June 28, 2005

Press Release

Could a hotel be built on the land owned by Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter? A new ruling by the Supreme Court which was supported by Justice Souter himself itself might allow it. A private developer is seeking to use this very law to build a hotel on Souter's land.

Love it, love it, love it!
Serves Souter right if he has to sweat some over this;
that ruling on homes being able to be seized by eminent domain for more profitable (and higher tax paying) developers stinks to the high heavens and is against every principle this country was founded on.
Let Souter and his family go live with Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Tony Kennedy until we find some developers who can "improve" their home sites!
Here's to the Hotel Lost Liberty!
Is this a great country with the best, smartest people or what?!

Trafalgar 200 - Home
Of course, as with the commemoration of the events of WWII (and I suppose of WWI), the "pan-EUros" try to mess up a perfectly great celebration with "We're all friends now" PC crap:
Trafalgar mock-up 'pretty stupid'

Lord Nelson's closest living relative has fired a shot across the bows of the Trafalgar 200 celebrations, labelling some of them as "pretty stupid".

Anna Tribe, 75 and the great, great, great granddaughter of the admiral, criticised a mock-up of the 1805 sea battle as "politically correct".
Tuesday's re-enactment in the Solent will pit reds against blues, not British against French and Spanish.
[...]
But Mrs Tribe, from Monmouthshire, said: "The idea of the blue team fighting the red team is pretty stupid.

"I am sure the French and Spanish are adult enough to appreciate we did win that battle."
[Actually, Mrs. Tribe, I wouldn't bet on it!--Jen]

She said such "political correctness" would "make fools of us".

What a delightful and perceptive lady!
Even the BBC is forced to admit Trafalgar's importance:

e Battle of Trafalgar was to witness both the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte's plans to invade Britain, and the death of Admiral Lord Nelson. It was never going to be any ordinary battle, and quickly acquired a heightened, almost magical, reality.

During the engagement at Trafalgar, on 21 October 1805, the Royal Navy annihilated the greatest threat to British security for 200 years, but lost Britain's national hero in the process. Little wonder the battle transcended the mundane calculation of ships and men, victory and defeat. It guaranteed Britain's control of the oceans, the basis of her global power for over a century.
[...]

Nelson used this combination of strategic flair and practical management to help Britain survive the 22 year struggle with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. He understood that invasion by France was the least of Britain's worries - the real threat was the destruction of her global commercial system.

Too funny that today's leading Frogs are still complaining about "Anglo-Saxon liberal economics!"
It's a good thing the vote went south for the EU constitution in France and Holland;
Jacques ChIRAQ and Napoleon-worshipping Dominique de Vile-pain were both ready to make England change the name of historically named places like Trafalgar Square and Waterloo Bridge to something more "unifying" as soon as Brussels had gotten complete control of everyone and everything!
As it was, they could only send their one non-functioning carrier Charles De Gaulle limping out to participate in the festivities!

The WSJ's Brendan Miniter takes down the "Iraq is Vietnam" analogy piece by piece:
OpinionJournal - The Western Front

At a press conference with the new Iraqi prime minister last week, a reporter noted slipping public opinion of the war and asked President Bush if his administration is now stuck in the mud. Mr. Bush responded with a joke, saying the reporter might even call it a "quagmire." The reference is to Vietnam, of course, and some in the press corps these days hardly seem able to hide their glee that Mr. Bush's war appears to be faltering. Tonight the president will strike back with a live, prime-time speech aimed at rallying public support.
[Meanwhile, the MSM continues to push-poll the American public, if we are to believe them, but of course, I don't!
Better still are John F'in Kerry's suggestions to President Bush as to what he thinks the President should say tonight.
Kerry, who served in Vietnam and made "Ds" at Yale, still likes to pretend he won last November.
Having played a big part in ending the Vietnam war, he's trying to go for a "2-fer." --Jen]

We can hope that he will mention Vietnam because that metaphor is getting hard to escape. Not because the U.S. is embroiled in a far off, unwinnable war that is somehow compromising the nation's moral character--although convincing us of that is clearly the goal of the critics who never tire of using Abu Ghraib, Gitmo and the Patriot Act to claim the administration is tossing civil rights to the wind. Those were the conclusions drawn by the antiwar left in the late 1960s and early '70s and ended up being apt as the pressure caused the U.S. to retreat and a betray our allies in Vietnam. This was the case even as on the ground, particularly after the Tet offensive in 1968, the communist forces were decimated by the American military. Rather the Vietnam metaphor is apt today because the U.S. is in a war it can win and is winning, if only those inside the Beltway would stop preferring defeat to victory and disgrace to honor.

