I’ve been a bit under the weather the past week, so I haven’t really felt like I had anything to say.  But the situation in the UK with the arrests of the potential bombers and the new security restrictions have given me a couple of thoughts.

First, I think CAIR needs to sit down and STFU with regards to the President calling the terrorists “Islamic fascists.”  People may quibble over the actual meaning of the word, but I think that’s rather silly.  I think it’s a fairly apt term, especially as I think it’s come to have a meaning beyond that of a specific political party.  As for the “Islamic” part, I happened to notice in the list of those arrested that there weren’t any people named “Bob Johnson…” 

Secondly, I don’t see this ban on liquids as being sustainable.  I would think the traveling public, especially the “road warriors,” would soon become weary of it, especially as frequent travelers often try to get by strictly with carry-on baggage.  This is in part because it’s faster and that most of them don’t trust the airlines with checked baggage.  I certainly travel defensively in that I carry a small kit of essentials as well as a change of clothes in my laptop carry-on so that I won’t be completely out of luck should the airline “misplace” my checked bag. 

Another angle I didn’t think about until I heard someone from DFW mention it this morning is the issue duty free shops.  Unless these restrictions are lifted, I would think that they will pretty much shrivel up and die, since the most commonly purchased items in these shops are liquor and perfume.

I saw this on a mailing list and thought I’d pass it along.  I don’t know anything about the organization, although they provide lists of items that our people may need.  Here’s the link: Adopt a Sniper.

At the time the civilian contractors were killed in an ambush in Iraq I never said anything about the hideous outburst of hatred from the left.  I was too pissed to come up with anything more than incoherent sputtering whenever the subject popped up.

I don’t know why I would have expected anything better, given the treasonous actions of those who want our troops to die so they can have their cause vindicated.  Perhaps I thought they’d understand that these contractors are a) civilians, and b) working on projects that were important to getting Iraq back on its feet (even if some of them are working on those “evil” oil facilities). 

Anyhow, their hatred is hitting a bit too close to home for me to dismiss it this time.  I have an uncle who is in Basrah right now, working on a contract for KBR.  I won’t identify him by name lest any of these lefty bastards try to identify him (and as he’s my mother’s brother, he does not share my last name).  Here’s a short excerpt of an email he sent to one of my aunts.

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. We still work 12-14 hrs/day, 7 days/week.

Things here at Basrah have really gotten hot. We have hit 130 degrees.  Before the end of July we’ll hit 140. We also are getting shelled and mortared more often. And so life goes on.  KBR gave me a contract for another year back in April and so I might be here till next year.

Having said all this, I hope it is understandable why I have no interest in hearing any bullshit about how any contractors “deserve” what happens nor do I have any more interest in listening to the anti-war left.  They’ve made their position perfectly and abundantly clear, and they’ve made themselves irrelevant in the process.

I heard on the news this morning that two teachers at Northwest ISD who were suspended for showing the video of Nick Berg’s beheading will be allowed back in the fall.  I must confess that I don’t completely understand the uproar over showing this video in school (at least in this instance).  It was shown to Junior and Senior level students and they were all given the option not to watch it.

I think it’s important for everyone who can stomach it to watch that video to understand just what kind of enemy Western civilization is facing.  These are brutal thugs who would subjugate all of us to religious slavery if they could only get away with it.  Anyone who thinks that negotation or appeasement is possible need only watch this video to understand the folly of that position.  You can’t negotiate or compromise with someone whose only goal is your destruction.

I wonder whether it might have a deterrent effect on certain Islamist elements if it were to be leaked that the US has an ICBM or three targeted at the coordinates 21°25’24” N, 39°49’24” E.  If an American city were to be attacked with WMD (any type of NBC weapon), these coordinates would become quite warm about 15 minutes later.

