Saturday, November 25, 2006

Does he want it, or fear it?

Followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr seized state-run television Saturday to denounce the Iraqi government, label Sunnis "terrorists" and issue a call to arms. The broadcast, emanating from the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City included three members of al-Sadr's parliamentary bloc, who took questions from outraged residents demanding revenge for a series of car bombings that killed some 200 people Thursday. (McClatchy)

"This is live and, God willing, everyone will hear me: We are not interested in sidewalks, water services or anything else. We want safety," an unidentified Sadr City resident said as the televised crowd cheered. "We want the officials. They say there is no sectarian war. No, it is sectarian war, and that's the truth."

47 Comments:

Blogger Marcus Aurelius said...

They want safety?

It's obvious they have never heard: Those who give up liberty for safety will get and deserve neither.. If only someone would say that to them!

11/25/2006 06:59:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm glad they're recognising the reality of the situation. But calling Sunnis "terrorists" doesn't help. They're just as guilty in their polarising rhetoric as the fundamentalists they are condemning.

Safety = call to arms? The inability of the state police and army in dishing out justice and reinforcing security (significantly because the police is aligned with either sect and therefore subject to biased judgement) has resulted in the increasing success of al-Sadr's clandestine agenda in forcing al-Maliki to devolve responsibility of security enforcement to the cities themselves.

al-Sadr wants sovereignty for the Shiite-dominated enclaves and cities so that he can justify brutal and merciless action against the Sunnis in the name of "safety".

Though obviously he is doing just that even without the clear segregation and division of Iraq into Sunni, Shiite and Kurd regions.

They are willing to admit it's sectarian warfare because it's a fiction that they intend to convince the Dems: that the situation is irreparable, and the only solution is either the partitioning of Iraq, or cut-and-run.

Either way, al-Sadr gets what he wants, all in the name of enforcing "safety".

11/25/2006 07:33:00 PM  
Blogger Deuce ☂ said...

Marcus quotes Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin Franklin although not a large landowner but a city dweller, (if Philadelphia could be called a city at the time), spoke the same language of many men of his time. You cannot compare the landed gentry, merchants and pamphleteers of 18th century America to slum dwellers in the hell holes of Baghdad, 2006. You would be better to compare Baghdad with Berlin under siege by the Red Army. Franklin also stated "There never was a good war nor a bad peace." That would have more resonance with the residents in Sadr City.

11/25/2006 07:34:00 PM  
Blogger Papa Ray said...

If you will notice, al Sadr and his henchmen made no mention of Iran, Syria, al-Qaeda, or of the numerous other groups that are involved in this battle.

BTW, Iraq is only a battle, one of the first battles that we must win in this long war.

If only the world will let us, as we seem to have lost our will.

Papa Ray
West Texas
USA

11/25/2006 08:29:00 PM  
Blogger Marcus Aurelius said...

2164th,

I wish there was a way to express sarcasm over this sort of channel, as the comment was made with sarcasm.

I respect Benjamin Franklin's statement as he made it when he faced a noose, but too often the comment is cheaply made.

I hear the cries of what the Sadr City dwellers want. The political and diplomatic realities of the current day will not listen to them. They need to setup cafes on every corner with weekly performances of The Vagina Monologues by next week or we will have completey, totally, and utterly failed in our mission and it is utter stubborness to acknowledge defeat.

I fear we will be forced to pull out of Iraq and after the Sears Tower, the Empire State Building, and that cool building in San Francisco come down we will have to go back at great expense in gold and red to go back to Iraq.

The President could have done somethings differently (pushing Israel into the gas chambers is not one of those things), however as much as we would like to discount the opposition to his vision and hopes we can secure the peace at less cost than Churchill and Roosevelt.

I think Chamberlain and his disappointment were inevitable. I believe the only differnce between President Bush (and Blair) and Churchill is Bush and Churchill were elected and no one listened to them as opposed to not listening to and not electing.

We too will suffer a similar disappointment. Will it be larger? I hope not with nuclear weapons it could very well be, but then again with larger populations proportionally speaking it may not be.