As in Vietnam, the stakes in Iraq today are much larger than simply allowing millions of people in one country to descend into chaos and oppression. We fought it out for a decade in the jungles of Southeast Asia, losing more than 50,000 American lives, because we knew that handing communist insurgents one country made it more likely that they would soon grow hungry for another. Do we think it is now any different with Islamic insurgents just because there is no longer a Soviet Union out there ready to back them?
[Apparently, the former Soviet Union is still trying to be a superpower player and arming our enemies: Russia wants to build more nuke reactors for Iran]
If the U.S. walks away from this war and leaves it to Europe to hold back Islamic extremists, we might as well just accept right now that the terrorists will topple more of our skyscrapers--or worse.
[There should be a poster/engraving/needlepoint of this in every American home!--J.T.]

In the end, South Vietnam was abandoned and conquered, and it descended into poverty and oppression. Some, not content to their fate in the re-education camps, took to the high seas, and many ended up in the U.S. But the oppression hasn't ended for those left behind. Dissidents, Buddhist monks and others are routinely pulled off the streets and out of their homes and tossed into prison. Some of the continuing human rights abuses were chronicled last week in congressional hearings.

If this was it, then maybe we could accept a defeat once in a while. But walking away from the overarching moral struggle proved disastrous across the world. After Congress shut off funding to the Republic of Vietnam, U.S. influence receded in the face of communist insurgency, and South Vietnam quickly fell in 1975. The emboldened Soviets were then free to press their interests in Africa, South America and, yes, the Middle East. The shah of Iran fell just a few years after Saigon. Radical Islamic terrorism got a big push from the Soviets.
[Not only did they probably fund the Ayatollah, but the USSR definitely was behind Yasser Arafat, the senior Assad in Syria and Saddam in Iraq.--Jen]
This history is worth running through because some of those who led the effort to shut off funds to South Vietnam are in Congress today and are among the critics of the war in Iraq. It's not that Massachusetts's Sens. Ted Kennedy and John Kerry learned nothing from the defeat in Vietnam. It seems that they learned all the wrong lessons and still have no problem with watching the U.S. lose an eminently winnable and moral war.

The history of the Vietnam War could repeat itself in Iraq if the Beltway class decides to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Yet we are winning the global war on terror by the only measure of success that matters: Terrorists have not successfully pulled off another attack on American soil since Sept. 11, 2001. We are also succeeding in Iraq and at pressuring much of the Middle East to move toward accepting the antidote to the hate-filled ideology that spawns terrorists: democracy and freedom.

Partly our success can be seen by what's not happening in Iraq today. There are no more mass graves being filled. Nor is there a cruel dictator sitting atop one of the world's largest armies and wondering how best to acquire the weapons of mass destruction that might throw back Western forces. We also don't have to worry about Saddam Hussein handing off such weapons to terrorists from his prison cell. With Saddam out of power, an elected provisional government is now working on the nation's constitution. There will be more elections in the near future, including a referendum on the constitution.
[All of these are BIG things for which the President, his Administration and our military get very little credit, especially from Old Media.
In fact, they're trying to undo what we've already accomplished.
Don't let them succeed!]

On the military side of the war, U.S. forces have lost fewer than 2,000 people in more than two years of fighting in Iraq--an outcome that would have been dismissed as utopian before the invasion. Meanwhile our forces are armoring up and developing tactics and weapons to defeat insurgents. Even as the enemy is still pulling off deadly attacks, insurgents are finding Iraqi recruits harder to come by. Many of the "insurgents" aren't Iraqi at all but are terrorists from foreign countries. This is a welcome development--jihadis who head for Baghdad aren't heading to Brooklyn.
[Think about that for a few minutes.]
It can also only go on for so long, especially now as the Iraqi Security Forces are growing in number and in their ability to lead counterinsurgency operations. It's telling that recruits to the ISF and tips on what the insurgents are up to are on the rise--both of which are used by the U.S. military to measure Iraqi resolve.

