And do something positive at the same time. Go help and/or buy a pro-troop DVD in the form of Go Outside the Wire. See if we can help them sell more copies than the miserable opening weekend for the latest anti-war film from Hollywood that tanked. All they need to do is sell 2,900 CDs to break even.

But he had no links to terrorism right? Those “centres” in Palestinian areas that helped to take care “martyrs” had nothing to do with terrorism. The bounty on killing Jews was just a social program. Does it shock anyone to know that most of the MSM is leaving out large chunks of the Pentagon out to fit their agenda?

So those of us who always said that Saddam was funding terrorism are going to get an apology from those on the left that trashed us? Right?

Good piece over at PJM by Michael Weiss

The K9 above is Brutus, a military K9 at McChord. He’s huge – part Boxer and part British Bull Mastiff and tops the scales at 200 lbs. His handler took the picture. Brutus is running toward me because he knows I have some Milk Bone treats, so he’s slobbering away! I had to duck around a tree just before he got to me in case he couldn’t stop, but he did. Brutus won the Congressional Medal of Honor last year from his tour in Iraq. His handler and four other soldiers were taken hostage by insurgents. Brutus and his handler communicate by sign language and he gave Brutus the signal that meant ‘go away but come back and find me’. The Iraqis paid no attention to Brutus. He came back later and quietly tore the throat out of one guard at one door and another guard at another door. He then jumped against one of the doors repeatedly (the guys were being held in an old warehouse) until it opened. He went in and untied his handler and they all escaped. He’s the first K9 to receive this honor. If he knows you’re ok, he’s a big old lug and wants to sit in your lap. Enjoys the company of cats.

Imagine him kicking down your dog is you are a terrorist.

Update: There is some debate about the veracity of the above story.

Canada.com:

The Liberals are calling for the firing of junior foreign affairs minister Helena Guergis for imperilling the lives of their leader and his deputy by giving advance notice of their visit to Canada’s provincial reconstruction team in Kandahar City.

In a scathing letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Liberal Leader Stephane Dion called for Guergis’s removal as secretary of state for foreign affairs because she sent an e-mail to journalists giving advance notice of the Liberal leadership’s trip to the PRT.

And why, pray tell, would the Taliban attack their most important allies? If Field Marshall Dion gets his way, Canadian troops will be doing more critical things than annoying the Taliban.

Like, oh, handing out complimentary gift baskets in Kabul.

Or shovelling snow in Toronto.

Or invading Pakistan.

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Well good to see the American Navy know how to react to provocation. Too bad the British Navy are not under the same rules of engagement. It seems going for your guns convinces the Iranian Navy thugs to bugger off and leave you alone.

US troops improving the Iraqi landscape, one IED at a time. Warning: Language; wanton destruction of Iranian property.

link

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SimplyJews

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

the blog québécois

all over this . . . any day now:

U.S. combat troop deaths and other violence in Iraq are down significantly in some of the most dangerous places of insurgent activity, including Al Anbar province, military officials in Washington and Baghdad said Wednesday.

Maybe most significant was that last week there was not a single military casualty – Iraqi or U.S. – in Anbar, said Maj. Gen. Richard Sherlock, a Joint Chiefs spokesman. It is apparently the first time since March 2003 that could be said.

[ . . . ]

– Violence in and around Baghdad is down 59 percent. – Car bombs are down 65 percent. – Casualties from car bombs and roadside bombs are down by 80 percent. – Casualties from enemy attacks down 77 percent. – Operations against Iraqi security forces are down 62 percent. – Assassination attempts for sectarian reasons are down 72 percent.

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The noted warmonger Mark Steyn admits all is lost:

After valiant efforts by American opinion-makers to blame the bridge collapse on Bush, the war in Iraq and global warming, the truth may defy such glib pigeonholing:

Pounded and strained by heavy traffic and weakened by missing bolts and cracking steel, the failed interstate bridge over the Mississippi River also faced a less obvious enemy: Birds, specifically pigeons. Inspectors began documenting the buildup of pigeon dung on the span near downtown Minneapolis two decades ago. Experts say the corrosive guano deposited all over the Interstate 35W span’s framework helped the steel beams rust faster.

We need to bring the troops back from Iraq to shoot all the birds.

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Which is why they so seldom appear on the CBC.

CNN (via the corner) :

And, I’m Kiran Chetry. America’ top general is in Iraq right now, and he is actually taking a surprising step. He wants to show that things are safe enough that he could actually walk through the streets of one of the most dangerous areas of Iraq in the Sunni Triangle. The streets of Ramadi.

That is where General Peter Pace is right now. CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr is actually traveling with him as well…Are you guys actually walking through the streets as we speak, Barbara?

VOICE OF BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Kiran, it is an extraordinary thing. I hope everyone can hear me. We are absolutely walking through the marketplace as we speak. General Pace just stopped and brought some fruits and vegetables from a dealer here in the market. He is stopping to say hello to every little kid he can find and take pictures with them.

