physical way of saying we aren’t going to run away from the thing we have started.

As I type these words, the news anchors are gushing about how dangerous it was for the President to fly into the Green Zone in a helicopter. That’s a bunch of poppycock. I’ve flown over Baghdad several times. It’s only dangerous if the chopper gets shot down. Unlikely. It happens, but very unlikely, and Mr. Bush had an escort like I’ll never see. He was relatively safe, in comparision to most who travel through Baghdad.
Guess I better shut up and listen to what the man has to say. He’s on TV shaking hands with Prime Minister Maliki and they are both smiling.

Strategy Page speculates that Zarqawi could have been tracked by what Iraqis (and probably lots of others) think of as magic:

For the last ten years, development of "smart dust" has moved right along. "Smart Dust" is basically very miniaturized electronic devices. This is similar to stuff like RFID, smart cards, EZ Pass and those rice grain size tracking devices you can have injected into your pets. But Smart Dust takes this all to a new level by being small enough to be disguised as dirt, the kind you can pick up in your shoes or clothing.

Nanotechnology can be used for good or evil. I’m glad Zarqawi didn’t have access to it. Future criminals (the elite ones) probably will. Within 20 years. You heard it here first.

Ooh! Magic dust that follows people around and sometimes kills them. That’s neat. Move along now. Nothing to see here people.

Irony. It follows me everywhere.

Elizabeth just suggested that I read some books from Juan Cole’s recommended reading list. I don’t recall paying much attention to the name Juan Cole until yesterday. So Elizabeth pretty much introduced me to Juan Cole, Middle East affairs expert.

Today, in my web travels, I was re-introduced to Juan Cole, expert on recently deceased chopper of heads Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

From Iraqpundit:

In the wake of the news that Zarqawi had been killed, something that everybody on all sides agreed was accurate, Cole seem to have decided that previous to his death, Zarqawi must have existed after all. To mark this epiphany, the professor wrote this week that it didn’t matter. “There is no evidence of operational links between his Salafi Jihadis in Iraq and the real al-Qaeda; it was just a sort of branding that suited everyone, including the US. Official US spokesmen have all along over-estimated his importance. Leaders are significant and not always easily replaced. But Zarqawi has in my view has been less important than local Iraqi leaders and groups. I don’t expect the guerrilla war to subside any time soon.”

Cole is correct in thinking the war won’t likely subside soon. However, what Cole seems to lack is any willingness to admit progress in Iraq. He also displays a deep seated hatred of all things Western. I could be wrong, but I’m sure I’ll be getting to know more about Mr. Cole and his beliefs as time goes on. We have a whole century of memewars ahead of us. Zarqawi doesn’t get to play, because he wanted to cut off heads instead of talking things through.

Everyone, to one extent or another, frames the world the way they want to picture it. What sort of frame do you look through?

It will be interesting to see what I think of some of the books from Juan’s recommendation list. I’ll try to see things through his frame before I draw my own conclusions.

Bag prompts airport shutdown, evacuation

There are some fabulous quotes here, ripe for the picking.

Todd Coleman, food editor for New York-based Saveur magazine, was detained but later released after the bag was removed from the terminal and a robot opened it to disclose the contents.

Hmm. Todd Coleman. Sounds like a terrorist. I’m sure he looked very suspicious. He was probably muttering and sweating a lot. Likely had bits of food stuck to his face, and so on. I’ll bet he even had a little pen and notepad. Maybe he was wearing a t-shirt that said, “I love food and Tim McVeigh. Wanna see my jihad?”
And everyone knows that when you have a suspicious bag, the first thing you should do is call for a robot to open it up. Doesn’t matter what the bag’s owner has to say. You simply cannot trust food editors. It’s much more appropriate to shut down the airport and act super paranoid so the airlines can lose as much money as possible, and people in general can be inconvenienced for the flimsiest of reasons. You cannot professionalize unless your federalize.

Couldn’t these fools have made sure Coleman couldn’t push any buttons and then walked the bag to a safe area, and asked him to open it and demonstrate that the contents were innocuous? Excuse me, but what the hell are they teaching TSA employees? It’s certainly not how to exercise common sense.

Learning English should not be mandatory to live in the U.S., but it certainly opens up a broad range of choices for those who take the time to maste the world’s primary language for discussing science and industry. If I was planning on relocating permanently to Costa Rica, I would bone up on my Spanish first. If I was planning on moving to Britain, I’d learn English. When in Rome, and all that.

In our system of publicly funded education, there is a raging debate over whether children should be educated in English or in their native language. The Christian Science Monitor discusses this in an article entitled Bilingualism issue rises again.

Arizona followed suit, and in 2002, Massachusetts became the third state to vote out bilingual education. Students who were once taught primarily in their native languages are now put in SEI classrooms where Spanish or Portuguese or other languages are used solely for clarification purposes.

But as educators analyze the results of the Massachusetts English Proficiency Assessment tests, which will be released to the public later this month, some doubt how well the new program is working.

The goal is to keep English learners separated from their peers for no more than a year. But in Lynn, where about 18 percent of students have limited English proficiency, the head of the district’s language program says most elementary students stay in SEI classrooms for about two years. It can take longer for older students.

I’m not sure what the best way to deal with the problem is. If I were supreme leader, I’d be tempted to require public school students to speak English first and learn everything else second. Then again, if I were supreme leader, there wouldn’t be public schools (not a good return on investment). The benefits of learning English should be obvious to anyone who reads this excerpt from Wikipedia:

English is currently one of the most widely spoken and written languages worldwide, with some 380 million native speakers. Only Chinese and Hindi have more native speakers while Spanish is similar in number. English is also the most widely spoken of the Germanic languages. It has lingua franca status in many parts of the world, due to the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and that of the United States from the Second World War to the present.

Through the global influence of native English speakers in cinema, music, broadcasting, science, and the Internet in recent decades, English is now the most widely learned second language in the world. It is often used as an international language of communication, and is now a common intermediary language.

Another important point (to me, since I produce more than I consume) is that the money that is used to pay for the teaching, whether bilingual or not, comes out of the pockets of English speaking American taxpayers, whether or not they have children. I want that money spent efficiently.

I don’t think we need to make English the “official” language of the nation though – common sense should tell you that if you have an opportunity to learn English, you should do so. In America’s public schools, you should learn English first, and progress to other subjects when you are judged ready. But that’s just my opinion. What’s yours?

Guantanamo Bay has been in the news recently. Interesting discussions are taking place as a result.

From Andrew Sullivan:

Every time I have tried to write something about the cancer and shame of Guantanamo, and the thought that the United States has strapped dozens of randomly captured individuals in metal restraints in order to force-feed them, I find myself so flummoxed that I give up.

From Jon Swift:

Critics claim that the inmates are in a state of despair and have a sense of hopelessness because officials continue to resist efforts to charge the prisoners and give them trials or release them. Already, nearly half of these dangerous men (and several children) have been released after spending years at the camp, meaning that the 460 who are left must really be bad.

I honestly do not know what to think. I believe everyone is entitled to due process. Since I don’t know much about what sort of due process (if any) has been afforded to the men held at Guantanamo, I don’t really feel like I am in a position to speak, other than to say I believe these men should be tried and convicted by a court in proceedings which are made public. The Nuremburg trials were public, why shouldn’t these be as well?

Am I missing something logically or legally important?

It recently came to my attention that it is really hard to find a copy of the policy for U.S. military personnel stationed in Iraq who want to blog.

I’m providing the document here, free of charge. It’s not classified, so feel free to download and distribute if you are a military blogger and have any doubts about what you’re expressing in your blog.

Download MNC-I Policy #9 – Unit and Soldier Owned and Maintained Websites. Current as of April 6, 2005.

As always, don’t say anything on the Internet you wouldn’t want getting back to your mom, cause your unit commander isn’t as patient as your mom.

• “Photos of defensive female ducks”
• “SM Stirling + gay” (his wife might want to know)
• “Brad and Angolia” (why did my blog show up as a result?)
• Day in the life of a janitor
• rfid+oil+mark+of+the+beast+iran+iraq
• Zarqawi was already dead (told you)
• Iraq studs gay

It takes all kinds.

I’m sure you have heard the rumor by now. You know, that one where vengeful Americans beat a horribly injured Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to death?

“When the Americans arrived they took him out of the ambulance, they beat him on his stomach and wrapped his head with his dishdasha, then they stomped on his stomach and his chest until he died and blood came out of his nose,” Mohammed said, without saying how he knew the man was dead.

This rumor brought to you by the same type of intellectual giants who are responsible for this:

We know that we are living in world of double standards. In Fallujah, they have created a new vague target,: AL ZARQAWI. This is a new pretext to justify their crimes, killing and daily bombardment of civilians. Almost a year has elapsed since they created this new pretext, and whenever they destroy houses, mosques, restaurants, and kill children and women they said “we have launched a successful operation against Al-Zarqawi.” They will never say that they have killed him, because there is no such a person. And that means the killing of civilian and the daily genocide will continue.

So you see, Zarqawi was an invention. He was made up so that people could pretend he was beaten to death by the evil Americans. Everyone point at the evil Americans. I heard they eat Iraqi babies, you know. My neighbor Abdul told me, so it must be true.

I cannot count the number of times I’ve received a chain e-mail from someone I would otherwise think of as intelligent, warning me about this or that grave threat or exhorting me to be more socially active in one way or another. Invariably, those forwarded e-mails are false, or only partially true. I can smell them a mile away. The above story has the stink I’ve come to recognize from those almost inevitably incorrect chain e-mails.

Life goes on inside the Green Zone.

In the few days since Abu Musab al-Zarqawi went to meet Satan (it’s my preference to believe that is what happened), things have been relatively hectic. Since I work in public affairs, we have been busy. The web site I maintain on behalf of the coalition experienced a spike in traffic to five times the norm. This caused some headaches for the tech staff back in D.C., I’m quite sure.

It also caused those of us here in Baghdad to run around like chickens with our heads cut off. If you have never worked in what I call media misadventures, the modus operandi is multiple bosses for every tech worker. When anything truly significant (like Zarqawi’s timely demise) happens there is a chain reaction.

If you have ever seen a human pyramid forming, try to imagine the reverse. What would happen if all the people at the bottom of the pyramid demanded that the pyramid reverse itself, so that you would end up with 16 or so people stacked up on the shoulders of just one person in tiers. That is military public affairs. For every competent tech worker there are three useless soldiers who just take up space and a minimum of six idea men of the rank of captain or higher.

