Sgt. First Class Paul Ray Smith, a soldier in Operation Iraqi Freedom 2003, is about to become the first serviceman to receive the Medal of Honor since MSG Gary Gordon and SFC Randall Shughart’s “Blackhawk Down” heroics in 1993. SFC Smith was the key player in a firefight at the Baghdad Airport that saw 15 to 20 engineers, mortarmen and medics defeat 50-100 soldiers of Iraq’s Special Republican Guard.Sargent Smith will receive his medal posthumously.
The independent Iraqi weekly Al-Yawm Al-Aakher reveals details on the training of Al-Qa’ida members operating under the orders of Saddam’s Presidential Palace two months before the September 11 attacks.Oh, gosh, how surprising! I’m sure that the Al Qaeda guys just walked in (because what would stop them from just dropping in on Saddam?) and offered their services to a mortal enemy so this would in no way indicate any prior relationship.
We might see the EU crumble before NATO. NATO at least has a potential reason to exist and therefore somebody might want it.Orrin’s dance on Europe’s grave would be more persuasive if Europe had not done OK in the 1940s after being so sick in the 1930s. It’s not in nearly as bad shape now as it was in 1938.
I don’t see how we disagree. I expect Europe’s future to look very much like the ‘40s—war, genocide & famine, while waiting for rescue from America.
Al-Jazeera is getting its burqa in wad over a picture of a US soldier frisking a small boy. This is labeled as “shocking” that will “shame the US military” and has “shocked human rights campaigners across the world”. Actually, I believe that last one.
But the question to ask is, why would a US trooper frisk a small boy? Could it be because certain groups operating in Iraq are known to use small children as expendable munitions? Maybe Al-Jazeera could do a story on that.
There is some stunning— and so far unreported — news in a new poll conducted by Democratic strategist Stanley Greenberg.The essense is that on polls asking which was issue was the most concernng to the respondent out of the standard list, 2% or less of the respondents picked “terrorism”.The survey — sponsored by Democracy Corps, the group founded by Greenberg, James Carville and Robert Shrum — focused on Democrats who take part in the nominating process in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
What Democracy Corps found was that Democrats, at least those who are most active in politics, simply don’t care about terrorism.
Just don’t care.
I think this is indicative but not as strong as result as claimed here. Note that the respondents weren’t asked whether the threat of terrorism concerns them. In contrast, they could only respond with one item on the list.
I’m not sure I would have answered “terrorism” myself for several reasons.
While some signs are worrying for the war, overall support seems high and as long as that’s true, we will win.
The big story of the day is another leak from the Pentagon, this time of a memo from Donald Rumsfeld. A whole of spinning on this one. To me the big questions are:
A CYNIC might advise Israel to simply kill all the Palestinians. After all, the world doesn’t seem to mind mass murder:The pictures that the committee has procured — and now published, together with a report called “The Hidden Gulag” — are satellite photographs of North Korean concentration camps. With remarkable clarity they show, for example, the contours of Yodok, one of the most notorious prison camps in North Korea: the barracks and “villages” inhabited by different categories of prisoners, including political prisoners; the mines, the flour mill, the farms where prisoners work; the cemetery. They also show the outlines of Bukchang, another vast camp, including its cement factory, its hospital, its punishment barracks, its school for prisoners’ children. Distinct objects, including the high walls that enclose the camps, are clearly visible.
Claudia Rosett has more. The Israelis are, of course, too humane to subject the Palestinians to the genocide that the Palestinians would surely visit on them if positions were reversed.
For this, however, the Israelis get no credit, from the world that is busy ignoring what is going on in North Korea.
UPDATE: Reader Joe Hrutka emails:
Scary, professor, all they would have to do is announce universal health care and education, shut the borders and kill anyone they want. Or denounce George W. Bush as a warmonger. Then they get a free pass. Call it the Castro technique.
It does look that way, doesn’t it?