What’s really extraordinary here is, of course, Ramadi was the real heartland of al Qaeda, if you will, just a few months ago. So many U.S. troops lost their lives on these streets and the battle for this city. Now, today, the streets are quiet. Rebuilding is underway. Perhaps one of the most extraordinary things is they have not have an IED attack on the streets of this city since February.

It’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of problems around. Lots of security challenges to overcome, but I don’t think anyone really expected even six months ago that a chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff would spend the afternoon walking around the streets of the city. It’s a pretty extraordinary event…

Last night CBC reported that 14 US soldiers had been killed that day in Iraq. From all the context that Mansbridge and Co. provided (none), one might have thought that they were all struck by lightning.

What went entirely unremarked was that the surge of US forces into al Qaeda strongholds is now in full gear, and things aren’t looking so rosy for the CBC’s favorite plucky “insurgents.” To be sure, the CBC’s deliberate suffocation of the most important current story in Iraq isn’t surprising: If it looks like the Americans are succeeding, you won’t hear a word about it out of dear old Mothercorp. So it’s safe to conclude that the terrorists are on the receiving end of a major butt-kicking.

For confirmation, we go to Michael Yon, who, despite not having a billion-dollar budget, managed to get himself to the scene and embedded with a Stryker Combat Team:

The combat in Baqubah should soon reach a peak. Al Qaeda seems to have been effectively isolated. The initial attack on 19 June achieved enough surprise that al Qaeda was caught off guard and trapped. They have been beaten back mostly into pockets and are surrounded and will be dealt with.

[. . .]

As of about noon in Baqubah on the 22nd, there seems to be a lull in the fighting. A calm. This is about to get wet. At the going rate, al Qaeda in Baqubah will soon have two choices: Surrender, or die.

the blog québécois

Not wishing to bury the utter humiliation of the kidnapping/surrender of a bunch of British Military personnel the MOD has not allowed them to sell their stories. There are estimates some of them, well the woman of the group for sure, could get up to 100k for their tales. Surely this is in extreme bad taste as this lot didn’t actually do anything heroic? There are men and women that are doing heroic things every day in the service of their country. I would expect this sort of behaviour from the French but not the English.

The DT thinks its sign of rot the MOD.

Al over at me ole muckers Cold Fury has an open letter to the UK which might or might not be slightly sarcastic in tone.

Meanwhile Tim has written an interesting piece at the current state of affairs with Iran. An amusing note is there still at least one drone commenter who is trying to pin the whole event on Bush.

It is a truly appalling to watch the Blair government botch the whole taking hostages at sea episode with Iran. His government is truly shown up to be a bunch of wimps, the EU has been shown up for the “partners” they are and my mug thats says of Lady T Now more than ever! could not be truer.

As where is Davey boy?

Go over and read an extensive report from the Kurdish areas of Iraq from Michael Totten. Its makes for reading that would probably upset the agenda-ladened types at the BBC and other bits of the MSM. Its funny you never hear a positive word about the Kurds or how they doing? One wonders is if people get wind of their development and freedom it might change their minds about the war.

Alicia Colon in the New York Sun:

The total military dead in the Iraq war between 2003 and this month stands at about 3,133. This is tragic, as are all deaths due to war, and we are facing a cowardly enemy unlike any other in our past that hides behind innocent citizens. Each death is blazoned in the headlines of newspapers and Internet sites. What is never compared is the number of military deaths during the Clinton administration: 1,245 in 1993; 1,109 in 1994; 1,055 in 1995; 1,008 in 1996. That’s 4,417 deaths in peacetime but, of course, who’s counting?

Jonah Goldberg in The Corner asked for confirmation of these numbers, and a reader obliged:

Note that there were far more military deaths in 1980, the last year of Carter’s presidency, than any year of the current administration. The death rate was, also, higher. This was because of lower standards and less care in training.

The bottom line is that we’re fighting this war with lower casualties than that expected from normal training accidents in a peacetime army. You should be embarassed that you didn’t know this. It’s a testiment to the near universal innumeracy and incompetence of the journalism profession that most journalists haven’t even seriously considered looking at basic statistics and putting things in context 5 1/2 years after 9/11.

and also included a Department of Defense link (warning: PDF file) that lists deaths by all causes from 1980 to 2004. In fact, the Clinton quagmire years total out at 8,793 casualties.

the blog québécois

I’ve republished these quotes from the Globe and Mail out of sequence, mainly for my convenience:

[University of Ottawa Professor Amir] Attaran said his interest in the detainee issue began about a year ago when he was asked by the Law Society of Upper Canada to speak at a symposium on torture.

“I asked myself, ‘What steps is Canada taking to make sure there will not be torture during our military intervention in Afghanistan?’ ” He said he ran into a brick wall when he tried to get a copy of the detainee-transfer agreement and that it would have remained secret if he had not persisted in asking questions.

“When I saw it I was very alarmed,” he said. “What scandalizes me and what should scandalize this nation . . . [is that] today we are signatories to a treaty under which we do transfer prisoners to the Afghan National Police, self-confessed torturers.”