All of these people except the technical person spend their time saying things like “wouldn’t it be great if. . .” and “you know what would be neat. . .” The tech guy is the only person who has any clue how to make these wonderful ideas emerge from the birth canal of the master brain where they originated so they can be disseminated to other human beings around the globe.

And that is why I have purple bags under my eyes. I am the tech – the lonely bastion of technical competence in a world of people who have only recently learned the power of information that can be stored and moved around rapidly as 0s and 1s.
When I return to civilization, I plan on punching anyone who begins a sentence with “Wouldn’t in be great if,” directly in whichever eye is closer to my fist.

To all of you back home who have recently sent tea, postcards, snacks, books, magazines and other little trinkets – thank you. You’ve managed to help me hang on to sanity by a small thread. I will make an exception for you folks. You guys are great.

Him or her? You can’t be both, can you?

Update: Hyperbolic Pants Explosion lost his camera at the convention. Please let her know if you found it.

Say what? He lost his camera. Please let her know if you found it. Am I crazy, or is that impossible? How hurried do you have to be to forget if you’re writing about a man or a woman?
Anyhow, if you attended the Kos festival of self-love, and you have Hyperbolic Pants Explosion’s camera, or know his/her true sexuality, surf over there and help them straighten the mess out. I hope that was a typo.

Wired reports that Verizon is betting on fiber technology.

Now, Verizon Communications is making a big and expensive bet on replacing the network of copper wires that has provided phone service since the 19th century with fiber, giving it the capability to carry TV and super-fast internet service in the bargain.

Investors have been skeptical of the plans, sending Verizon’s stock down by about 20 percent since the rollout started last year, and other phone companies have not made the same gamble. Donohue, however, is happy with the service Verizon calls FiOS.

I think Verizon would make a nice stock buy right now. The capital investment they are making makes sense from my perspective.

Who doesn’t want 20MBps into their home? Trust me, a high speed always on connection is the new status symbol of the 21st century. Your ability to be connected everywhere you go, and the number and types of connections you have at your disposal are status symbols – they represent your power quotient.

I think that high speed wireless technology will eventually eclipse everything else, but that process is going to take decades. For now, fiber optic technology is the ultimate nerdly status symbol.

Your Sunday must read is Requiem for a Nightmare, by James G. Poulos.

But the dilemma of the war — that in order to free Iraq, the coalition created a realm of murder and despair — came about courtesy of a man whose very idea of strategy involved exploiting the weakness and good faith of the liberal project of freedom. Stretched between monsters of Islam like Zarqawi and the Muslim angels who have striven for peace, brotherhood, and order in Iraq, a whole range of varyingly aggrieved citizens found their complicity suddenly on the market. Enlistment in al Qaeda in Iraq brought a perverse stability that joblessness could not. The planting of a roadside bomb brought ready cash. Silence itself — won by threats if not by payola — was a commodity of war. And true enough the fabric of Iraqi society itself had no shortage of threads for Zarqawi to pull. The denominations of Sunni and Shi’a became through his blood-colored glasses factions of mutual destruction; the hordes of hardened criminals turned out on the streets in one of Saddam’s last treasons against his own people became a field of opportunity.

This above is a good read no matter who you blame for the messiness that is modern Iraq.

If life is a river, perspective is the current.

Another crisis of legitimacy for which he can be held responsible, and perhaps the worst, was this profane mockery of the laws of armed conflict. Citizens were to be made targets — now, even to the exclusion of actual soldiers. Combatants were to be relieved of the quaint, millennia-old obligation of wearing uniforms. And killing was to be conducted primarily by suicide operations and by the robotic proxy of the IED — a clever new acronym for what was once the bane of people for peace everywhere: land mines.

Zarqawi sowed what he reaped. He worked hard to earn his end.

Vibram Fivefingers? I would think Fivetoes would be more appropriate. Maybe they are hinting that this product makes your toes act more like fingers.

“Fivefingers” is certainly an interesting looking product. I wonder if it causes temptations for people with a foot or toe fetish?

At $70, I’m going to have to sell a lot of blog ads to afford fingers on my feet. Oh well, c’est la vie. Maybe the Fair Tax will pass, and I’ll be able to actually save money in my lifetime, instead of having it all sucked off the top of my paycheck before I even see it.

There are always two sides to a story, including the one that began in Haditha last November. According to one of the military participants, there was no intentional massacre.

Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, 26, told his attorney that several civilians were killed Nov. 19 when his squad went after insurgents who were firing at them from inside a house. The Marine said there was no vengeful massacre, but he described a house-to-house hunt that went tragically awry in the middle of a chaotic battlefield.

I am not in a position to judge. Could an intentional massacre have occurred? Certainly. It’s within the capability of the animal inside all of us. Only those who have been tested in close quarters combat know what they are truly capable of doing in such a situation. I hope these Marines are not guilty of what is being insinuated. If they are, they should pay.

What if they are cleared of the charges? I have a feeling that won’t be good enough of the pseudointellectuals who pass themselves off as pundits. I won’t hold my breath waiting for the statements of contrition and and apologies from those who rushed to judge.

It took us 30 years to decide Saddam Hussein needed to be punished. The same sort of people who question whether he was actually an evil dictator who was bad for Middle East stability will never admit to being wrong about Hadita, even if the investigation concludes otherwise.

Greyhawk at Mudville has some related thoughts.

There are lots of different ways to look at the latest news about Zarqawi.

Before his death, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had recruited hundreds of people who received terrorist training in Iraq and then returned to their home countries to await orders, The New York Times reported in Sunday editions.

Citing high-ranking security officials in Jordan, the Times said that in addition to recruiting volunteers and suicide bombers to fight in Iraq, Zarqawi had recruited some 300 people who received terrorist training in Iraq before returning home to await orders to carry out strikes.

I’m sure some of you will be thinking – see, if we hadn’t invaded Iraq this never would have happened. Bulls**t.

Think of the earth as a person. Now think of that person as having a respiratory infection. For the sake of argument, we’ll call that afflication Islamofascism. There are two options – ignore the cough and hope the body heals itself, or use whatever medicine you have available.

I prefer to use the medicine, which in this case, is military force. It may cause the infection to reacy violently, but in the long run that will speed up the healing process. Sometimes, medicine makes you feel sicker than you would otherwise but it mostly helps you get rid of your infection.

Don’t be alarmed. I’m playing with themes. Everything is OK.

My main goal here is to end up with a theme that allows for wider photos. 375 pixels just don’t seem to be big enough for people to appreciate.

Update: Obviously, people don’t like the new test theme. Bye bye. Trying another one. Thanks for your input.

Update II: So we end up back to the old theme, with some modifications that make me feel happier, and hopefully improve overall readability of the blog without screwing up the content for people who are using lower resolutions. I’m catering to people with their screens set at 1024×768 or higher. Yes, I am a pixel elitist.

I’ve been saying since the invasion of Iraq that the idea was a sound one and now I have proof – the source of the terror addresses the issue directly.

Two official statements posted on the Web site used by al-Qaida in Iraq urged Muslims to volunteer to fight in Iraq, saying al-Zarqawi’s death should remind them of their “duty” to fight infidels.

“Iraq is the front line of defense for Islam and Muslims. So, don’t miss this opportunity to join the Mujahedeen and the martyrs,” said one signed by Abdullah Rasheed al-Baghdadi, who succeeded al-Zarqawi this year as head of the Mujahedeen Shura Council, the umbrella group that includes al-Qaida in Iraq.

“This is a compulsory duty for all Muslims in these days,” it said.

Here are the keywords to pass to your friends who think we’re in the wrong place:  Iraq, front line, compulsory duty for all Muslims. What further evidence could you possibly need that a) al-Qaeda is desperate b) al-Qaeda is focused on Iraq, instead of elsewhere, as they would be WITHOUT IRAQ and c) America is stomping the poop out of religious fanatics who want to destroy her (and by proxy all of you people who think the war in Iraq is wrong.)

Yes, there are flaws in the war. Mistakes have been made. There was some bad intelligence. Nevertheless, Iraq has its first freely elected government in modern history – and as far as I know – ever. Is that a bad thing? The U.S. and Iraqi militaries are working closely together and kicking some butt. Is that a bad thing? And let’s be honest – if moderate Islam is going to triumph over radical Islam it is Muslims themselves who will have to reject terrorism. I think most will, because radical Islamists have little to offer.

Give this some time. Iraq is not a quagmire, and we shouldn’t be talking cut and run. Let’s all grow up and walk the hard road together. In the long run, it will benefit both nations.

The VA is overoptomistically hopeful that the data of 26.5 million veterans has been erased. Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson wants us to believe that tech savvy teens are responsible for a ring of thefts in which they erase data before reselling the computer equipment.

He explained that the burglary occurred in an Aspen Hill, Md., neighborhood in which there had been a pattern of thefts by young burglars who took computer equipment, wiped them clean of the data and then sold them on college campus or high schools.

“We remain hopeful this was a common random theft and that no use will be made of this data,” Nicholson said. “However, certainly we cannot count on that.”

Lawmakers were skeptical. They noted that the committee and the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ investigative arm, had warned the VA for years that security was lax.

This is pure speculation. The teens may well be lazy and naive as criminals. If they don’t pay any attention to current events, then maybe the data has been erased. However, now that the contents of the drives are public, if the criminals who took them are savvy at all, they are happily sifting through their valuable treasure and discussing ways to market the trove to the highest bidder.

I wonder what the street value of 26.5 million American identities is? There’s another interesting descrepancy in reporting on this fiasco – sometimes we’re told that the data is on 26.5 million veterans and sometimes it’s only 2.2 million. I am guessing that when we hear 26.5 million it includes all veterans going back 50 or more years, and when we hear 2.2. million the number is related to current active duty military personnel – and that’s all of them. It sounds to me like it was a complete database of every veteran since World War II. Nice. Join me in a *polite golf clap* for the VA, ladies and gents. Government taking care of veterans!

Of course the press isn’t biased. They’re just smarmy and arrogant. Like many career bureaucrats, they know better than the public what is good for the public. That is why they write, for the same reason I write – not to report the facts, but the influence opinion. The only difference is that I will admit my entire blog is my attempt to get my view out to the world, but a journalist, when asked, will usually tell you they are just reporting the facts. The problem with that is that they skew the facts, however subtle that process may be. Here’s an example:

Even as they were locked in genuine confrontation on the battlefield, al-Zarqawi and the United States engaged in public, tit-for-tat insults.

