Posts Tagged ‘War on Terror’

Only failure will convince them

Posted: January 28, 2009 by datechguy in Blame Bush, opinion/news
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You might think that I’m outraged over President Obama’s letter to the president of Iran.

You would be wrong.

Do I think it will help? Likely not. Do I think the Iranians will use it as a propaganda tool? Likely they will. Do I think that Iran will use this to demand concessions from us? Sure. Do I think that they will use any contacts to stall us while they build their bomb? Without question.

Then why no outrage?

Listen if anyone at all thinks that the president was going to take strong decisive action to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities you have been smoking something, in fact his actions suggest he won’t even support democratic movements in Iran. This is not even slightly a surprise and I don’t get outraged over stuff I already know.

Bush Derangement Syndrome means that the only way we can convince our liberal friends that this stuff won’t work is to let it be tried and fail. It still won’t convince some of them, in fact some may actually want Iran to have the bomb, but it will convince some and until reasonable people on the left get a chance to try things their way they won’t consider the alternative.

And hey anything is possible, maybe it works out.

I’m counting on Israel on this one. They know what is coming down the pike and they aren’t going to consent to become a glowing spot on the Mediterranean Sea just to make the rest of the world happy.

Hey we had an election, you pays your money and you takes your chances.

No its not an archive page

Posted: January 28, 2009 by datechguy in war
Tags: ,

Arab Rockets and bombs, Israel hitting tunnels, Hamas leaders a beating a very brave retreat. It’s deja vu all over again.

As usual Israellycool and the Muqata are the places to be. One great example:

UNRWA has gradually adopted a distinctive political viewpoint that favors the Palestinian and Arab narrative of events in the Middle East. In particular, it seems to favor the strain of Palestinian political thought espoused by those who are intent on a “return” to the land that is now Israel. UNRWA’s adoption of any political viewpoint is undesirable, but the one it has chosen to emphasize is especially regrettable. In addition to clashing with the objectives of the United States, this view has detracted from UNRWA’s humanitarian assistance, encouraged Palestinians who favor refighting long-lost wars, discouraged those who favor moving toward peace, and contributed to the scourge of conflicts that have been visited upon Palestinian refugees for decades.

and this:

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees employs and provides benefits for terrorists and criminals, asserts a former legal adviser to UNRWA who left the organization in 2007. James Lindsay, now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, served as an attorney with the US Justice Department for two decades before leaving to work for UNRWA in 2000.

This stuff is being funded here in the US. I know we are bailing out almost everyone but this takes the cake.

At least they had one quiet week.

A new revelation every day

Posted: January 25, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
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It’s funny.

As I recall before the election the problem of what to do with those in Gitmo was not a big issue, the only issue was getting in closed.

Now that the order has been given suddenly we are seeing a lot more stories like this:

One day after President Obama ordered that the military detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, be shuttered, lawmakers in Washington wrestled with the implications of bringing dozens of the 245 remaining inmates onto American soil.

Republican lawmakers, who oppose Mr. Obama’s plan, found a talking point with political appeal. They said closing Guantánamo could allow dangerous terrorists to get off on legal technicalities and be released into quiet neighborhoods across the United States. If the detainees were convicted, the Republicans continued, American prisons housing terrorism suspects could become magnets for attacks.

Meanwhile, none of the Democrats who on Thursday hailed the closing of the detention camp were stepping forward to offer prisons in their districts or states to receive the prisoners.

And this:

Two men released from the US “war on terror” prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba have appeared in a video posted on a jihadist website, the SITE monitoring service reported.

One of the two former inmates, a Saudi man identified as Abu Sufyan al-Azdi al-Shahri, or prisoner number 372, has been elevated to the senior ranks of Al-Qaeda in Yemen, a US counter-terrorism official told AFP.

Three other men appear in the video, including Abu al-Hareth Muhammad al-Oufi, identified as an Al-Qaeda field commander. SITE later said he was prisoner No. 333.

or this:

The report, which could be released within the next few days, will provide fresh details about 62 detainees who have been released from Guantanamo and are believed by U.S. intelligence officials to have returned to terrorist activities, according to two Pentagon officials who asked not to be identified talking about a document that is not yet public. One such example, involving a Saudi detainee named Said Ali Al-Shihri, who was released in 2007, received widespread attention Friday when Pentagon officials publicly confirmed that he has recently reemerged as a deputy commander of Al Qaeda in Yemen. Al-Shihri, once known publicly only as Guantanamo detainee No. 372, is suspected of involvement in a thwarted attack on the U.S. embassy in Yemen last September.

or this:

The emergence of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.

One would think that the media wants to give cover to the new administration in case it takes say the first terms to decide what to do with these oppressed individuals, dangerous terrorists. It will be interesting to see what happens.

Steyn deserves his own post

Posted: January 21, 2009 by datechguy in internet/free speech, opinion/news
Tags: ,

Mark Steyn is one of today’s great writers. His comment on the Wilders situation deserves its own post:

The PC nellies of the Canadian “Human Rights” Commission, happy to hound the last neo-Nazi in Saskatchewan posting to the Internet from his mum’s basement, won’t go anywhere near Abou Hammaad Sulaiman Dameus al-Hayitia, the big-time Montreal imam whose book says infidels are “evil people”, Jews “spread corruption and chaos”, and homosexuals should be “exterminated”.

Instead, the state’s response to explicit Islamic intimidation is to punish those foolish enough to point out that intimidation. You don’t have to be as intemperate as Minheer Wilders can sometimes be: In the Netherlands even the most innocuous statement can get you into trouble. To express his disgust at Theo van Gogh’s murder, the artist Chris Ripke put up a mural outside his studio showing an angel and the words “Thou shalt not kill”. But the cops thought this was somehow a dig at the local mosque and so came round, destroyed the mural, arrested the TV news crew filming it, and wiped their tape. The Dutch have determined to commit societal euthanasia, and dislike fellows pointing out it might not be as painless as they’ve assumed.

Democracies tend to die of suicide, lets hope that’s not the case.

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