WW IV is coming and when it does I fear we will have no problems demonizing the enemy and left and right in the West will be united, lets hope it happens before it is too late.

11/25/2006 10:07:00 PM  
Blogger Marcus Aurelius said...

C4,

The leftoids of late have been bantering this statement quite a bit. Also, I have use the popular formulation of the phrase.

Comment #1 above is leftoidal and sarcastic in nature.

11/25/2006 10:14:00 PM  
Blogger Marcus Aurelius said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

11/25/2006 10:15:00 PM  
Blogger Marcus Aurelius said...

... and utterly failed in our mission and it is utter stubborness to NOT [left out in earlier post] acknowledge defeat.

11/25/2006 10:18:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

sarah d. wrote: However - the lack of what the American goverment and military have allowed Iraq lies in the lack of will to actually wage a war in todays political climate. Had we been actually trying to win it, Sadr would have a bullet sized lump of lead in his brain and it would be left to the historians (and leftist revisionsist) to decided his fate at a later date. Saddam would likewise be sleeping amongst the worms.

Agreed. Hegelianism suggests that history is a dialectic, that it is constantly evolving, and that humans are consciously unaware of the wider implications of their actions in the larger context of history - the cunning of reason.

Who knows, perhaps if we had offed al-Sadr, Saddam, Nasrallah and Meshaal when we had the chance, future generations would have forgiven us for our supposed moral transgressions and violations of the very values of humanity we consider sacrosanct in our constitution.

We should not overly concern ourselves with matters of collateral damage when the enemy has undoubtedly declared our citizens fair game. Here we are struggling to deal with definitions that we feel must be absolute in this black-and-white, good-and-evil paradigmatic view of the world - our foes take on ambiguous identities, shifting between innocent civilian to guilty perpetrator to apologetic politician. This allows them to escape our strict "criteria" for conceptualisation of the enemy.

It's as if we are considering allowing them to revel in their multi-faceted identity because: al-Sadr may be a murderous Shiite chaosmongerer deliberately stirring up sectarianism and genocide against Sunnis, but when he is a politician, we need to respect that the reason al-Maliki is in power is because of him and the Sadrists in parliament, and therefore let him get away scotfree.

Instead of waiting for them to reveal their true intentions of destabilisation and anarchy - as if they weren't obvious enough - our criteria should be rendered more flexible, and so should our scope for decisive action against these doppelgangers.

As for the citizens themselves, let them choose. If they decide to stay, then they would be considered fair game instead of collateral damage. Same should go for Lebanese sympathisers of Hezbollah and Syria, and Palestinian civilians who harbour terrorists and are attempting to stop Israeli rocket reprisals by forming human shields.

Not desensitising or demeaning the quality of human life here, but that "human shield" which consciously and deliberately put itself out in the open presents itself as a "meat shield", equally culpable for any transgressions that the terrorists might commit.

Or perhaps the War on Terror, the resurgence of Islamofascism and fundamentalism is just another blip in the course of history. Perhaps Islamic radicalism is in its death throes, and that if we simply acquiesce with their petulant, reckless disregard for the sanctity of human life, they will eventually engage in internecine carnage and kill each other off.

But that would be irresponsible on our part, wouldn't it?

Carpe Diem!

11/26/2006 12:31:00 AM  
Blogger Sparks fly said...

If America were to raise the ante in Iraq, what would it be?

The U. S. Army should go to each sheik of a troubled area and give him the alternative: either give us the names and addresses of the loose canons in your area or today, right now, you die.

Begin with Al Sader. If he chooses death then just wait a week or two and give his replacement the same options. Agnostics do not get a pass. Time to be busy. These are top down societies and nothing happens in these areas without the big guy saying OK. They are guilty. A generation of leadership would pass quickly or those areas would quiet down fast. The shieks are not the ones wearing the suicide belts. What good is power if it is not exercised? They respect tough negotiations. Growing up is hard to do sometimes.

11/26/2006 02:05:00 AM  
Blogger allen said...

With the failure of the 5,280th ceasefire within minutes of the deadline, Mr. Olmert and his Palestinian peace partners are hard at work on ceasefire number 5,281.