On April 25, al-Zarqawi brazenly showed his face for the first time in a video posted on the Internet. In a lengthy diatribe, he accused Bush of lying to Americans about U.S. military victories in Iraq. U.S. forces, he predicted, “will go out of Iraq humiliated, defeated.” The video showed al-Zarqawi strutting across a desert landscape, wielding an automatic weapon.

Genuine confrontation on the battlefield? There was no genuine confrontation on the battlefield. When did Zarqawi stand and fight? Never. The number of force on force battles between the U.S. and al-Qaeda has been very limited in comparision with a traditional battlefield because the enemy is so completely outclassed in every way when it comes to training, logistics, and technology that they have to hide most of the time. So let’s be honest – al-Qaeda hides and attacks from the shadows. They may have a valid reason for doing so – survival – but let’s not pretend their is a battlefield. The battlefield is anywhere al-Qeada can deliver a bomb, but they won’t be there when the explosion goes off.

But the U.S. psychological operation appeared to backfire, according to one military study of how it played in the Arab and U.S. media. While some media outlets found al-Zarqawi ludicrous, most wondered why he was so hard to capture or kill if he was so incompetent.

Weekly press briefings are not psychological operations, anymore than having a weekly business meeting is a psychological operation. Note that it’s the media outlets’ opinions that are important in the above sentence, not the opinions of the audience.

By then, administration attention was locked on Iraq. In a speech in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002, Bush outlined the “grave threat” Saddam posed to the United States.

I know from doing it that when I put a snippet of a quote inside a larger sentence while talking about a speaker I am mocking them, or trying to point out that I am dubious about whatever is in quotes. Saddam may or may not have posed a grave threat to the U.S. He certainly posed a grave threat to Iraqis, his neighbor nations and anyone who displeased him. I think it’s possible the U.S. displeased Saddam and that, given the opportunity, he would have facilitated a strike against Americans on their home soil. Of course, that possibility has been largely poo-pooed to the extent that roughly half the U.S. public is now dubious about Saddam the psychopath. In fact, there is a growing chorus of lunacy at home singing songs that paint Bush as more evil than Saddam could have ever hoped to be. It’s a silly and disturbing trend.”

What’s the point of the article entitled Al-Zarqawi served role in U.S. strategy in Iraq. Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus were trying to get something across to their audience with the article. I’m not sure I understand what it was. Zarqawi was an evil man. His departure from this plane of reality isn’t going to change the U.S. strategy in Iraq one bit. Security, unity, prosperity – three simple words that explain what the U.S. would like to achieve. Simple stuff. If Zarqawi had a three word plan for Iraq it would have been – Allah my way. That’s really all that matters to me.

Maybe I’m spending too much time looking between the lines?

People are fighting over Iraq’s soul. Zaraqawi didn’t care about Iraq’s soul – he saw it as unimportant, he wanted the entire world on a platter, and he wanted to own all of our souls. Same base goal as Osama bin Laden.

“Zarqawi didn’t have a vision for what a future Iraq should look like that was about Iraq,” Bensahel said. “Iraq was a player in a broader global struggle and that’s not something that either the Sunni or the Shia communities inside Iraq see themselves as. They are concerned about the future of their own country.”

The unrest in Iraq can be framed many ways. The Shia/Sunni rift is almost a millenium old, and inside Iraq, it is like a wound that is being picked at. How many times can you let the healing process start only to rip the scab off? That’s bad for the healing process. Then there are the Salafis aka Wahabists – those loony tune religious fanaticists who want to see the Eastern Hemisphere, and eventually the Western one as well, under the dominion of an Islamic caliphate. And underlying it all is man’s base desire to wield power and control other men.

Zarqawi wielded his power like an out of control fool. He guided his ship right into the center of a hurricane and smashed himself on the rocks. He is dead. Good riddance. Few of us want to cruise through life with a madman at the helm.

Perhaps his demise will make others within Iraq take a second look at how they are using the resources available to them. Power has be be used wisely for the benefit of everyone. In the long run Iraqis will benefit from his death, because their lives have gained value from the passing of the monster who cared not one whit who or what he destroyed in his quest to achieve his own mad dreams.

Some places in this country let you vote without ID. Why should you have to show ID to fly? Assuming you are not violently suicidal (99.999999% of all flyers), the only people who actually have a vested interest in your identity should be the airline from whom you purchased the contract to fly you from Point A to Point B.

Read the Great No-ID Airport Challenge. You’ll laugh and cry and clutch your ID tightly to your body as you pass through the scanner that leaves you naked to any bureaucrat who happens to be in the area…

Michael Berg, father of terrorist murder victim Nick Berg, is an idiot.

There’s just no other way to characterize a man as confused as the elder Berg. It’s a wonder to me that an individual with such flawed reasoning ability survived into his 50s (I am assuming his age). In fact, I blame President Bush for creating a society in which the terminally stupid are protected from themselves.

I cannot bring myself to quote the man, but I’ll link to the article in which he reasserts his idiocy. I’m sick and tired of people who expect to be protected from evil while blaming those who do their best to protect them for its existence. Stupid and suicidal all rolled into one. Sometimes I want to remove all the warning labels from life and let things progress the way nature intended.

Like many complete idiots before him, Michael Berg is running for Congress.
Yes, I know I’m being harsh. Go ahead, berate me for it. I’ll be happy to debate you, especially if you are named Michael Berg.

Land of the free. That’s an important statement. American ideas about freedom are exported around the world, for better or for worse. Our silly debate about whether gay people should be allowed to marry makes us all look like morons, in my opinion.

I realize that most of the people who read this blog will probably disagree with me, but it is my personal belief that adults should be treated like adults, and that government should try to stay as far out of any legal contracts between adults as possible, until there is a dispute and the courts need to get involved. Frankly, the God I believe doesn’t want me to poke my nose into other people’s business unless they represent some sort of threat to me. Gay people are pretty low on that list. In fact, the gay people I know are generally very friendly although they tend to see themselves as persecuted, which is something that they have in common with early Christians, I would imagine.

There is an entry on the whole ongoing debate over gay marriage at Hammer of Truth that I think is worth your time.

Allowing gay people to marry represents no threat heterosexual couples whatsoever. If it goes against your beliefs, then you have every right as a private citizen to proselytize up to the the tolerance level of your neighbors and local community. You are more than welcome not to practice lifestyles you disagree with, just as you don’t have to eat food you dislike. And that’s about as far as your right to discriminate against others should go, from where I stand.

America is a nation of ideas. One of the best ideas I’ve heard in America is that no one group gets to decide what God wants for the rest of us. Too bad many so-called Christians are hypocrites when it comes to forcibly inflicting their ideas about morality on others when they would fight tooth and nail if someone tried to do the same thing to them.

Perhaps we should change the moniker to Land of the Free Discriminatory Heteros.

It appears that the VA is doing something in response to the recent veteran’s data theft.

For years, Veteran’s Administration employees have been taking home confidential data of veterans to do claims work. No more.

I’ve received the following memo from a reader:

June 7, 2006

To All VBA Regional Office Directors:

This e-mail confirms and clarifies the direction provided earlier today by the Office of Field Operations to all Regional Office Directors and the Director of the Appeals Management Center.

As directed by the Secretary in the memorandum dated June 6, 2006 below, VBA’s practice of allowing Veterans Service Center employees to remove claims files from their regular duty stations to adjudicate claims at alternative work sites is suspended immediately.

Regional Office Directors must immediately inform all of their Veterans Service Center employees (including AMC employees) who perform claims processing activities from their home or other non-VA telework site to return tomorrow to their home regional office or the closest practical VA work site. This affects all Veterans Service Center employees working at home, including rating veterans service representatives, decision review officers, veterans service representatives, claims assistants, rehired annuitants, and any other employee performing adjudicative processing tasks utilizing veterans claims files.

Employees must return all claims files when they report to their home station tomorrow. These claims files are to be inventoried to ensure all claims files have been accounted for and properly returned. Employees must also return their VA computer equipment to their home station. If employees are unable to personally bring the equipment back to the regional office, arrangements must be made by the regional office to pick up that equipment.

This suspension of all work-at-home and telework claims processing also applies to all overtime claims processing at home. No claims files may be removed from any VBA facility in order to adjudicate that claim at home or at a non-VA telework site during an employee’s regular work hours or on overtime.

Regional Office Directors must report to their Area Directors when all work-at-home and telework employees have reported to the regional office and all files have been returned. Area Directors should provide a consolidated report for their stations to OFO by COB Thursday. Identify in your reports any exceptions that might prevent full compliance immediately (employee on annual leave, etc.). Please direct any questions through your Area Director to ensure coordinated and consistent guidance to all offices.

Thank you for your immediate attention to this important issue.

Daniel L. Cooper
Under Secretary for Benefits

The Army Chief of Staff and Command Sergeant Major of the Army also sent an All Hands alert today, warning that up to 20 million veteran’s data have been compromised and requesting that soldiers carefully monitor their bank accounts, credit cards and other financial accounts. That might be hard to do for some of us who are in remote locations without easy access to telephones, e-mail and electronic banking.

What remains unclear is whether issues of basic security are being addressed. I hope the right questions are being asked. Telecommuting government employees should be required to keep all electronic files encrypted to industry standards and they should be required to have sufficiently complex passphrases. More troubling is that according to my source, VA employees routinely take home hard to replace paper copies of important documents such original medical records. I’m told the only security in place is the lock on the front door of the residence. That’s not kosher.
Click here for posts related Veteran’s data loss.

Iraq’s new government will be more important to the overall story of Iraq than yesterday’s news of Zarqawi termination.

The government announced the new Minister of Defense, Minister of Interior and Minister of State for National Security.

