Archive for the ‘war’ Category

This is called “lobbying”

Posted: February 24, 2011 by datechguy in Afghanistan war, media, opinion/news, war
Tags: , , ,

Morning Joe was breathless today reporting that the well-known bastion of journalistic mud-racking on government issues Rolling Stone magazine is reporting that our troops were using “psi-ops” against US senators.

Joe breathlessly reported this as a turning point, Norah O’Donnell subbing for Mika talked about it breathlessly and then when the panel started talking about it, the one person who had actually read the article, found very little there there:

So I figured I’d take a look at rolling stone, to see what that pillar of serious news had to say.

In between their world-class coverage of Justin Bieber Superboy and their big exclusive on The Return of Bevis and Butthead to MTV I found the military story and what a story it is.

The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in “psychological operations” to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war

WOAH! sounds nasty! No wonder they hate soldiers at Columbia. Did they bug their hotels looking for dirt, plant hot blonds to snooze them and take pictures? Maybe they waterboarded or drugged them? What nefarious methods did Rolling Stone uncover that the Evil US army used against senators:

According to Holmes, who attended at least a dozen meetings with Caldwell to discuss the operation, the general wanted the IO unit to do the kind of seemingly innocuous work usually delegated to the two dozen members of his public affairs staff: compiling detailed profiles of the VIPs, including their voting records, their likes and dislikes, and their “hot-button issues.” In one email to Holmes, Caldwell’s staff also wanted to know how to shape the general’s presentations to the visiting dignitaries, and how best to “refine our messaging.” emphasis mine

…WOW that’s absolutely positively…ordinary, but I’m sure that it gets worse because in the very next paragraph it says:

According to Holmes, the general wanted the IO team to provide a “deeper analysis of pressure points we could use to leverage the delegation for more funds.” The general’s chief of staff also asked Holmes how Caldwell could secretly manipulate the U.S. lawmakers without their knowledge. “How do we get these guys to give us more people?” he demanded. “What do I have to plant inside their heads?”

Wow he wants to find pressure point, he want to plant stuff inside their heads, boy this sounds a lot like…..lobbying.

But it’s not like Holmes the source for this story had a grudge. After all any soldier could be the subject of an Ar 15-6 investigation. And I’m sure many Colonials and their female Majors under them get reprimands over an “inappropriate relationship”. After all Rolling Stone covers stuff like this all the time and married or no they understand that as Holmes wrote: “Gimmee a break a man has needs you know.”

So this is the breathless story that Morning Joe started the show with and Norah O’Donnell in their first hour. It flew like a lead balloon and made such an impact that they followed up with their 2nd hour to go long with the crank call to Gov Walker before trying once again to sell this story as the template for the anti-war left, this time without Jamie Rubin who had popped their bubble in the first hour as MSNBC runs with the story.

The real problem lately has been reports out of Afghanistan have been encouraging and the agenda of the left when it comes to Afghanistan is the opposite of Reagan’s “We win they lose”.

One of the people who I ran into CPAC was the young lady who last year worked for Joe Scarborough who had given me the high compliment of saying I was tough but fair on him. When she greeted me I mentioned that I was even harder on him lately, she approved and it was suggested that he was more concerned these days with being accepted by the cocktail set.

When I talk about Morning Joe these days I’m often teased that I follow it because so few people watch it. The more I see of it lately the more that critique seems justified.

Muslim Brotherhood: “Prepare for War with Israel”

Posted: January 31, 2011 by datechguy in middle east, war
Tags: , , , , ,

If you want to know why supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood want us to stop talking about them. This is why:

Mohamed Ghanem, one of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, calls Egypt to stop pumping gas to Israel and prepare the Egyptian army for a war with it’s eastern neighbor.

Speaking with Iranian television station Al-Alam, Mohamed Ghanem blamed Israel for supporting Hosni Mubarak’s regime. Ghanem also said that the Egyptian police and army won’t be able to stop the Muslim Brotherhood movement.

But don’t worry about it, because it was said on Iranian TV as far as our media is concerned it doesn’t count.

Israel however is unlikely to ignore this and will unless they are idiots, strike preemptively.

This is the internet age, we do not have the luxury of ignorance. If we ignore it then it will be our own fault.

Update: If people don’t know it won’t be because Stacy McCain didn’t mention it.

That sentence says an awful lot

Posted: January 24, 2011 by datechguy in internet/free speech, opinion/news, war
Tags: ,

Now it is one of the seven corporal acts of mercy to visit the imprisoned. So I certainly can’t fault someone for visiting a person in jail, and if Firedoglake and Greenwald want to bemoan Manning’s treatment that is certainly their call and of course as a blogger I have no issue with citizen journalists covering a story.

But the Washington Post has an interesting description of the firedoglake folks who went to visit Bradley Manning in this story.

Two backers of a jailed Army private suspected of passing classified documents to the WikiLeaks website say their car was towed after they arrived at a Marine base to visit him.