Palestinian attacks go on despite truce

Oxymoron alert!

11/26/2006 02:50:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Another ceasefire. Looks like Hamas, al-Aqsa and Palestinian Jihad ran out of rockets and had to deal with Hezbollah's delayed cargo this week after all the ruckus in Lebanon after Gemayel's assassination.

It's time to restock the ammunition.

11/26/2006 03:31:00 AM  
Blogger Deuce ☂ said...

Marcus you will obviously have to learn to cut and paste emotion faces. I regret missing your dry sarcasm. C-4 and I are very serious people.

11/26/2006 03:46:00 AM  
Blogger Herr Wu Wei said...

> But calling Sunnis "terrorists" doesn't help. They're just as guilty in their polarising rhetoric as the fundamentalists they are condemning.

That's the whole point. There are no good guys among the Iraqis, just warring groups which are equally bad. The Sunnis have formally complained to the UN that the current Iraqi government is just a Shiite tyranny, and that's not far from the truth. The Iraqi government, at Al-Sadr's prompting, put out an arrest warrant for the top Sunni cleric, who had to flee the country. Al-Sadr is part of the government, and his death squads kill Sunnis every day (just as Sunni death squads kill Shiites). The main difference between the groups is simply that there are more Shiites, so they get to call themselves "the government".

The important thing is that none of this really has anything to do with the United States. It is a local civil war among thugs who are not a threat to the US. Al-Sadr is not a threat to the US. The Iraqi Sunnis are not a threat to the US. Indeed, the official US policy is that we don't take sides, and don't care if the Sunnis or Shiites or Kurds win the election.

Lots of people have said we should kill the enemy in Iraq, but there is no enemy to kill. The declared enemies were Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction; they are gone.

If there are any global terrorists in Iraq who want to attack the US mainland, then they should be killed. But that is already happening all over the globe, not just Iraq.

Indeed, that is the main complaint that many have about Iraq, that the battle there has nothing to do with global terror or our defense. So by keeping so many troops in Iraq, we are helping Al Qaeda. Instead of tracking down bin Laden, our troops are tied down in an Iraqi civil war that has nothing to do with the US.

11/26/2006 03:47:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

C-4
"Most personally, and most tellingly, he supported the arrest and imprisonment without trial of his Loyalist son Richard in horrific conditions."
---
So?
GWB supports the sisters going to Mar‧di Gras!

Apple/Tree
Great things await.
Guaranteed prep work for future in over your head situations.

11/26/2006 04:31:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Gerald Ford: More personal accomplishments than Gore, Kerry, and W combined. =

Maybe luck really turns on the ability to inspire others to help you. I recall the story of how Jerry Ford was able to attend the University of Michigan in the depths of the Great Depression, when neither he nor his family had the money to pay the $50 tuition. Jim Cannon recounts:

Times were so hard that there seemed to be no way Jerry Ford Jr. could get to college. The meager child support from grandfather King stopped when the old Omaha entrepreneur died a few months after losing most of his fortune in the 1929 stock market crash....

Without Ford’s knowledge, the principal of South High, Arthur Krause, decided to help Ford, who was not only a promising athlete but a National Honor Society student. Krause wrote Harry Kipke, coach of the Michigan football team, and invited him to Grand Rapids to talk to Ford.

Kipke did come to Grand Rapids, met Ford and his family, and took him to Ann Arbor. In that era there were no football scholarships to Michigan, but Kipke helped Ford find a job at the University hospital waiting on tables to earn his meals....

A job waiting on tables was a start, but Ford had no money for tuition. Principal Krause called him in one day and said, “Jerry, tuition at Michigan is fifty dollars a semester, one hundred a year. I know your dad doesn’t have that. But, you know, we have a bookstore at South High, and I think we ought to start a scholarship with the profits. I think we’ll make the first award the first award to Jerry Ford.”

With that gift, and enough money saved from summer jobs to pay the rent, Ford could go to college.

Ford would call the opportunity to go to U of M “the luckiest break I ever had.”