Quick bullets:

Minister of Defense Abdul Qadir Mohammed Jasim

• Graduate of Military College 1969 – worked in armored division until assuming post of Armored Division Commander
• Commander of armored brigade during Iran-Iraq war
• Opposed invasion of Kuwait in 1991, was stripped of all posts and responsibilities, was referred to retirement in 1992, arrested and tried by special court martial in 1994, sentenced to seven years imprisonment with all properties confiscated, personal house was returned after coalition toppling of regime in 2003
• Participated in the new Iraqi army as head of the ground forces
• Currently unaffiliated with any political party

Minister of Interior Jawad al-Bolani

• Born in Baghdad 1960 with family origins in Diwaniya
• Graduate of Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Technology
• Worked as an Engineer in the Iraqi Air Force until 1999
• Acting member of the Governing Council
• Member of the water committee in previous parliament
• Not currently a member of any political party

Minister of State for National Security Shirwan al-Waili

• Born in Thi-Qar 1957
• Graduate of Military Engineering College 1979
• Worked in the Military Works Division in building military camps and other military construction mission. Did not participate in any military operations
• Was detained during the 1991 uprising
• Retired as Brig. Gen. in 2000
• Studied Law at Basra University
• Acting member of the Governing Council
• Served as an Advisor for regional affairs for the National Security Portfolio
• Served as member of the Constitutional Committee in the previous parliament
• Not currently a member of any political party

You can find more info about Iraqi’s key government members here.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead. Yes, he is. What can I say? From my perspective, a monster departs the realm of the living.

I’m sure further details will emerge throughout the day.

Prediction: Conspiracy theorists will come up with all kinds of plots and claim that the U.S. had him in custody all along and he was killed to offset negative press reports about Haditha. And variants on that theme as well.

Update: MNF-I press release – Coalition forces kill Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi

Update II: I’ve talked to a few of my Iraqi co-workers. Every one of them has expressed a sentiment that “today is a good day in Iraq.” For them, news of Zarqawi’s death is personal.

Update III: Omar at Iraq the Model celebrates and discusses the terrrorist’s legacy of horror.

CONGRATULATIONS TO IRAQ, CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WHOLE WORLD ON THIS VICTORY.

Watching the live press conference on the Pentagon Channel, which is happening next door as I write this. Someone already asked about the fortuitous timing – Zarqawi killed and important cabinet members named on the same day? Well, yeah, sometimes good things come in waves.

Update V: Photo of dead Zarqawi and video of the air strike available at MNF-Iraq.com. I link to the photo as proof, not because I want to gloat. Zarqawi dead does not bring back any of his victims, it only ensures he cannot plan more murders. There are also slides available from today’s press conference here.

Update VI: It’s now my understanding that Zarqawi was killed by the air strike, and not by forces on the ground, although it is clear that there were many different groups involved in yesterday’s assault, from both coalition and Iraqi forces. Interestingly, I’m told Iraqi police were the first ground elements to arrive on scene post air strike.

In an article called The Libertarian Dem, Kos tells us that libertarians believe government is evil.

Traditional “libertarianism” holds that government is evil and thus must be minimized. Any and all government intrusion is bad. While practical libertarians (as opposed to those who waste their votes on the Libertarian Party) have traditionally aligned themselves with the Republicans, it’s clear that the modern GOP has no qualms about trampling on personal liberties. Heck, it’s become their raison d’ etre.

Kos, you’re wrong. Libertarians believe government is a monopoly on force. If the United States is a house, government is a hammer. To it, everything looks like a nail. You need more than a hammer to build a good house. In fact, modern houses are built primarily with other tools.

Some government is necessary, yes. It’s good to have a hammer around when you need to pound in a nail that’s sticking out. However, Democrats in general have a tendency to attack every problem in the house with the hammer of government, and that’s why there are so many holes in the damn drywall of the United States, Kos. It’s a problem with both of the big parties. They have overapplied the hammer and now they’re acting confused as to how all the holes got there.

From the Gun Owners of America comes the news that this 4th of July, the United Nations will be meeting on American soil to discuss ways to confiscate privately held guns. If it wasn’t for those pesky citizens, there wouldn’t be any violence, don’t ya know?

Keep guns in government hands. Governments know better than we do.

How insulting.

How much liberty and privacy am I willing to surrender to be protected from terrorists? How about child pornographers? Who else do I need to be protected from? Drug dealers? Telemarketers? Strangers with candy? FedGov is treading a very, very slippery slope.

The Justice Department said Thursday that it was not seeking to have e-mail content archived, just information about the websites people visit and those with whom they correspond.

Beyond law enforcement, though, the trove also could be available to lawyers arguing civil lawsuits — including divorce cases and suits against people suspected of swapping copyrighted movie and music files online. Privacy advocates fear the user histories could be exploited by criminal investigators conducting inappropriate exploration or pursuing minor cases.

“This is not simply limited to kiddie porn or terrorism. It’s a real break with precedent,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center. “Data retention is open-ended. The government is saying, ‘Keep everything about everyone and we’ll sort it out later.’ “

The real problem here is that government is sending a clear message that is contrary to long held American ideas about justice. They are, in essence, saying that we are all guilty until proven innocent. Otherwise, why would they need EVERYONE’s data?

I’m not sure I want to live in a place where the government trusts me less than I trust it. President Bush should reign in the nannies. You can’t protect us from terrorists by treating us all like criminals.

RFID chips might be the Mark of the Beast, according to Katherine Albrecht.

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts — Katherine Albrecht is on a mission from God.

The influential consumer advocate has written a new book warning her fellow Christians that radio frequency identification may evolve to become the “mark of the beast” — meaning the technology is a sign that the end-times are drawing near.

Whatever else RFID technology may represent, it certainly has great potential in areas of government growth and represents a threat to personal privacy. I really don’t want to be tracked wherever I am, by whomever is in control of the technology.

When someone tells you they are forcing you into something that’s only “for your own good,” you should be thinking, “danger, danger!” As long as RFID technology remains voluntary and subject to public scrutiny, I can live with it, although I have serious reservations already about the many current applications.

RFID may be perfect for us lazy Americans though. So many of us seem willing to be taken care of by others, without realizing what we’re giving up in exchange for the soft life.

In war and politics, change is the only constant.

Mr. Maliki’s tough stance suggests a new assertion of sovereignty by the Iraqi government, something that actually works to the US’s favor. But the allegations, coming as the new government tries to demonstrate control, are likely to complicate both US-Iraq relations and Maliki’s task of leading the Iraqi people.

Read the full Christian Science Monitor article. Sovereignty is what the name of the game has been all along, for better or worse. Hopefully, in the long run, most Iraqis will benefit from having a representative government.

I recently wrote about the theft of personal data belonging to 26 million veterans.

The first class action lawsuit has been filed over the incident.

WASHINGTON—Claiming that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, “flagrantly disregarded the privacy rights of essentially every man or woman to have worn a United States military uniform,” veterans groups today filed a massive class-action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The suit asks that the courts prohibit the VA from handling any personal, privacy protected data except under court supervision, and that the court create a set of “consensus minimal security standards” under which the VA can operate.

Brogonzo is upset with milbloggers reaction to Haditha thus far.

In general, the reaction to the allegations of Marines slaughtering Iraqi civilians in Haditha has been reprehensible, and I’m uncomfortable with the idea of being associated with a group of people who in many cases are busying themselves with shrugging the incident off, making excuses for the Marines involved, or claiming that those killed were probably insurgents who had it coming anyway.

My response: we’re all entitled to our opinions, but only a military court is entitled to determine what crimes, if any, have been committed, render verdicts and determine punishment. It’s healthy to debate morality, discuss use of appropriate and inappropriate force, and so on. However, much of the current discussion about Haditha, and Iraq, is tainted by people who would enjoy being watching the country fall into civil war just so they can say “I told you so.”

Murdering unarmed civilians is certainly a morally bankrupt act that should be punished. We have mechanisms in place for that, and the gears are turning. Criticizing a possible atrocity on one side of a conflict without giving equal attention to a much higher volume of atrocities on the other side of the conflict is also morally bankrupt.

If you doubt that there is a bias, do a Google search for insurgents should be held accountable. Top results:

1. YES! JOHN HOWARD SHOULD BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE!
2. Military: Marines Killed Iraqi Civilians
3. Gen. Zinni: Rumsfeld Should Resign
4. Daily Kos: Iraqi Insurgents Gained a ‘Legitimate Right’ of Resistance
5. And after his term is over, I think [Bush] should be held accountable.

Any hint of bias there? It’s completely evident from the above that the anti-war public demands the same level of accountability for war crimes from all sides in this conflict, right? Self-righteous suicide because of an inability to scale events and put them in context seems to be the modus operandi of certain segments of the population – making those segments as dangerous to the chances of seeing any long-term success in Iraq as the insurgents themselves.
Murder is wrong. Period.

The slanted, biased coverage of Haditha is also wrong, and possibly far more damaging to the overall chances of long-term success in Iraq. When those who are willing to write lengthy op-ed pieces condemning the entire military justice system and the whole chain of command from the President on down demonstrate equal willingness to devote their ire, scorn, ridicule and castigation to proven and alleged war crimes by the insurgency, I will rest easier.
We should talk about Haditha. We should constantly re-examine our own morality as a society. We should talk about the rule of law. We should talk about rules of engagement. We should hold ourselves to a higher standard, and we do. That’s what makes us who we are – it is what distinguishes us from most other societies on the face of the earth. In our society, every citizen has human rights inlcuding a day in court when accused of a crime. That includes Marines who risked their lives serving in Haditha. If there was a cover-up, that should be rooted out and those guilty should be punished severely. But we should let the system work.
That’s not what I see and hear happening. I hear a lot of speculation. Plenty of inneundo. A heap of accusations. Calls for resignations. None of which are appropriate until the facts have all been properly assembled and disseminated.
As a milblogger, I feel it is my duty to let the military justice system do its job before I judge this case from an individual perspective. Meanwhile, I plan to quietly pay attention during my ethics class.

It’s Still Alive! by Ms.Underestimated

Folks, I told you about the good news Congressman John Linder gave us about an impending face-to-face with President Bush about the Fair Tax, and now the word is out! The Gwinnett Daily Post catches us up on this great news:

FairTax still kicking
06/04/2006

By: Dave Williams

Many political observers were ready to bury U.S. Rep. John Linder’s FairTax bill last fall when President Bush’s tax reform commission gave the back of its hand to the proposed national sales tax.

The panel chose to recommend tweaking the current income tax system rather than such a dramatic overhaul of the way the federal government collects the revenue it needs to operate.

But the FairTax won’t go away. During a raucous public rally in Gwinnett County last month in support of the legislation, Linder, R-Duluth, announced that he is being offered an opportunity to present the bill to the president and House Republican leaders.