It took eight years of determined effort for Ronald Reagan to reverse the course of history by backing freedom fighters across the globe, building up our military capabilities and finding other ways to put the screws to the Soviets. During those years he was also roundly criticized for confronting the ideologues of oppression and, in the process, risking alienating our European allies. But shortly after President Reagan left office the evil empire collapsed in a heap. We had our holiday from history in the 1970s and again, under President Clinton, in the 1990s, with disastrous results each time. Now we've got the wind at our back and a president willing to confront the ideologues of hate by backing those seeking their own freedom around the world. We don't have to lose this war. But we could, if the nation loses confidence in fighting it.

Miniter does forget one of the main bones of contention that caused the U.S. to pull out of Vietnam and that was the fact that many of our soldiers there were drafted.
This is most definitely not the case with the WOT.
While we mourn every soldier who is killed in this war and ache for every soldier who is wounded, our soldiers have taken on these risks of combat, including giving the ultimate sacrifice, voluntarily.
They want to be there, protecting American lives and security and giving their all to support freedom and democracy wherever they go.
It's time to for us to renew our efforts here on the homefront to rally round our troops, our President and the values that made this country great.
What's the worst thing that could happen if we're all rah-rah cheerleaders for the war, for an American victory, and for our Commander-in-Chief as our parents and grandparents were during WWII?
Nothing, that I can see.
(Unless we do lose the war, then there will be plenty of time for crying, blaming and whining.)
Victory, for those of we civilians, is painless and virtually costless (if you leave out taxes...yes, the war is expensive, but then 9/11 cost us at least $1 billion dollars. Maybe more. If there's another attack, it will most likely be worse and cost more. Can we afford that?)
Can't we support our troops, our cause and our victory under the mantle of our Stars and Stripes?
Stop the whining!
Don't answer if the Dem/MSM pollsters call or tell them you're behind the President.
Consider giving to an organization that supports the troops like the USO, Operation Uplink or Operation Air Conditioner.
Visit our military websites and send a "Thank you" email.
And I hope to keep reading stories like this: First class trio.
(Bless you, gentlemen, who gave up your seats! You're true patriots.)
We've had almost 4 years of peace and freedom at home--isn't that worth something?
(Ironically, it's the peace and calm, I think, that are lulling some of the American people into a false sense of security and to believing that we can all stand down because the lion's share of the enemy has already been subdued.
Would that it were true.
We're winning this war and taking plenty of bad guys out of action, but we're not done yet.)
And when we complete the mission and Iraq can survive on its own as a secular democratic state, we can celebrate this peace, then, too, but also with the assurance that that the peace is not likely to be interrupted or even ended forever by Islamist mass murder again.

The BBC's John Simpson takes a rose-colored view of the new Iranian leader with all the usual anti-U.S. bias we've come to expect from the Beeb:
Iran's new leader: a familiar face?

[...]
Ahmadinejad was a founder of the group of young activists who swarmed over the embassy wall and held the diplomats and embassy workers hostage for 444 days.
[...]
He is the first non-cleric to hold the job since Ayatollah Khomeini died in 1989, yet he is much more fundamentalist than either of the religious figures who have been in office since then.

Many Abadgaran members are like him: intense, strong believers still in Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution of 1978-9.

Abroad, the Americans were the least surprised by the result. They assume anyway that Iran is a country seething with hatred for the US and determined to dominate the region by [nucleal] threat and undercover terrorism.

The British, French and Germans were the most taken aback, because they had previously argued that the Iranian government was basically pretty moderate and wanted to reach an accommodation with the West.
[More fools they!
It shows you why the whole EU thing hasn't been going well, doesn't it, that they could live with such delusion and inane "happy talk."--Jen]

So now it seems as though the conservatives control not simply Iran's basic religious and political structure through the supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, but also the government itself.

The gridlock between conservatives and reformers which has dominated Iranian politics since 1989 has finally been resolved.

Iran's rulers are now at one in their Islamic fundamentalism.
[...]
Iranian politics are as complex and sophisticated as any I have observed around the world.