I hate to say it, but I think Charles has gone over the edge concerning the mistreatment of the Iraqi prisoners.  Yesterday he linked a parody piece that made fun of the situation.  Today he says it isn’t torture, although it may be a war crime.  I’m not willing to make these kinds of distinctions, nor is it something to be taken lightly.  I can almost understand how it would be easy to not understand the seriousness of the allegations, though.  So many groups have been accusing the US of torture, murder, etc at every step of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns that like the boy who cried wolf no one will take him seriously when the problem turns out to be real.

But when you get right down to it, any mistreatement is unacceptable.  Dammit!  We’re Americans, we’re supposed to be better than that!  Or at least we strive to be.  At least we’re starting to get this mess into the open so that the guilty can be punished.  In that respect we have an opportunity to show the Iraqi people how this is supposed to be done.

However, there are several things I’ve heard that simply leave me scratching my head.  The first is that somehow the guards didn’t have sufficient training.  There’s a simple, concise response to this: Bullshit!  It doesn’t take a directive from a general to let you know that it’s wrong to strip prisoners and take degrading pictures or wire their genitals.  I would have thought that general rules of civility (which should have been hammered into their heads as pre-schoolers) would have been sufficient.  I also heard somewhere that they were understaffed.  This dog won’t hunt, either.  If they were so understaffed, how did they have the time for this nonsense?

But responsibility starts at the top.  I find it interesting that the commander just didn’t understand her role in all of this.

During the course of this investigation I conducted a lengthy interview with BG Karpinski that lasted over four hours, and is included verbatim in the investigation Annexes.  BG Karpinski was extremely emotional during much of her testimony.  What I found particularly disturbing in her testimony was her complete unwillingness to either understand or accept that many of the problems inherent in the 800th MP Brigade were caused or exacerbated by poor leadership and the refusal of her command to both establish and enforce basic standards and principles among its soldiers.

This is particularly damning given all the carping in the world media that had gone on by this time about Guantanamo.  She had to have known that the political aspects of the situation demanded accountability with regards to the treatment of the prisoners.  Because regardless of whether any actual abuse occurred, there would be groups screaming loudly to the world press that it had.  Someone at the level of Brigadier General should have understood this and issued orders that anticipated such scrutiny.  That she’s now trying to squirm out of responsibility for actions that occurred under her command would seem to show that she was not fit for that command.

Update:  Upon reading the U.S. Army report on Iraqi prisoner abuse I changed the link above (with the quote concerning Karpinski) from The Command Post to the actual report. 

For those who say what happened was not torture, I would think that these incidents (taken directly from the report) would tend to argue against their position.

6.  (S) I find that the intentional abuse of detainees by military police personnel included the following acts:

a.  (S) Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet;

b.  (S) Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees;

c.  (S) Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing;

d.  (S) Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time;

e.  (S) Forcing naked male detainees to wear women’s underwear;

f.  (S) Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped;

g.  (S) Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them;

h.  (S) Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture;

i.  (S) Writing “I am a Rapest”  (sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked;

j.  (S) Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee’s neck and having a female Soldier pose for a picture;

k.  (S) A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee;

l.  (S) Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee;

m. (S) Taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees.

…

8.  (U) In addition, several detainees also described the following acts of abuse, which under the circumstances, I find credible based on the clarity of their statements and supporting evidence provided by other witnesses (ANNEX 26):

a.  (U) Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees;

b.  (U) Threatening detainees with a charged 9mm pistol;

c.  (U) Pouring cold water on naked detainees;

d.  (U) Beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair;

e.  (U) Threatening male detainees with rape;

f.  (U) Allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell;

g.  (U) Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick.

h.  (U) Using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.

Stephen Green says something that’s been rattling around in my head for the past two years now.

But are you terrorized?

Do you live in constant, unalterable fear?

For me, the answer is: “Hell, no!”

Dread is for the weak; defiance is, perhaps, the American virtue.