He will meet this week with the House GOP leadership, then head to the White House on a date yet to be set — accompanied by House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill. — to outline his bill to Bush.

So much for the demise of the FairTax.

“The national sales tax is very much like Freddy,’’ said University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato, referring to the main character in countless installments of the “Nightmare on Elm Street” horror movie series. “It just refuses to die.’’

See? I TOLD you so! It’s POSSIBLE! And that’s not all – the Gwinnett Rally was just the beginning:

A capacity crowd of 4,500 jammed the Gwinnett Convention Center for last month’s rally, which featured Linder, Atlanta-based syndicated radio talk show host Neal Boortz and Sean Hannity of the Fox Television Network.

“We think there were 3,000 people turned away,’’ Linder said. “I was amazed.’’

The event was so successful that Linder and Boortz are talking about following it up with a series of rallies. Linder said they’re looking at Orlando, Fla., as the next stop.

Okay you guys, here’s your next chance. We gotta stick together and make this happen. If you live in the southeast (or anywhere else, for that matter), I urge you to call your local radio talk shows and implore them to get Neal Boortz, John Linder, Sean Hannity, and whoever else is on board with the Fair Tax, to come hold a rally in YOUR area! If we keep up this momentum, this could truly be a present-day Boston Tea Party that we have on our hands. It’s time to get the government out of our lives, and as John Linder said that night “it’s none of the government’s business how much money I make.” YES!

We’ve got to be vigilant, though, as well all know there are those detractors out there who want to stop us:

The FairTax also faces competition from other proposals aimed at overhauling the current system, including the flat tax on incomes once championed on the presidential campaign trail by Republican Steve Forbes.

“The vast majority agree the tax code needs drastic revision,’’ Sabato said. “The problem is nobody agrees on what the revision should be. … There just isn’t a national consensus for it or anything close to it.’’

But Sabato gives Linder high marks for persistence.

“He is trying to plant the seed,’’ Sabato said. “Who knows whether the seed may sprout and even flower? On the other hand, the seed may die in the ground.’’

My friends, we can’t let that seed die in the ground. We must keep nourishing it with our voices. If we can get 1, 2, 4 or 50 more rallies like this going, we will send a loud and clear message to Washington: “I WANT MY FAIR TAX!”

Also, send these radio stations copies of the Fair Tax book. I know it has been previously called for us to send copies to our representatives, but I’m sure they’ve gotten their copies already. It’s the people of this country we need to change – the Congress is hopeless. If your local talk show hosts can believe in this, then this movement will carry forward. You can buy them here. The government cannot ignore an informed country. The time is now!

The FairTax Blogburst is jointly produced by Terry of The Right Track Blog and Jonathan of Publius Rendezvous. If you would like to host the weekly postings on your blog, please e-mail Terry or Jonathan. You will be added to our mailing list and blogroll.

I realize most of you are not going to change your minds about Iraq. You already know better than I do, even though you’ve never been here. But I have to try.

My friend and immediate boss, SSG James Sherrill, recently wrote an article that may interest environmentalists. Read the tale of Iraq’s marshlands, which were drained by Saddam to punish Iraq’s Marsh Arabs, and which are now being restored by the Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources, with help from the coalition.

Marsh Arabs have been living among the southern wetlands for thousands of years, making their homes from abundant reeds and mud. They sell the reeds, catch fish from long wooden boats and herd water-buffalo to sustain themselves.

Fed by the Tigres and Euphrates rivers, the giant wetlands once stretched for more than 6,200 square-miles.

When Saddam Hussein seized power in the early 1970s, he began ordering small sections of the wetland drained to make room for military factories, chemical plants and other industry.

The ancient marshes fell victim to the regime once again during the Iran-Iraq war, beginning in 1980, and were drained even further because of the land’s perceived tactical value.

The biggest impact on the marshes came at the conclusion of the Gulf War in 1991. Hussein gave the order to drain the marshes completely in retribution for the Shia uprising against the regime. The huge cost of draining the marshes put a burden on Iraq’s economy, and the environmental impact on the marshes’ eco-system was disastrous. Certain types of birds, fish and plants normally found in the marshes rapidly disappeared.

By 1996, the marshes were reduced to less than 10 percent of their pre-1991 size. More than 100,000 people who depended on the marshes to live were forced to relocate, and many migrated to neighboring Iran where a portion of the marshes were still intact.

Of course, everyone knows the coalition is only here for the oil, and the imperialism. As soon as the marshes are restored, we’re going to seize them and build subdivisions, Starbucks and other places where semi-literate Americans can gather to complain about the Bush administration. That is how democracy works. There’s no hope for Iraq. Except for this:

As the marshes begin to fill with water again, the displaced people are beginning to move back to their ancient homeland and way of life.

“We’re grateful to the people who are helping us,” said Abdul Dakhel, a Marsh Arab who lives in a tiny village north of Basra.

Let’s just give up. There is simply no hope for Iraq. It’s all been a colossal waste of time.

One hallmark of how a person votes is who they believe is responsible for their life. Doug Bandow writes a scathing criticism of “Dana L.” who recently underwent an abortion and blames President Bush for her suffering.

ABORTION IS AN EXTRAORDINARILY difficult issue. No one should minimize the burden of an unwanted pregnancy. Involving the government in the sort of intensely personal decisions surrounding pregnancy is not a pleasant choice. And I’m not sure the morning after pill is a slam-dunk “no” for pro-lifers: absent implantation, even a fertilized egg is not yet part of the natural continuum of life.

Yet Dana L. is emblematic of our culture. She takes no responsibility for anything and sees no moral implications to even the gravest decisions.

Let’s start with the obvious. If you have sex, babies can show up. If you engage in “unprotected” sex without wishing for a kid, you are being reckless. If you do so and don’t feel like going to the trouble of calling around to find a doctor to prescribe the morning after pill, you aren’t serious.

Our lives turn out the way they do because of the choices we make. Some people make wonderful stories out of their time here on earth despite all the odds being stacked against them. Some people just wallow in misery, looking for others to blame. Which type are you?

Sometimes, my own perceived inability to get my ideas across to others makes me feel like I’m wasting my time with this blog. But that’s only sometimes. I’m sure I’m NOT getting through to a lot of people a lot of the time. Luckily, I’m not alone in my efforts to convert the fence sitters to the idea that this war is bigger than Iraq. It’s an idea war, a memewar. Thank God I’m not fighting by myself.

A Marine in Fallujah named Anthony Ippoliti has written a good letter with an honest message to the harlots of failure back home. This Marine’s message makes me proud to serve in the same military he serves. Here’s an lengthy excerpt:

My primary concern is the assertion that these individuals support the troops in Iraq but not our mission. It boggles my mind that this logic is actually utilized on a large scale.

Supporting the troops but not the war is like saying that you support filmmakers but not making films. One cannot claim to support an individual in a given profession but not support what the said profession entails. This is essentially a slap in the face to those in the service.

How protesting the job we are doing in Iraq while demanding our withdrawal constitutes supporting us is beyond me.
Furthermore, I am particularly interested in how these people support us, specifically. I have never once received a letter from an individual who claims to “support the troops, not the war.” Not a single Marine I know has received anything that could be considered remotely supportive from any of these people or the groups they represent. We have received phone cards, hygiene supplies, food, etc. from members of state and local government, radio stations, schools, private individuals and organizations, but never once from any group claiming to “support the troops, but not the war.”

I ask again: How can these groups claim to support our troops while telling us that what we are participating in is wrong?
How can they support us if they are essentially saying that our blood and sacrifices have all been given in vain? How can they support us if they say that our comrades and brothers who have been wounded or killed in action have done so for a hopeless and morally questionable cause?

• • •

I reply to the questions I pose with a simple answer: They can’t. As a matter of fact, I assert with a considerable degree of confidence that their efforts make our already difficult job even more difficult. I’ll go so far as to say that their rallies and protests cost more and more servicemen their lives and limbs every day.

I support my assertion with evidence gathered first hand. I see the Iraqi people every day. The protesters do not. I speak with the Iraqi people every day. The protesters do not. I don’t sit behind a desk and do paperwork or resupply efforts in the military. I am an Infantry Marine and I walk the sewage-filled streets of this city every single day.

In Fallujah, the people watch Al Jazeerah. However, they also watch CNN. A lot of them fear that the United States will soon cut and run. The people of Iraq see when our country is divided. When they see rallies to “Bring The Troops Home,” they see that as a sign that we will end our efforts prematurely.

Furthermore, they know that the insurgents will not end their efforts early. That leads them to the conclusion that when we leave, the insurgents will still be there. Therefore, if they help us, their lives and the lives of their loved ones will be in great jeopardy the minute we leave — if we don’t finish the job.

Much that they see on American television leads them to believe that we intend to abandon our efforts before the new Iraqi government is capable of defending itself and its citizens.

• • •

The actions of these aforementioned organizations and the heavy media coverage their rallies often generate serves as fuel for the insurgency. Insurgents believe they can drive us out through the idea of “death by a thousand cuts.” The longer they persist in their efforts, the more the American public becomes disenchanted with the coalition effort.

The insurgency sees this as a result. These criminals will continue to kill Iraqi civilians, Iraqi Police, Iraqi Army and coalition forces so long as they see that their efforts are alienating the American public from its military.

And for those of you that aren’t up to speed with the situation in Iraq, the insurgents attack and kill established public services (such as Iraqi police and Iraqi army) more often than they attack coalition forces. As a matter of fact, an explosive-laden insurgent blew himself up last week outside the Iraqi police station that is attached to our compound.
The insurgents aren’t fighting simply to drive America out of Iraq. They are fighting to destroy any semblance of the Iraqi government so that they can impose their will on its people.

Publicly protesting our efforts in Iraq fuels the insurgency. Doing it under the pretext of “supporting our troops” is disgraceful.

Do you get it yet? There is some truth to the idea that you’re either with us, or you’re against us. Seems to me like about half of Americans are against the U.S. military and stupid enough to believe September 11, 2001 was an isolated incident that wouldn’t have been repeated despite the fact that it has been, on a smaller scale several times in several places around the world since that date. Muslim fanatics aren’t going to leave you alone just because you supported them winning in Iraq.

Hat tip goes to Andrew Sullivan.

Here’s the touching story of Patrick Kennedy, who possibly votes on issues that affect your life while high:

I was not drinking that night. I got — actually I was with several of our folks here in the other room, Charlie Maynard, Rich LeClair, Liz Uhrls (ph), many others from the Rhode Island mental health community that actually were there. We worked together that evening.