THE ONE BIG THING
In the perspective of history, maybe it is We the People who are the lucky ones since, at a critical time, Gerald Ford served as the nation’s president. Yanek Mieczkowski, grappling with the 1970s context of the Ford administration, observes:

Ford ameliorated the decade’s problems. Keeping a steady hand on the tiller, he led a country confronting perhaps its greatest challenges of the postwar era. Domestically, he restored economic stability; overseas, he projected power confidently; on a personal level, his White House radiated a civility and openness, replacing earlier attitudes.... The decade’s challenges were daunting, and Ford struggled to bring them under control. In the end, he left a lighter burden for the country to bear.

Richard Reeves puts Ford’s achievement this way: “We judge presidents by the one or two big things that they do. Nobody remembers that Lincoln balanced the budget, and nobody cares. In the end, President Ford did the one thing he had to do, which was hold the country together.”

11/26/2006 04:57:00 AM  
Blogger buck smith said...

Time for partition in Iraq. Three countries, big thick walls at the borders to slow down the bullets and shrapnel flying back and forth. Maybe then in a few hundred years, new technology will allow the construction of thinner walls which are even better at slowing down the bullets and shrapnel.

11/26/2006 06:26:00 AM  
Blogger Marcus Aurelius said...

2164th,

No regrets, I know as well as anyone else almost every element of sarcastic expression do not travel over this channel. The Beam in my glass (you may have noticed a mungled follow up as well) may have had something to do with it.

I'll have to revisit my follow up blog correcting all of the munglments.

11/26/2006 07:49:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

harrison said:

Another ceasefire. Looks like Hamas, al-Aqsa and Palestinian Jihad ran out of rockets and had to deal with Hezbollah's delayed cargo this week after all the ruckus in Lebanon after Gemayel's assassination.

Just this week Iran started making soft sounds about their nuclear program too. Whatever Cheney is saying over there in the KSA, it's getting through back channels to Iran and its scaring the crap out of them.

11/26/2006 08:17:00 AM  
Blogger Fellow Peacekeeper said...

buck smith said...
Time for partition in Iraq. Three countries, big thick walls at the borders ...

Partition yes, but FOUR countries ... the unforgivable icing on this FUBAR cake would be letting the christian Assyrians get wiped out.

11/26/2006 08:24:00 AM  
Blogger al fin said...

No, no. This isn't a regional civil war. Iraq is a world war of Islam. Sunni vs. Shia. You think all those Shias crowded together in slums in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, etc. etc. aren't waiting for an excuse to do the same thing to their Sunni masters? They hate like no hate you can imagine.

You'd have to be an idiot not to recognize how much worse things could be in the middle east right now, had Bush been Kerry. You think this is bad? Baby, you don't know bad.

11/26/2006 08:49:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ralph Peters fantasizes about a Europe growing a spine.

11/26/2006 10:36:00 AM  
Blogger Pierre said...

There is no enemy to kill?

Lots of people have said we should kill the enemy in Iraq, but there is no enemy to kill. The declared enemies were Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction; they are gone.

Lets not forget the Terrorists who filled Iraq to the brim prior to the war and then flooded it after the war. The Islamists have declared over and over that Iraq is a central front.

Personally I think the attempt to bring a democratic republic to Iraq is foolhardy. There are no groups large enough willing to back that sort of idea. The idea of freedom of religion, freedom of speech, respect for property, equal rights are so foreign that we are beating our heads up against the wall.

As depressing as this might be we might simply have to garrison that country and use it as a stepping off point to finish off the rest of the threats, Syria and Iran.

If there are any global terrorists in Iraq who want to attack the US mainland, then they should be killed. But that is already happening all over the globe, not just Iraq.

We have invaded Iran and Syria already?

Indeed, that is the main complaint that many have about Iraq, that the battle there has nothing to do with global terror or our defense. So by keeping so many troops in Iraq, we are helping Al Qaeda. Instead of tracking down bin Laden, our troops are tied down in an Iraqi civil war that has nothing to do with the US.