Defiance is the word that I’ve been searching for.  I’ve gotten really tired of the way we’ve been using the word “terror.”  Perhaps it fits into the worldview of the chattering classes, who might live in terror, but I think that’s a signal of their helplessness.  They’re used to living under the protection of others and taking no responsibility for their own safety.  The rest of us are more angry than anything else, and we’re ready to take it out on the first Islamofascist nutbag who tries something stupid.

For me, September 11, 2001 began much like any other day during that year.  I was on my way to work (stuck in a traffic jam) at 7:46am CDT, when the first plane hit.  It was a bright, clear morning.  I was listening to the radio when they interrupted the music for breaking news.  They said that an airplane had hit one of the towers of the World Trade Center.  A woman was reporting via cell phone and I remember wondering why she was so hysterical.  The possibility of a plane hitting a tall building in New York was always there (like the one that hit the Empire State Building), so I thought it was just an accident.  By the time I got into the office, though, we were getting reports that a second plane had hit.  We didn’t have a TV, so all we had to go on were second-hand reports from others, the radio, and the internet (which wasn’t much use, since the big news sites’ servers were melting under the load).

I just remember that day being a series of surprises and revelations.  I remember thinking that an airplane couldn’t bring down the building itself (somewhere I’d heard that they’d planned for this possibility during the design of the towers), then being surprised when the first tower collapsed.  We later learned that it was the fire that did it.

My most vivid memory of that day was returning home after work.  I had stopped at a light and had the windows down.  Something felt strange and it took me a few seconds to realize that it was too quiet.  We work in the flight path of DFW airport and there are always planes overhead.  This time there were none and their absence was noticeable.

After the initial shock came the crash course on militant Islam as well as the PC brainwashing about the “religion of peace™”.  It took a while to get past that to understand the truth.  At the time I was a pretty hard core libertarian, leaning towards being an anarchocapitalist.  But as I came to learn more about the sick culture that spawned this attack, I came to realize the futility of anything other than a robust military response.  We could withdraw all our forces back to our borders, but we’d still be attacked.  There was nothing to gain from trying to be nice.

Further, as more stories came out about the victims of the attacks my anger grew.  The thing that did it for me was the picture of that little girl who was killed along with her parents on one of the planes.  I kept wondering what kind of sick bastards would view her sacrifice has somehow acceptable.  What kind of disgusting pigs would deliberately target people who were doing nothing more than going about their daily business, harming no one?

I have no intention of “moving on”, or accepting it, or any of that other psychobabble bullshit.  I no longer care about the opinion of the “Arab street” or what the Islamofascists think of us.  Frankly, I don’t give a rat’s ass about them anymore.  And the Palestinians can forget about any kind of support anymore as well.  Those rat bastards cheered in the streets after September 11, 2001.  Before then I thought that they perhaps deserved a chance.  But 9/11 shined a spotlight on their disgusting culture of death and opened my eyes.  Anyone who engages in attacks against us, who encourages those attacks, or who provides any kind of support for those attacks deserves nothing less than death.

I don’t care if they like us or not.  I just want them to understand that attacking us will only get them killed.  Let them hate, so long as they fear.

At this point I don’t care anymore whether we find WMD in Iraq or not.  Simply liberating that children’s prison makes the whole operation worth it.  The mere fact that Iraq had a children’s prison highlights the pure evil that was Saddam Hussien and his minions.

I’m still having a hard time coming to terms with even the concept of such a thing as a children’s prison.  It’s just not something that I can wrap my mind around.  Apparently, I’m not the only one.

I want some of what the Iraqi government people are smoking.  Whatever it is, it must be some damn good stuff, if they think we’ll believe crap like this…

Iraq’s foreign minister said if coalition troops keep fighting, “they will burn in the desert.”

“America and Britain have no choice but to surrender and withdraw,” Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said Monday. “They will not leave our land safe and sound if they continue to be stubborn in their aggression. We will confront them with all we have … No one will be safe.”

It must be nice to have your own personal reality distortion field.