Then I went to vote. My votes ended around 9:15. I called up a friend. We spoke for about 15 minutes. She came over and visited me around approximately 10:30 and I was with her the rest of the night. And, you know, she told me, I got up at around 2:45 because I said I had to go and vote. And that’s what happened.

You can read the rest of his ramblings here.

What’s important about Kennedy is that he is an example of American hypocrisy. The man is obviously a rambling drug addict, but he’s addicted to alcohol and prescriptions, so that’s OK. Meanwhile, we treat people who abuse non-prescription drugs like subhumans. We seize their property and throw them away.

A man who doesn’t know where he is shouldn’t be writing and voting on legislation.

So this is about a whole real transformation for me. It’s not just about drugs and alcohol. I mean, this disease involves a lot of parts of your life, and it’s actually a program to recovery that involves trying to tackle, you know, other interpersonal challenges that you have every day so that you don’t slip back, maybe not to drinking or drugging, but into an old mindset that makes you very unhappy.

Yes, Mr. Kennedy, it is possible to recover from a lifetime of abusing drugs and alcohol, but it takes years, and the older you are when you quit, the harder it is to recover. Luckily, you’ve spent a lifetime trying to manage Americans’ lives, so I’m sure you’ll do a dandy job of managing your own “recovery” while you continue the wonderful work you’ve been doing to improve America.

Considering Kennedy’s problems, it’s surprising how many of his votes I agree with. Take a look for yourself. The important thing to remember is most of the crap Congress votes on isn’t authorized by the Constitution in the first place.

More news for the socialists to rejoice in: fat people die younger. Great fodder for the crowd that believes they need to legislate what other folks do with their bodies.

If you’re a fat smoker, you stand to lose 13 years on the average:

Dutch researchers studying Americans found that there’s a lot to lose for those who don’t lose their extra pounds. Published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the data from the Dutch study were gathered from more than 3,450 subjects between the ages of 30 and 59. The researchers categorized people according to their body mass index, or BMI. A BMI of 19 to 24 is typically considered healthy, while a BMI of 25 to 29 is considered overweight, and a BMI of 30 or more is clinically obese.

Among those subjects who were overweight but not actually obese, the study showed that 40-year-old female nonsmokers lost 3.3 years of life due to their excess weight. In this weight class, the 40- year-old male nonsmokers lost 3.1 years of life expectancy. For non- smokers who were clinically obese, the news only got worse for women, who lost about seven years of life because of their obesity, while the men of this size lost just less than six years.

Not surprisingly, the loss is much greater for overweight smokers. When we add the strain and damage of cigarettes to the body’s burden of obesity, the loss doubles, to around 13 years for both men and women.

I think your body belongs to you, but I’d encourage you to take good care of it. We all go through a phase where we think we’re invincible. That tends to fade as age catches up to us. Stretch the quality of your life out as long as possible. There’s no sense suffering any more than you have to in life, and many of us spend the last decade or two pretty decrepit. It’s senseless.

The janitor’s sunflowers are blooming now in our 130 degree days.

[image:303:r:s=1:l=p]
Yes, I did say 130 degree days. Basically, imagine yourself living inside a hair dryer that is always turned on at low speed. That’s what summer is like in Iraq, especially when I’m wearing my flak vest and Kevlar helmet. My pistol becomes uncomfortably hot to the touch and every pore sweats constantly.

Congress is wasting time and money again trying to legislate morality in video games.

There’s hardly any shortage of video game proposals, with many already pending in Congress. Just last month, a little-noticed bill called the Video Games Ratings Enforcement Act was referred to Stearns’ panel for consideration.

Introduced by Rep. Jim Matheson, a Utah Democrat, the proposal would make it illegal for anyone to sell, rent, or attempt to sell or rent video games rated “adults-only” to minors under age 18, or “mature” video games to anyone under age 17. The Federal Trade Commission would be permitted to levy fines of up to $5,000 per violation.

That approach is nearly identical to a bill unveiled last December by U.S. Senate Democrats Hillary Clinton and Joseph Lieberman. They propose imposing fines or community service hours on any business that sells or rents video games with a “mature,” “adults-only” or “ratings pending” tag to anyone under age 17. That measure has not yet gone up for debate.

You cannot legislate morality. Parenting is not the responsibility of Congress, and those of you who have paid attention may have noticed that the morality of our youth have not been improving despite all the news laws we’ve enacted over my lifetime (and probably prior to that as well).

Parents, if you are relying on Congress to ensure your kids grow up with a good set of values and are protected from everything prurient and wrong in the world, well, you have bigger problems than video games. Bob Barker used to remind his audience to spay and neuter their pets at the end of every episode of The Price is Right. Perhaps he should have included irresponsible parents in his target group of those who shouldn’t breed. Actually, maybe it would improve politics if we required prospective members of Congress to spay or neuter themselves before allowing them to have their names on the ballot.

Ted Rall is at it again. His latest tripe, The 10,000th Haditha, is a misanthropic collection of rambling smears against the U.S. military.

Rall is no stranger to making controversial statements. His inability to feel anything other than loathing for the nation that spawned him is pathetic. Rall wails and gnashes his teeth and complains:

But The System is even less responsive to protest now than it was during Vietnam. State-run media made fun of antiwar activists as tattooed neo-hippies, called them treasonous and refused airtime to Administration critics. When is the last time a hard-hitting opponent of the Iraq war showed his or her face on national TV? Those of us who raised our voices against this war from the start, having fruitlessly complained about stories of battlefield abuse reported by the European media, are suffering from marginalization fatigue.

What state run media? Last I heard, the media was largely controlled by people who share Rall’s doom and gloom, self-loathing outlook. Marginalization fatigue? I’d call it marginal intelligence syndrome.

Most of the world’s population–including virtually every Muslim and about a third Americans–always believed that the war against Iraq was a genocidal attempt to intimidate the Muslim world and extort its oil at gunpoint. They don’t see a difference between Haditha and the thousands of other Iraqis killed by U.S. forces since 2003. Because the entire exercise was morally bankrupt from the outset, sold and perpetuated with countless lies, all of the 200,000-plus civilians and Iraqi soldiers who have died–whether by bomb or by bullet–were effectively murdered by the U.S. military.

Rall conveniently ignores the definition of genocide in his attempts to inflame his readers. Genocide is the systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group. Rall doesn’t mention who his imagined genocide is against, because there isn’t one taking place. There is no systematic attempt by the United States to eliminate any group inside Iraq, other than al-Qaida, which is a murderous ideologically motivated group of terrorists.
Rall also conveniently neglects to make any mention of a man named Saddam. From Wikipedia: as president, Saddam ran an authoritarian government and maintained power through the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) and the Gulf War (1991). Saddam’s government repressed movements that it deemed threatening, particularly those of ethnic or religious groups that sought independence or autonomy. While he remained a popular hero among many Arabs for standing up to Israel and the United States, some in the international community continued to view Saddam with deep suspicion following the 1991 Gulf War.

Rall is being completely intellectually dishonest and picking and choosing his quotes carefully, finding the most disgruntled Arabs he can to thrust into the public eye.

The morality-come-latelies still don’t understand that nothing good will ever come out of the U.S. war against Iraq. Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says that massacres of civilians by U.S. soldiers do “not happen very frequently, so there’s no way to say historically why something like this might have happened.” Actually, similar incidents have taken place in every war, including World War II. Pace’s statement is either a dazzling display of ahistorical ignorance or a bald-faced lie–take your pick. Pace adds that if some of his men committed an atrocity at Haditha, they “have not performed their duty the way that 99.9 percent of their fellow Marines have.”

That’s not what the Iraqis say.

Rall, of course, picks and chooses his Iraqis carefully in order to craft a lie. That lie is that the United States military is running around Iraq wantonly killing innocent people at will. The truth, and I won’t let you forget it, Mr. Rall, is that religious zealots are the ones doing the lion’s share of that sort of thing in Iraq these days. They’re stirring up centuries old rivalries and hatreds. They’re bombing places of worship, and hiding inside them. They’re the ones committing genocidal acts, pulling people off of buses and shooting them dead based on their ethnicity or religion.

You, Mr. Rall, are encouraging them to continue doing so with your loathing of those who defend you and your disingenuous presentation of what you want others to believe about Iraq. If the country spirals into chaos, it will be because people like you – those intellectually dishonest artists who smear the canvas with the broadest of brushes, obfuscating and tarnishing the truth while good men and women sweat and toil to try and bring Iraq into the community of nations where people such as yourself are suffered to sit in a comfortable chair in an air conditioned office saying whatever they want to say without fear of being murdered for it.

Mr. Rall, I will defend your right to rant like an idiot. However, it’s obvious to me that you have never had to make a life or death decision in the middle of tremendous stress, or you wouldn’t rush to judge. The reason you’ve managed to eke out such a comfortable existence free from any real hardship is because of my fellow troops. Please, come spend time with troops in Iraq before you further damn us all with your caustic words and your overly dramatic 10,000 completely imagined massacres that never were.

In case you don’t follow such matters, the upcoming version of Windows is called Vista. Here’s an interesting article about what’s not to like.

Despite these seeming faux pas, Microsoft has also managed to add a good deal of benefit and improvement in Windows Vista — enough good things that it may be even easier to collect 20 things you’ll like about Windows Vista. But that’s a different article (one you can read almost anywhere). And make no mistake, the new Windows lacks a gotta-have-it feature, unless it’s the increased security that protected-mode browsing, built-in spyware protection and the new User Account Controls provide. To my way of thinking, security shouldn’t be something you have to pay for. What’s more, it seems like Microsoft is building some of the most ambitious security components of Windows Vista not for its customers, but for itself.

I’ve beta tested the last three versions of Windows to be released. Of course that is hard to do from a war zone. I don’t think I’ll be rushing out to get Vista right away.

Iraq has many problems to deal with. The biggest of these is sectarianism, not the actions of a few U.S. troops last November. The Sunnis used to be in charge under Saddam and not they aren’t. Now, they have to share the power, and that doesn’t sit well with some. When Iraqis were dragged off buses and shot, they were first seperated into Sunni and non-Sunni. The Sunnis were released.

The new Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has his work cut out for him. If he cannot stem the sectarian violence, both Shia and Sunni incited, his government is doomed.