Al Qaeda and Bin Laden are but troops in the war on the West. Attack and destroy their sponsors and their end is a foregone conclusion. If they are being backed by the people as some polls in Indonesia suggest then we have to at some point acknowledge that this is indeed a clash of civilizations. Not such a strange idea since Islam has been attacking the west for 1400 prior.

Finally Ralph Peters said this: No matter how many troops we send, we're bound to fail if the troops aren't allowed to fight - under the leadership of combat commanders, not politically attuned bureaucrats in uniform. At present, neither party's leaders want to face the truth about warfare - that it can't be done on the cheap and that war can't be waged without shedding blood."

Of course its not all peachy keen with Ralph Ralph Peters on Islam and those who warn about it!

11/26/2006 11:25:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

"The idea of freedom of religion, freedom of speech, respect for property, equal rights are so foreign that we are beating our heads up against the wall."
---
Simple:
We'll use their methods against them by beating our *wive's* heads against the wall.

11/26/2006 11:54:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

"- you have no Humint -"
---
That's getting bit tired, C4:
After all:
Last year the FBI Academy graduated 1 Arabic speaker.
Let's hope the CIA is doing as well.

11/26/2006 11:58:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Marcus,
Blogging while Blotto.

11/26/2006 11:58:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

"PAPER: POLICE PROBE CLAIMS HE MAY HAVE KILLED HIMSELF!"
---
I told you he couldn't stop himself with that Fire Alarm Fetish.

11/26/2006 12:01:00 PM  
Blogger dla said...

I don't think allowing a cleric to hole up with his followers in a city is a bad thing. He might be able to keep his faithfull safe. And, most importantly, his militia is incredibly vunerable to US attack, if necessary. US forces already proved their ability to "cleanse" a city.

Given the primative state of "civilization" in the Arabian peninsulla, it is probably too much to expect Sunni and Shiia to put aside their "Catholic versus Protestant" differences and work together. Remember that it took Vatican II (1962-1965) to stop Catholics from assigning Protestants to hell.

So for now, Iraq will be both Federally divided and religiously divided. As was (is) the United States(blue versus red).

This division doesn't prevent participation in a democratically elected government. The US might have to snuff out a few fools who want to impose Sharia law, but that is small stuff.

11/26/2006 12:46:00 PM  
Blogger desert rat said...

dla,
Why would the US "snuff" folk for following the dictates of the Iraqi Constitution, which was already US approved"

If Sharia Law is to be targeted why has it been allowed to find root in Basra and across the southern Provinces, where the Iraqi Government has been given charge?

You expand the US Mission, to destroy the Federal Iraqi Government's Authority under it's own Constitution, why?

11/26/2006 01:06:00 PM  
Blogger desert rat said...

Article (2): 1st - Islam is the official religion of the state and is a basic source of legislation:
(a) No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam.
(b) No law can be passed that contradicts the principles of democracy.
(c) No law can be passed that contradicts the rights and basic freedoms outlined in this constitution.

11/26/2006 01:08:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

Latest Constitutional Penumbra:
No law can be passed that violates any Multicultural Right
---
All's Well in the PC War on the Homefront

The idea that a Muslim boycott against US Airways would hurt the airline proves that Arabs are utterly tone-deaf. This is roughly the equivalent of Cindy Sheehan taking a vow of silence. How can we hope to deal with people with no sense of irony? The next thing you know, New York City cab drivers will be threatening to bathe.

Come to think of it, the whole affair may have been a madcap advertising scheme cooked up by US Airways.

It worked with me. US Airways is my official airline now. Northwest, which eventually flew the Allah-spouting Muslims to their destinations, is off my list. You want to really hurt a U.S. air carrier's business? Have Muslims announce that it's their favorite airline.

The clerics had been attending an imam conference in Minneapolis (imam conference slogan: "What Happens in Minneapolis – Actually, Nothing Happened in Minneapolis"). But instead of investigating the conference, the government is now investigating my favorite airline.

What threat could Muslims flying from Minnesota to Arizona be?

Three of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 received their flight training in Arizona. Long before the attacks, an FBI agent in Phoenix found it curious that so many Arabs were enrolled in flight school. But the FBI rebuffed his request for an investigation on the grounds that his suspicions were based on the same invidious racial profiling that has brought US Airways under investigation and into my good graces.