David House and blogger Jane Hamsher say in a statement they had not had problems previously driving onto the Quantico base. But they say they were detained and unable to visit Army Pfc. Bradley Manning on Sunday.emphasis mine

“Backers”; that is the key word. Manning (and lets give the presumption of innocence) is accused of leaking classified documents in wartime to a foreign national who put them out there harming the US and risking lives. When they are backing Manning, it’s not because they think is wrongly accused, it’s because they don’t support the war and support any action that might cause our retreat.

Let’s make it clear. They do not back him because they think he is innocent. They back him because they believe he is guilty.

As Glenn Reynolds has said many times. They are not anti-war, they are on the other side and we are deluding ourselves if we think differently.

Sit Down Pam Geller Light might be dawning on Marblehead MSNBC

Posted: January 5, 2011 by datechguy in Afghanistan war, middle east, opinion/news, war
Tags: , , , , , , ,

As a person who follows the war on terror and radical Islam, I have read many stories like this:

In the weeks before the New Year’s Day suicide bombing of an Egyptian church, al-Qaida-linked websites carried a how-to manual on “destroying the cross,” complete with videos on how to build a bomb and the locations of churches to target — including the one that was attacked.

They may have found a receptive audience in Alexandria, where increasingly radicalized Islamic hard-liners have been holding weekly anti-Christian demonstrations, filled with venomous slogans against the minority community.

This is not news to me, but the fact is this story didn’t come from my normal haunts. This story comes from MSNBC. What a shocker. I don’t know how much they are promoting this story but it is quite a change.

Of course to us old hands this news is as unsurprising as this story from Palestinian Media Watch:

A glimpse of the world of education in Sur Baher in East Jerusalem was recently made available by Hamas TV. A broadcast showed how the Jerusalem children in the Islamic Riyad (Gardens of) Al-Aqsa School were taught to sing about desiring death: “May our blood be shed.”

They also sang the following in front of the cameras:
“How strong is the army of Al-Aqsa.
I am a soldier, defending its protected area.
How precious is the land of Al-Aqsa.
I shall give up my life for its sake.”

This footage of young children singing and being taught these lines in the Islamic Riyad Al-Aqsa School in Sur Baher appeared in a documentary program entitled “The Shahids’ (Martyrs’) Wedding” on Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV.

This is the same thing people like Pam Geller and Robert Spencer have been trying to warn folks about for years

Of course maybe these “Palestinians” have a point they have to defend against the evils of Israeli spy vultures and Sharks and Squirrels (yes those are real stories).

Then again yesterday’s news out of Pakistan of the murder of the Governor of Punjab by his own bodyguard makes it impossible to pretend that radical Islam is not the driving force here.

Taseer’s apparent killer cited his boss’s stance against a controversial anti-blasphemy law in justifying his actions.

And the reaction of to the killings has been frankly disgusting:

Hundreds of Facebook users welcomed the killing of liberal Pakistani politician Salman Taseer as a strike against reformers of the country’s tight blasphemy laws. The Punjab governor was shot on Tuesday by one of his guards, 26-year-old Mumtaz Qadri, who confessed to the murder because of Taseer’s vocal opposition to the law that was recently used to sentence a Christian woman to death.

You might remember that story, the woman got water for a group of people who refused to drink from the bucket because it was fetched by a Christian and therefore unclean. After the woman’s objection she was arrested and sentenced to death for blasphemy.

But that’s only facebook, it’s not as if the papers were backing this guy up:

Pakistan’s leading Urdu-language newspaper, Jang, ran a front-page story declaring: “There should be no funeral for Salman Taseer and no condemnation for his death.”

“A supporter of a blasphemer is also a blasphemer,” said a sub-heading, reporting that 500 religious scholars and clerics had paid tribute to Qadri.

and remember the murdered man was a Muslim! Sarah Memom is confused:

Islam never preaches for one Muslim to kill another Muslim, then why are all these atrocities happening?

The worst part is that his own guard killed him, after seeing this, how is one suppose to trust another, how is one suppose to have a sense of security.

Apparently Sarah hasn’t been paying attention. These guys have a history of going after their fellow Muslim’s if they preach peace:

Taseer lamented the power of the religious mob in an interview last summer following bombings of mosques belonging to the Ahmadi sect, whose members identify themselves as Muslims but are barred by the constitution from “posing” as such.

The Ahmadi sect has a mosque in Fitchburg, I’ve interviewed the Iman and visited his Mosque, he is a good man and they are a credit to both the city, their religion. Then again I suspect they would be targeted for the very things we celebrate about them.

While commentators opine I suspect this man is next on the list so to speak:

Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Minorities Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti condemned Saturday the recent announcement of a reward for killing the jailed Christian woman on death row for blasphemy.

Bhatti said the call is unjust and irresponsible and should be discouraged in the strongest possible manner because no one has the right to issue a decree to kill someone else, according to Pakistan’s Daily Times newspaper. He also added that Pakistan is a civilized country and violation of the rule of law is not allowed.

“Every legal and constitutional means will be adopted in the Asia Bibi case,” assured Bhatti, who was in charge of investigating the case and reported that Bibi was innocent to President Asif Ali Zadari.

If the media is starting to notice this then there is hope, now if they can only make the connection between this stuff and the people we are fighting (and the voices in Islam we should support such as the Ahmadiyya Muslim community) then the worm may finally be turning!

Older Entries
Newer Entries