From Canada comes the news that 17 people have been arrested and three tons of ammonium nitrate have been seized.

“It was their intent to use it for a terrorist attack,” McDonell said at a news conference in Toronto. “To put it in context, the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people was completed with only one ton of ammonium nitrate.”

McDonell said the group “posed a real and serious threat. It had the capacity and intent to carry out these attacks.”

Authorities would not say what triggered their investigation, which called on more than 400 officers and investigators from several law-enforcement agencies and the intelligence community, or how long they had been watching the suspects. They said they could not disclose many details because the investigation was ongoing.

Canada is an experiment in multiculturalism. I think we should make room for different points of view in our soceities. However, cultures can become retarded when they do not allow open exchange of ideas, or when they teach hatred and violence as acceptable ways of achieving an end.

This applies to Christians who would bomb abortion clinics. It applies to Muslims who would blow up buildings. It applies to any group of people with common beliefs who are willing to use violence as a tool for achieving political goals, except as a last resort, and in self-defense.

For a society to stay strong and healthy, it must have some commonalities. Language is the primary one that comes to mind. Respect for human life is another. Canada is one of the nations most respectful of its minorities, but that apparently isn’t enough to keep it safe from the mentality espoused by adherents of radical Islam.

“These individuals were allegedly intent on committing acts of terrorism against their own country and their own people,” recently elected Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said. “As we have said on many occasions, Canada is not immune to the threat of terrorism. . . . Today, Canada’s security and intelligence measures worked.”

Um, I don’t know what was in the pipe Stephen Harper has been smoking, but it must be powerful. People who want to blow you up are not thinking in terms of “their country” and “their people.” They have an us against them mentality, fostered by one-sided tolerance and spawned by multiculturalism.

We can eat different food, and have different hobbies. We can afford to play different sports and practice different philosophies.  What we cannot afford is to allow closed and intolerant communities to breed violent radicalism inside our biggest cities.

The below press release just went out. I know because I am sitting here at 2:40 AM waiting for related materials to post to the official MNF-I web site. Read it for yourself.

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the Multi-National Force-Iraq spokesman, delivered the following statement June 3 on the Coalition raid that took place near Ishaqi on March 15:

“Recently there has been much attention in both the Western and Arabic media concerning reports of Coalition Soldiers killing innocent Iraqi civilians. Temptation exists to lump all these incidents together. However, each case needs to be examined individually. Let me be clear. Multi-National Force-Iraq does not and will not tolerate unethical or criminal behavior. All allegations of the loss of civilian life are thoroughly investigated.

In response to claims as many as 13 civilians were killed in a March 15 air strike in the vicinity of Ishaqi, south of Samarra, an investigation was launched into the incident the very next day. The investigation revealed the ground force commander, while capturing and killing terrorists, operated in accordance with the rules of engagement governing our combat forces in Iraq.
Based on credible intelligence, Coalition Forces conducted a raid in the vicinity of Ishaqi on March 15, capturing Ahmad Abdallah Muhammad Na’is al-Utaybi, aka Hamza, a Kuwaiti-born, al-Qaeda cell leader, and killing Uday Faris al-Tawafi, aka Abu Ahmed, an Iraqi involved in making improvised explosive devices as well as recruiting locals to join the insurgency.

The forces, upon arrival, began taking direct fire from the building. As the enemy fire persisted, the ground force commander appropriately reacted by incrementally escalating the use of force from small-arms fire to rotary wing aviation, and then to close air support, ultimately eliminating the threat.

The troops then conducted a thorough tactical search, and documented the discovery of the body of Abu Ahmed plus three noncombatants. The investigating officer concluded that possibly up to nine collateral deaths resulted from this engagement but could not determine the precise number due to collapsed walls and heavy debris. Allegations that the troops executed a family living in this safe house, and then hid the alleged crimes by directing an air strike, are absolutely false.

The investigating officer ascertained that the ground force commander properly followed the rules of engagement as he necessarily escalated the use of force until the threat was eliminated. All loss of innocent life is tragic and unfortunate, and we regret such occurrences. We take all reports of improper conduct seriously; we investigate them thoroughly, and hold our troops accountable for their actions.”

When you are being fired upon, the correct response is to defend yourself. Unless you don’t value your own existence.

My wife just had to put our 16-year-old bull terrier Boogie to sleep. She died peacefully, and my only regret is that I couldn’t be there at the end.

Our dogs are treated like family members. Unlike human beings, dogs do not hold grudges. They give their owners love unconditionally, sometimes even when that love hasn’t been properly earned. If you’ve ever owned a dog you know what I am talking about.

See you again in my dreams, Boogie. I will miss you. I hope you are in a better world.

I use WordPress as my blogging tool of choice. So do a lot of other people. If you’re more than a casual writer (at least in your own mind), then dump Blogger or whatever you’re using. Once you’ve tried WordPress you’ll never go back. Webmonkey agrees and has a nice introductury tutorial for you to read.

The best thing about WordPress (apart from it being free) is that plug-ins are available to do all manner of things, from inserting tag clouds into your blog to adding surveys and shopping carts to integrating YouTube videos. Not to mention the fact that you have serious control over the design of each section of your site.

WordPress is absolutely free and in the year or so I’ve been using it, has become a significantly more robust weblogging tool.

Every week, the media are briefed on ongoing military developments and operations throughout Iraq. This week, Major General Bill Caldwell (my new boss), talked about Operation Chapultepec, among other subjects.

On Operation Chapultepec — next slide, please — the significance of this operation was this was truly one of the first real led — Iraq-planned and -conducted missions that was conducted. On May 24th, approximately (500 ?) Iraqi soldiers from the 2nd Battalion of the 2nd Brigade of the 8th Iraqi Army Division, supported by coalition army and air forces and over a hundred Iraqi police forces, were led by Babil province chief General Case (sp), who conducted this raid, in response to reports of kidnappings and increased sectarian violence in the area. And out of that, as you can see, they had a very successful operation and found in fact both a weapons cache, and it also resulted in the deaths of several known terrorists down in that location.

The ongoing training and increasing “solo” ability of the ISF is important for Iraq’s future, and for the coalition. No one, most of all the grunts who do the dirty work, wants the coalition to stay in Iraq any longer than necessary. Certainly a U.S. presence will be necessary in Iraq in the years and probably even decades to come. At least, it will be if the goal is to see Iraq ruled by an elected government instead of the strongmen and puppet rulers who have been in charge for generations.

For republicanism (I refuse to say democracy) and ideas about what it means to be free to take root, the Iraqis have to be able to quell the insurgency themselves, from within. All the coalition can do is train, teach and assist where needed. That is what is happening, even if the process is painful and expensive.

As important in the long term as military assistance is humanitarian assistance. Saddam invested very little in infrastructure during his rule. Most of the electrical systems in Baghdad that I have seen are at least 30-40 years old. Buildings catch fire all the time because of faulty wiring. But the coalition is working to provide water, electricity, education and medical care to as many Iraqis as is possible, in as short a time as possible.

In addition to that, of course, is the whole point with electricity, water and electricity being two of the basic services that the people of Iraq keep telling their leadership that they wanted to have fixed. And this one here is a substation that will provide electric support to almost 50,000 Iraqi residents down in the Massad (sp) Dhi Qar province. And that’s just coming on line, too, this week.

Many of you who are against this war seem not to have a basic understanding of the alternative. What you are wishing on Iraqis is a lifetime without electricity, without clean drinking water. By campaigning against our involvement in Iraq, you are essentially voting for men who could care less about education, access to modern medical care and basic human decency.

Your ranting and raving is fuel for the insurgency and motivates them to keep attacking infrastructure projects, Iraqi police stations and government officials. Musab al-Zarqawi has no interest in rebuilding anything. He has no desire to see new companies invest in Iraq. He has no plans to make Iraq a center for biotech research. If he wins, young Iraqis will not dream of becoming brave firemen, fearless astronauts, world-class athletes, pioneering surgeons or brilliant mathematicians. How many fundamentalist Islamic adherents have you heard of whose contributions for the benefit of humanity are known and respected around the world? I can’t think of any.
For Iraq to have a chance to emerge from the Dark Ages, it needs to be able to offer the vast majority of Iraqis basic necessities and an environment where free speech and the free exchange of ideas are possible. That is what I am fighting for. Human dignity and human freedom are worth sacrifice.

Our legislators have been coming up with excuses to ignore the second amendment for decades now. This country is pretty evenly split between people who think guns are evil and people who understand they are merely a tool. Legislators are working to correct that imbalance too. They would like it if most of us had an irrational fear of guns.

The gun control issue is not about controlling guns. It is about controlling people. When a legislator enacts laws that restrict American citizens’ gun rights, they are not only violating the Second Amendment, they are telling Americans we are not responsible enough to handle tools. While that may be true in a few cases, I don’t want politicians arbitrarily deciding which people may have guns and which may not. After all, as a group, Congress doesn’t seem all that responsible either.

What happens when you allow legislators to ignore the document designed to keep power where it belongs, in the hands of the people?

The Washington Post Magazine reports that twenty-one year old Lora lost her temper and flung an empty water bottle and her car keys.

Unfortunately for her, the car keys landed near her mother. For that, Lora was arrested, booked, and told she must not have any contact with her mom for three days, even though she was still living at home. Officer Mike Twomey, who assisted in the arrest, remarks that “in the old days, the proper response would have been to say, ‘hey, ladies, cool it.’ Now, arrest is the only option.”

Foolishness happens. But sometimes it happens by design. Should a person be restricted from owning guns for a lifetime because they have one bad day?

Read more

The bodies of Paul Douglas and James Brolan have returned home. Kimberly Dozier is conscious again, and writing notes.

Shortly after I wrote this blog entry, I was reading my daily Dawn Patrol and I discovered that a soldier has given Kimberly Dozier his Purple Heart. There’s hope for us all, if we can just see it where it exists, grab hold and cling for dear life.

Pain, death, suffering, failure and misery get the limelight in the mainstream press. And stories like U.S. Army instructors teach leadership skills to Iraqis get completely ignored. I guess teaching loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor and personal courage aren’t worth reporting.

Kem said training in the Iraqi army must be more than just tactics and strategy. “You also must teach respect for other people and other viewpoints and why that is important,” he said. “Iraqis also have to understand what their constitution says and what it guarantees. The military needs to understand not only what (the Iraqi constitution) says, but why it says that. It’s really a remarkable document.”