Lynne Stewart's client, the Blind Sheik, Omar Abdel-Rahman, is serving life in prison in a maximum-security lock-up in Minnesota. One of the six imams removed from the US Airways plane was blind, so Lynne Stewart was the one missing clue that would have sent all the passengers screaming from the plane.

Wholly apart from the issue of terrorism, don't we have a seller's market for new immigrants? How does a blind Muslim get to the top of the visa list? Is there a shortage of blind, fanatical clerics in this country that I haven't noticed? Couldn't we get some Burmese with leprosy instead? A 4-year-old could do a better job choosing visa applicants than the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

11/26/2006 01:18:00 PM  
Blogger NahnCee said...

No, no. This isn't a regional civil war. Iraq is a world war of Islam. Sunni vs. Shia. You think all those Shias crowded together in slums in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, etc. etc. aren't waiting for an excuse to do the same thing to their Sunni masters?

Agree with this. You're starting to read of the restiveness of the two populations across the whole region, including Saudi and Egypt and Bahrain. And it's not just mild unhappiness with each other, like Republicans and Democrats or moonbats vs. neocon's. This is blood-thirsty throat-slitting unhappiness.

If I wasn't convinced of Dubya's absolute abysmal stupidity, I might even start to think that was the plan in the beginning: to set Muslim against Muslim, so they don't have time to come after us.

Or maybe it's God's Big Plan that's kicking in after the failure of Bush's Little Plan.

Yum.

11/26/2006 01:32:00 PM  
Blogger dla said...

Desert Rat: Thank you for pointing out the apparent dichotomy.
When I say "Sharia law", I'm thinking of the Taliban-style, 10th century system. Or perhaps only slightly less repressive Saudi Arabia. Neither are democratically elected.

There is a wide variation in the "law of Islam" amoungst Muslims. Al Qaeda is sponsoring one version, the US another.

11/26/2006 01:44:00 PM  
Blogger dla said...

cedarford wrote:
Or that 5 years after 9/11 there is no government effort to create additional programs to get university students skilled in dealing with Muslim culture and structure to give the nation those needed skills.

Sad. Sad. Sad.


Does the Government have a program to help people get the most out of their Playstation 3?

You are ignoring a fundamental aspect of human nature at work within the US.

Our 3rd-world K-12 system leaves our young Americans more "indoctrinated" on myths like human-caused global warming than aware of the worlds second-largest religion.

Our french-fry munchin, Xbox360 playing "intellectuals" spout remembrances of Nazi Germany and then in the next breath call Bush a "fascist".

Is it any wonder that a smart guy in cave can manipulate the world's only superpower into believe in defeat?

11/26/2006 02:05:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

dla wrote:

Remember that it took Vatican II (1962-1965) to stop Catholics from assigning Protestants to hell.

God thought that was a good idea, since He was always under the impression that He ought to weigh in when it came to eternal berthing assignments.

11/26/2006 03:23:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

dla wrote:

Is it any wonder that a smart guy in cave can manipulate the world's only superpower into believe in defeat?

Meanwhile the libs think Osama is in the pay of the right-wingers. Walter Cronkite, trusted in American living rooms at supper time for many years, noted the six point boost for Bush after the Oct 2004 Osama video tape and said Karl Rove probably put Osama up to the thing.

11/26/2006 03:32:00 PM  
Blogger dla said...

nahncee wrote:
If I wasn't convinced of Dubya's absolute abysmal stupidity, I might even start to think that was the plan in the beginning: to set Muslim against Muslim, so they don't have time to come after us.

As mentioned
here, I think there is a brilliant bit of triangulation in process in the Arabian peninsula.

The clerics and Inmans who are stuck in a 10th century time-warp are being forced to explain away a vastly superior form of government.

Of course nobody would care one iota if it weren't for oil. Historically nobody has cared about the sandbox. But the global nature of terrorism has forced the US to care, so the US is isolating the 10th century throat-slitters militarily and soon economically. Even the most wide-eyed Cleric with bad teeth can appreciate the post 10th-century advances that allow children to live past the ripe old age of 5. Islam is prone to intellectual retreat when failure dominates.