The complexity is increased by Iran's constitution, which gives the unelected religious leadership greater powers than those of the elected president.

This was why President Khatami, who wanted to open the country more to the West, never could. The gridlock always stopped him.
[I think Mr. Simpson is being more than kind here;
the political "gridlock" didn't stop Khatami. The mullahs did!--J.T.]

President Ahmadinejad will certainly move in the opposite direction. He has already reversed many of Khatami's earlier changes in Tehran.
[These were probably superficial reforms to allow little freedoms that Ahmadinejad will now do away with.

If his followers harass people in the streets, attacking men who shave and women who show their hair, wear make-up and bright colours, there will be much greater social tension and the possibility of future violence.
[I doubt this matters a whit to the Moolahs!
In fact, I'd bet it's what they want.
With Iran sandwiched between newly-free and democratic Iraq and Afghanistan, and with Freedom on the march throughout the Middle East, the mullahs would see a rappel à l'ordre(return to order) as being just what Iran needs as radical Islam is under siege.--Jen]

The implications of this will be worrying to the religious leadership. It is the better-off in Iran who usually want to follow Western styles.
[...and who are making all the trouble for the mullahs. They'll wonder why they haven't confiscated all their money yet!]
And although Ayatollah Khamenei is a religious conservative, he will not want class warfare breaking out in the streets.
[He doesn't want any warfare breaking out on the streets, but dissent and revolt against the present government is rampant throughout Iran.
If it's violent, it's because Iranian security police usually commit most of the violence themselves.]
So although President Ahmadinejad won a sizeable majority last Friday, he will not necessarily be able to do what he wants.
[Bull!
I dare say he'll be given a free hand to "restore order" by the mad mullahs.]

But Mr Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei will certainly agree about one thing - the nuclear issue.
Iran believes it lives in a difficult neighbourhood, with Israel, China, Russia, India and Pakistan - all nuclear powers, real or potential - close by, and the US over the horizon.

Iran wants the nuclear option too.

The US is no overwhelming threat to Iran now, unless it decides to attack it from the air and alienate world opinion utterly.
[Oh, no!
We'd "alienate world opinion utterly" for taking out these Islamist thugs and killers...when do we start?
I've had a bone to pick with these b*st*rds since 1979!--Jen]

The best the British, French and Germans can do is persuade Iran to be more cautious and tactful in following its nuclear ambitions. Ayatollah Khamenei may see the sense of that.
[Ha! This Simpson man sounds so inanely wrong about the Iranian mullahs that I believe he must believe this tripe!
Wish he were right, but he's not.
How cautious and tactful is yelling and meaning "Death to America" for 25 years?]

But unless I have remembered him wrongly from the old days, caution and tact are not qualities you immediately associate with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Even this British Kool-Aid drinker can't vouch for his "boy" Ahmadinejad in the end.
I feel real pity for the Iranian people who have to live under this evil régime; it sounds like life will get a lot worse under the A-man than it's been under Khatami and that wasn't all that great.
It wouldn't surprise me to see this new guy set up a Taliban-like rule, with the mullahs' full blessing, if you will.
We can only pray that they will find the wherewithal to overthrow the mullahs by themselves and some of them have already been killed trying.
They say many Iranians voted for Ahmadinejad because he promised them a better economy, but Iran's economy--which was doing alright under the Shah--won't get any better ever under the tyranny of an Islamic theocracy.
As for the Islam Bomb, I think we all know they've either got one or more...or they're working on it 24/7.
This is basically a case of SSDD for Iran: Khatami didn't really reform anything, it was a sham to placate the restive Iranian people.
Whether the people will put up with more hardline Islamic government rather than less now remains to be seen.

Pakistan Frees 17 Ex-Guantanamo Inmates

Pakistanis freed from Guantanamo Bay claimed Monday they saw American interrogators throw, tear and stand on copies of Islam's holy book, and one former detainee said naked women sat on prisoners' chests during questioning.

The Pentagon denied the accusations and said al-Qaida training manuals instruct prisoners to make such false charges.

The men acknowledged they were aware of the international furor caused by previous reports about Quran desecrations. Such reports triggered protests across the Islamic world and deadly riots in Afghanistan last month.