For every negative story you hear coming out of Iraq, please remember there are at least 1,000 positive stories happening you aren’t likely to hear about, because they don’t sell as well.

Anne (Elizabeth?) points out that she has seen articles noting positive developments in Iraq, including this one from February’s New York Times. My more alert readers will remember February as the month that occurred four months in the past. Meanwhile, if you search Google or Yahoo News for current events, the headlines are filled with stories like Allegations against U.S. troops mount. The U.S. has three incidents spanning the last eight months that are currently under investigation. The insurgents commit multiple atrocities daily. Last time I checked the average was around 80 attacks a day. Multiple car bombs, kidnappings, beheadings and executions every single day. That’s a little perspective for you while we let our military justice system sort things out.

We’re held to a higher standard and we should be. But I would love to hear more of the good guys side of things. There are lots of good guys quietly doing their thing and they deserve to have their stories told. In fact, I’m bumping this post for a few days. If you know an individual or group of servicepeople who deserve recognition, e-mail me. I would be honored to tell their story here.

The Christian Science Monitor asks if the military can investigate itself and you might be surprised what the experts have to say.

“Once [allegations are] revealed, American citizens should have absolute confidence in the military-justice system to investigate and prosecute,” says Walter Huffman, judge advocate general of the Army from 1997 to 2001. “But there is a camaraderie among small military units that conceivably can lead to atrocities being committed by that unit and never revealed.”

“Do we know every one of the incidents that ever occurred?” he asks. “Probably not, and we don’t know what we don’t know.”

He says this not to suggest that the Haditha allegations point to rampant lawlessness. To the contrary, he and others believe that instances of murder are rare. But just as American police forces have their so-called “wall of silence,” military units can be insular and fiercely loyal.

I’d say that, on the whole, the U.S. military court system does a better job than the civilian court system. This will never convince those who have already made up their mind that this war is wrong. They’ll find any excuse they can to pretend to believe that life under the fist of Saddam was infinitely better than life in the new Iraq.

And perhaps, for those Iraqis who survived 30 years of Saddam, it was easier to keep their heads down and make no waves. That time is gone. Iraq is in transition.

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive points readers to a discussion of what makes a shooting a massacre that is worth reading:

There is one and only one relevant standard for this whole incident and that is the reasonable belief that your life or the life of others is in danger. If that is reasonably believed then deadly force may be employed, absent that belief it may not. There are other factors that would impact this, like rules of engagement, but in this case the Marines ROE obviously included the right to return fire. The question is was there any, and if not why did they fire? If the Marines killed people without reasonable belief they were in danger, then they committed murder. If they had a reasonable belief in their danger, they did not.

I haven’t commented on the Haditha investigation because it is an ongoing matter and the military legal system’s wheels are still in motion. I think it’s highly inappropriate for Murtha and other politicians to be talking about the matter other than relating that there is an ongoing investigation and that the facts will be made public once they have been determined by military investigators and a military court.

The constant attempts to smear our military sicken me. The vast majority of the servicemen and women I know are honorable people who are doing there best under circumstances that would make lesser beings crumble.

Consider for a moment that the enemies our Marines face every day in Iraq have no compunctions about killing anyone at all to achieve their goals. They attack from inside the homes of people who may or may not be sympathetic to their cause. They attack from inside the protection of houses of worship, knowing full well that the coalition must follow rules of engagement while they have none. The enemy we face in Iraq has no moral limitations and is not bound by the Rule of Law.

If the same weaponry that is available to Western nations were available to them, your city, your neighborhood and your home, with your family inside, would long ago have evaporated in a mushroom cloud.

Don’t rush to judge something you don’t fully understand. If crimes were committed, they will be punished. That is what makes our society worth fighting for – as imperfect as our dispensation of justice is – it is leaps and bounds above what the enemy lives by. If you doubt me, I challenge you to leave your home nation and move to Waziristan, Afghanistan or some other place where fundamentalist Islamic fanaticism is firmly entrenched. I’ll buy you a one way ticket.

Wired is reporting that Pirate Bay has been raided.

“Pirate Bay was a huge source of pirated films for people around the world, and today they are no longer,” said Kori Bernards, a representative for the Motion Picture Association of America. “This was one of our No. 1 targets.”

Bernards said that the MPAA has been working with the U.S. and Swedish governments for several years in an effort to shut down Piratebay.org, which helps internet users find illegally copied software like movies and songs on the popular peer-to-peer application BitTorrent. Piratebay.org is the largest BitTorrent tracker, according to Alexa.com, which tracks website traffic.

Ever played Whack-A-Mole? It’s a game where plastic moles pop out of holes and you bonk them in the head with a mallet. They disappear only to be replaced by other moles. The moles start popping out faster and faster until it’s impossible to whack them all.

I think the MPAA and the various agencies it convinces to “assist” it in prosecuting copyright violators and information pirates are playing a giant game of global Whack-A-Mole.

The real challenge here is to find ways to price the information properly and package it attractively. People, like water, generally gravitate towards the path of least resistance. I can buy a pirated movie here in Iraq for $2. I usually don’t, but not because it is illegal back home. I don’t because the quality of the product is crap. I would rather pay for the nicely packaged high quality media that I get back in the States.

While the MPAA plays Whack-A-Mole in Sweden, most of the world is busy copying information and sharing it. Information wants to be free. I’m not sure how the game will end, but I can’t see the MPAA winning in the long run. Paradigm shifts must be explored.

Fox News reports than New Orleans may be sinking faster than geophysicists once thought:

Everyone has known New Orleans is a sinking city. Now new research suggests parts of the city are sinking even faster than many scientists imagined — more than an inch a year.

That may explain some of the levee failures during Hurricane Katrina and it raises more worries about the future.

Hmm, could it have anything to do with the weight of all that political corruption and graft? New Orleans is sinking in more ways than one. I don’t think the rest of the nation should have to bail “Chocolate City” out. Especially not in light of the prediliciton to re-elect the idiot savant Ray Nagin (he’s an idiot as a leader but a savant as a politican). America, this is your home grown culture of entitlement at its best (which is America’s worst). How repulsive.

New Orleans voters have shown us they are not interested in recovery so much as they are interested in a free ride. Why should the rest of us enable them?

As I was making my rounds today carrying out the mundane but highly technical tasks of a REMF, I chanced upon the camera gear that represents a physical connection to the last few moments of the lives of Paul Douglas and James Brolan. Their shattered equipment, which they used to record and report events in Iraq, lay broken and twisted on the floor, covered in specks of blood and pierced in various places by the shrapnel that always accompanies an IED’s concussive force in the milliseconds after the triggerman sets it off.

I do not know what ran through their minds in their last moments on this earth, but I hope they found comfort in whatever faiths they may have practiced. Death hasn’t touched me much on this deployment. The deaths of these two men did, because I had shared the same air they breathed on more than one occasion. They were observers, not combatants. They were human beings who hoped for better days for the nation and people of Iraq. They did not deserve to die.

If anything their murder hardens my resolve to support the continuation of the imperfect process that is underway here in the Middle East. The beliefs of fundamentalist fanatics willing to kill anyone by any means to achieve their personal goals and visions cannot be tolerated. I am not responsible for the turmoil that is brewing in the minds of murderers like Osama bin Laden and Musab al-Zarqawi. I only truly began to pay attention to men like them on September 11, 2001. Prior to that day, fundamentalist religious fanatics had only touched on my life in theoretical, distant ways. They were people I despised from afar but had little interest in because in my naiveté I thought they could not touch my life. On September 11, 2001 my aloof interest in religiously motivated fanaticism became much more personal, and has only grown more so as time passes and atrocities continue to be carried out.

I would rather die than submit to the type of men who are willing to kill indiscriminately to wield power, especially in the name of a higher being. How dare they tell me who God is and what God demands from me! No matter who they are or what arguments they attempt to use to justify their evil, they are wrong and must be fought. A life lived without moral boundaries is a life that burns through the lives around it like acid. These barbarians must be held back, corralled and subdued, no matter the cost. The alternative will only mean more shattered detritus speckled with blood reminding us of faces that will smile and laugh no more on this Earth.

Radley Balko has a great editorial over at Fox News.

Interestingly enough, the one statistic that bucks the trends outlined above is drug use. Drug use among adults is up fairly dramatically over the last twenty years. But drug use is one area of personal liberty the government has gotten more aggressive about policing. Which to me suggests that government efforts to control our decisions not only stifle individual freedom, they aren’t very effective.

Please take the time to read the whole thing. Nannying adults is expensive and ultimately, counter productive. When we insist that our government lead us by the hand through life, we become lazy. And because government is essentially the productive providing for the non-productive, encouraging people to be lazy over long periods of time decreases the ability of government to redistribute income from those who produce to those who do not. We are heading towards a situation in which the producers are being eaten by the non-productive. How long can a nation remain viable with such an imbalance?

Taxes are boring, complicated and designed to confuse the average person. If they weren’t, they could never have been jacked up to their current levels. I’ve been muddling my way through Neil Boortz’s Fair Tax Book for some time now. You may or may not agree with his plan, but it’s clear to many angry Americans that the time for massive tax reform is way overdue.

So anyhow, Boortz held a rally in Atlanta yesterday. Go read the report from Right Truth.

After all, who knew there would even be a thousand that would attend? Neal Boortz, the co-author of the Fair Tax Book, certainly didn’t think so himself. In fact, when Neal took the stage at about 8PM, the old curmudgeon was visibly moved. But that’s just where it all begins. Let me take you inside the event in my memory.

I hope the Fair Tax plan succeeds. Almost anything is better than the economic slavery and disincentives to achieve that have been the legacy of ruining lives gifted to us by the creators of the Internal Revenue Service. Spend a few minutes of your life assessing the Fair Tax. You may decide to throw your support behind it.

Thanks for the tip, Dale.

One of my pictures was published as the photo of the day on Defend America. I’m honored.

I’ll have more to say about Tarmiya early next month.

Every PC user should have a firewall installed. No exceptions. The one that comes with Windows XP is merely OK; it’s not exceptional. This one is better than good:

Comodo Personal Firewall is a kick-ass free firewall. It keeps hackers out and tricky unauthorized programs off the Internet. And it resists being terminated. It works as well as all but the best for-pay firewalls—and did I mention it’s free?

You can download the free firewall here (requires e-mail registration). Comodo also offers a decent and free password manager.