The general selected by the US marines to command a new Iraqi force in Fallujah has been abruptly replaced after he denied that there were foreign fighters in the insurgent city and blamed America for fomenting the bloody rebellion there.
Who vetted this guy, the State Department?
The Domestic Terrorists broke into an historic building which housed an, as yet, unopened restaurant rumored to be selling foie gras when it opened. They did the usual vandalism spray painting, tearing things up and cement in the drains, which caused flooding throughout the building, damaging unrelated businesses and the building itself. $50,000 right there.
They also took records of employees of the restaurant from the office. Which may not seem like much until you consider their other related action: they broke into the homes of the two owners of the restaurant, vandalizing and tearing up — and left behind a secretly taken video of the men’s children. Terrorists.
They also repeatedly broke into the Gonzalez business,once taking along a LAT reporter, and stealing ducks. The ducks died in their “care.” Pro-animal — can’t even keep a duck alive. Real competent.
The response of the California legislature? A bill was introduced to outlaw foie gras.
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Khaled Abu Toameh knows all about “the Israeli occupation.” He was born in the West Bank city of Tulkarem in 1963, when it was still under Jordanian occupation. Four years later, Tulkarem, along with the rest of Judea, Samaria, the Golan Heights and the Sinai peninsula, changed hands. And much later, in 1994, Tulkarem fell under the quasi-jurisdiction of Yasser Arafat through the grace of the Oslo Accords.
[…]
He’s quick to point out, without being asked, that the palestinians did indeed celebrate on 9-11. Why wasn’t that better publicized? Threats. The PA Minister of Information announced without nuance that he “could not be responsible for the safety” of journalists in the territories if the celebrations were broadcast. Why, then, not at least report verbally on them? Abu Toameh says that it’s a pattern. The journalists want to stay in the good graces of their sources, and they don’t want to make waves. Criticism of Arafat’s regime is prohibited absolutely, and no one wants to pay the price. In fact, the first thing Arafat did when he “returned” to the West Bank in 1994 was to clamp down on all free expression — close newspapers, fire reporters who wouldn’t toe the line, take over the media with an iron fist.
This points out the mockery of claiming that Arafat was “elected”. Let’s give President Bush 4 years to shut down newspapers, exile, kill or imprison his opponent and see how well anybody else does in the next election.
It’s also important to remember how the Palestinians reacted to the 11 Sep attacks.
A majestic Irish oak tree has paid the ultimate price for EU enlargement, and for the betterment of TV reception no less.
A pair of the 350-year-old hardwood trees used to stand 200 meters from Farmleigh state guest house in Dublin, where leaders of the now 25-nation European Union feted enlargement with a champagne dinner.
But that was until last week, when one of the oaks was felled so that live TV images from the dinner could be beamed clearly to nearby press centre.
What else could they do with an obviously Euro-sceptic tree?
These are the crucial months in Iraq. The events in Najaf and Falluja will largely determine whether Iraq will move toward normalcy or slide into chaos.
So how is Washington responding during this pivotal time? Well, for about three weeks the political class was obsessed by Richard Clarke and the hearings of the 9/11 commission, and, therefore, events that occurred between 1992 and 2001. […]
And for the past 10 days, all of Washington has been kibitzing over the contents of Bob Woodward’s latest opus, which largely concerns events that happened between 2001 and 2003. […]
What’s going on is obvious. The first duty of proper Washingtonians is to demonstrate that they are smarter than whomever they happen to be talking about. It’s quite easy to fulfill this mission when you are talking about the past. It’s child’s play for a salad-course solon who spent the entire 1990’s ignoring foreign affairs to condemn the administration piously for not focusing like a laser beam on Al Qaeda on Aug. 6, 2001.
[…]
Over the next weeks, U.S. forces are going to jump from the fires of unilateralism to the frying pan of multilateralism. What’s going to happen when our generals want to take on some insurgents but Brahimi and the sovereign Iraqi appointees say no? We here in Washington will have a considered opinion. Our opinion will be that Joseph Wilson really nailed Karl Rove in his forthcoming book.
It’s probably for the best that these people look behind them, considering where their heads are at…
The city of Melbourne, Australia, is now paying for public signs that blame Israel for Jordan and Egypt annexing the West Bank and Gaza strip. If only the Jews had fought harder, they could have put a stop to that! Oh wait, they did, in 1967. Maybe the sign is blaming Israel for waiting so long to correct that injustice?
P.S. I’m also a bit confused about the claim that “100+ WMDs have been manufactured since 1948”. I thought the USA and USSR both had thousands of warheads in their nuclear inventories. Is this yet another rip off, where taxpayers have spent hundreds of billions for a measly 100+ weapons? Can’t you put that many on a single boomer? If so, why do we need 48 of them? I demand an investigation!
Celebrating the 29th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, the North Vietnamese general who led his forces to victory said Friday he was grateful to leaders of the U.S. anti-war movement, one of whom was presidential candidate John Kerry.
“I would like to thank them,” said Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, now 93, without mentioning Kerry by name.
The saddest part is that these people can openly say this without concern for whether it will prevent similar events in the future.
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It is a bit worrisome when the commander of the 1st Division says
it was “very difficult” to convince [Iraqi] security forces that the insurgents they are fighting are “killing fellow Iraqis and fellow Muslims”
I thought that only Americans were supposed to blindly blame foreigners for their problems.