Not so much Muslim against Muslim as the present versus the past.

11/26/2006 03:59:00 PM  
Blogger dla said...

woman catholic wrote:

Meanwhile the libs think Osama is in the pay of the right-wingers. Walter Cronkite, trusted in American living rooms at supper time for many years, noted the six point boost for Bush after the Oct 2004 Osama video tape and said Karl Rove probably put Osama up to the thing.


Interesting. I believe Bush has been playing Osama like a fiddle until the day when he can have his head on a plate.

However I also believe that Osama has found Bush's weakness, as opined here, and kicked his butt - short term.

11/26/2006 04:15:00 PM  
Blogger dla said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

11/26/2006 04:16:00 PM  
Blogger allen said...

For a first rate synopsis of a potentially VERY positive development in Afghanistan, check with Westhawk.
Afghanistan’s new army will see the world

H/T EB

11/26/2006 04:17:00 PM  
Blogger allen said...

dla,

re: "Our 3rd-world K-12 system leaves our young Americans more "indoctrinated" on myths"

You are aware, I suspect, that about 1/3 of highschool graduates believe that Germany and the US were allies in WWII.

All children were left behind years ago. No amount of money from Uncle Sam will reverse the process so long as the educrats remain in control.

11/26/2006 04:27:00 PM  
Blogger Ed onWestSlope said...

dla actually hit much of the problem, square on.
"Our 3rd-world K-12 system leaves our young Americans more "indoctrinated" on myths like human-caused global warming than aware of the worlds second-largest religion.

Our french-fry munchin, Xbox360 playing "intellectuals" spout remembrances of Nazi Germany and then in the next breath call Bush a "fascist".

Is it any wonder that a smart guy in cave can manipulate the world's only superpower into believe in defeat?"

Little or no comment is required on the state of our politics.

11/26/2006 07:35:00 PM  
Blogger geoffgo said...

Doug,

Your post about the admin's abysmal stupidity, and sect vs. sect violence over there. You mean that wasn't the master plan from day 1?

Seems there's no better way to find out who the most violent perps are, and their backers on both sides. So, I don't think we stumbled onto it.

We always have the Roman option available. (at least til January 2009.) B^)

11/26/2006 08:16:00 PM  
Blogger geoffgo said...

Allen,

Intetwined with the failure of public education, is the Dems seeking to control the "net." Wonder why?

It's because the "net" will allow home-schooling to flourish, and completely hollow out the current system. VDH can teach history to thousands, and we can monitor individual progress, and remediate instantly with online tutors. And, parents would get to choose the courseware and curriculum.

If a voucher of $7,500/student/ year were made available, it would create a pool of $100 + billion/year. Lots of us interactive instruction types have been eyeing/salivating over that mine for 25 years.

And, lots of great teachers would cotton to making $25/hour/per student. Unfortunately, your local school board will likely resist this - real certifiable talent crossing state lines, etc., along with 10,000 other little built-in legal impediments.

The "net" also permits stay at home parenting through work at home, so the Dems can't let that happen. They need both parents working to grow the gov't aid programs.

But, it's comin to a Playstation near you. The prerequisite of gaming is consensual attentiveness.
Make K-12 education entertaining and fun, as well as informative?

Oh the horror of having students gluded to their computers for 6-hours a day, and atually learnin stuff.

11/26/2006 08:44:00 PM  
Blogger geoffgo said...

pimf - "actually"

11/26/2006 08:46:00 PM  
Blogger Sparks fly said...

C4,

There is a lot to what you say. But from the size of the voter turnout it appears that a significant majority of the population would gladly support a constitutional democracy. The problem is the violent stranglehold the current poobahs have over that society. Scrape off that crust and a lot of people will give thuggery Islam a decent burial. Stick a fork in violent Islam; it's done!

11/27/2006 02:24:00 AM  
Blogger allen said...

geoffgo,

re: control of internet

Your point is taken.

11/27/2006 01:33:00 PM  

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