Seventeen Pakistanis were freed Monday from a jail in this eastern city, where they had been held since their release nine months ago from the U.S. prison for terror in Cuba. A Pakistani official said each had been "declared innocent by America" and cleared of involvement in terrorism by Pakistani intelligence.[...]

All six said they were arrested in Afghanistan after going there to fight the U.S.-led coalition that ousted the hard-line Taliban regime in late 2001 for harboring Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network.

"During interrogation, whenever I would make a reference to the Quran they would hit me in the face with a copy (of it). They would tear it into pieces. They would tell me that Quran teaches us terrorism," said Salahuddin Ayubi, a 31-year-old from Rajanpur in eastern Pakistan.
[Personally, I believe that the Quran does teach them terrorism and I wish our guys at Gitmo had done this, but I'll betcha a steak dinner they didn't!--Jen]

"They would throw the Quran against the roof, which would tear it into pieces and they would say 'This is the real source of terrorism,'" Ayubi said. "This happened several times in my interrogation."

Hafiz Ahsan, a 26-year-old Lahore tailor who said he was arrested three years ago in southern Afghanistan during the "jihad" against America - claimed he saw interrogators stand on the Quran and throw the book in urine.
[These jihadis are really fixated on urine. Keep reading.]

"Our interrogators would stand on the Quran and they would ask, 'Call your God and ask him to rescue you,'" he said. "They would throw Quran in a bucket of urine. They would tear the Quran and throw it at our faces. All this happened in front of our eyes. It was a routine."

He claimed inmates staged a hunger strike in protest, and were then tortured with electric shocks.
[Now I know this didn't happen!--J.T.]

Lt. Cmdr. Flex Plexico, a Pentagon spokesman, said inmates at Guantanamo are treated humanely and there are "adequate standard operating procedures in place to ensure detainee religious faith is respected."

He said al-Qaida taught detainees to make false abuse allegations.
[...]
A Pentagon report released this month confirmed five cases in which U.S. guards at Guantanamo mishandled the Quran, including incidents in which one copy of the book was splashed with urine and another was stepped on.
[You know, the MSM should be stood up against a wall and shot just for using inflammatorily "descriptive" words like "splashed!"
Sounds as if our soldiers drank a 6-pack of beer just so they'd have plenty of pee-pee for the Koran watering.]

The report concluded that none of the guards flushed the Muslim holy book down the toilet - an explosive allegation that surfaced in a Newsweek magazine report. The magazine later retracted the report.

The freed detainees said they had learned about the controversy from other inmates and prison officials.

Many Pakistanis went to Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban, and scores ended up in Guantanamo. Pakistani officials say as many as 11 Pakistanis are among the 540 detainees still held. They say 67 Pakistanis have been freed from Guantanamo, and virtually all have been held in Pakistani custody since their return.

Tahir Ashrafi, a religious affairs adviser for Punjab province, said the 17 men had been cleared by Pakistani intelligence agencies after thorough interrogation and "have not been found to be involved in any kind of terrorist activity."
He said all the men signed statements saying they wouldn't join any anti-state activity.

However, one of the freed men, Khalil-ur Rahman, 21, from the eastern town of Gujrat, said he wouldn't hesitate to fight again. "If I get a chance to fight jihad again, I will definitely go. I will not miss it," he said.

These are the kind of detainees our bravest and finest are dealing with at Gitmo--liars and killers.
But dealing with them they are and doing a fine job.
I just wish we didn't have to let so many go...or allow them to have lawyers they don't deserve or need (Thanks again, Supreme Court!).
To echo Karl Rove last week, this is where the Liberals drag us, to treating international terrorist murder as "domestic crimes" where the killers have "rights" and lawyers and domestic criminal hearings.
Did that approach work when it came to prosecuting the first WTC bombers?
It did not: Al Queda just sent another team to finish the job on 9/11.
Case closed on the Lib weenie way of dealing with these murderers.
And don't you Democrats dare and close Gitmo!
As long as our wonderful soldiers will do the odious duty down there, I say we keep it open for business, 'cause the war's not over yet.
Of course, what Islamist thug would be scared to go there now, now that's it been revealed to be so humane and cushy?