Now what, I wonder, would Prof. Attaran have us do with these prisoners? I doubt he has in mind shooting them on the spot, as we are fully entitled to do, given their status as non-uniformed combatants.

Since handing them over to the Afghan authorities is not an option in Attaran’s opinion, are we then to keep them in our custody indefinitely; our soldiers increasingly tied up as glorified jailers? Or should we transfer them to Canada, whence a veritable feast of litigation will ensue by Attaran and his cronies (all underwritten by the government, mind you), trying to gain freedom (and refugee status) for these barbarians.

If Attaran gets his way, expect a quiet message to be propagated through the ranks: Taliban and al-Qaeda die where we find them.

It wouldn’t be anything new. Following the massacre of Canadian prisoners by the SS in Normandy, we proved rather difficult to surrender to.

Attaran said his interest in human rights and the accountability of institutions grew out of his immigrant experience and a seminal trip through Africa before working on his doctorate at Oxford.

“There in Africa, in the middle of Angola, it was astonishing to me that young men and women of my age who were just fantastically mentally gifted . . . would never have the opportunity to go to Berkeley, to go to Oxford, UBC, be a faculty member at Harvard, Ottawa.

“They were opportunities I got and they didn’t—just by accident of birth. . . . So it is clear to me that there is something that I have to pay back. That is the foundation of my morality.”

Yeah, whatever, you preening jackass. If the Taliban get back in power, too bad that Afghan children won’t get those opportunities. Sucks to be them, huh?

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Just in case your house is attacked by those annoying Turks:

In 1476, after defeating the Moldavian armies in the Battle of Valea Albă, the Ottoman Empire Sultan Mehmet II forced the Moldavian voivode Ştefan cel Mare to retreat to Cetatea Neamţului. However, as legend says, his mother refused to let him enter the stronghold, and instead advised him to go north into what is now Bukovina and gather a new army. While Ştefan was in Bukovina gathering more forces, Mehmet II laid siege to Cetatea Neamţului. He positioned his cannons on a nearby hill, and began bombarding the stronghold, causing much damage. The Moldavian garrison was at the point of surrender, when a German prisoner held in the dungeons had the idea of using the cannons against the Ottoman position on the hill. His idea was put into practice, and soon the camp of the Turks was being bombarded, forcing Mehmet II to leave the area. The event is recorded by the late Moldavian chronicle of Ion Neculce.

DoH! That’s what these things are for!

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I am not sure if any of you are following this but there is a disgraceful case of a US based retailer refusing to send product to Iraq to the troops trying to purchase it from him. Of course, it is his right to refuse custom to anyone he pleases, but it did not necessitate his being so rude to the purchaser. Not surprisingly the company owner is in fact a Muslim and has quite an interesting online prescence. Heidi over at Euphoric Reality has done such a good job at getting the story out that it is being picked up in the US by the MSM. Well doen Heidi. Interestingly enough the site exposing this dubious businessman was hacked right after reporting the story.

Except its not game fiction but real. Are your surprised it was found by the Flea? How about Apple fund the development and call it iArmour.

You remember there were a bunch of bombers who tried to kill more Londoners on the tube a fortnight after 7/7? Well the bastards are on trial. Their defence would be hilarious if it weren’t so serious. They claim they did not want to kill anyone but just terrify them and they had the idea first. If you want to see what is being said in the trial you can follow the live transcript as the trial happens. I suspect bloggers will have lots to mine on Islamist lunacy in this trial.

Snoopy has more and Tim Blair has a report that global warming saved those tube riders.

This time lecturing Americans about exterminating people or not. You see now that Germans have gotten over that spot of guilt from their genocidal behaviour in WWII they think they can lecture Americans about what they did to the American Indian tribes. Wonder if he realises that Sioux is actually a word used by other tribes to describe the tribe. Bet he has no idea what it means either. Oh yes and the guy is from the so-called “Conservatives” in Germany the CDU.

The Nostradamos-like Colby Cosh has seen one of his rather scoffed-at predictions gather some pace in the media. It seems that some serious thought is being put in to an American Foreign Legion as Colby details his recent piece for the National Post. Colby is truly one of the cleverest writers out there.

No doubt all of you dear readers have heard quite a bit about the Iraq Study Group Report. Do any of you care to own your own bound copy of the report? Well Andrew knows where you need to head to get yourself a copy. It is probably wise to read the report for yourself rather than rely on the various commetators who have gone through it. The site no only offers the report but plans to offer other titles related to Iraq.

This is class humour which educates about IEDs, satirises Irwin’s style and keeps it tongue firmly in cheek. The thing is that its far funnier that most of the Beeb’s recent comedy output like the frankly dire Jam & Jerusalem. Its a bit crude but this bloke deserves his own show for the sheer stuff of doing the video. Found via Andrea.

You can hear a 36 minute interview with RAF WWII Bomber Pilot Captain F/L Donald Macintosh. You can read the interview and look at bits of his book on the subject. I think its a site that would be terribly interesting for those that are keen on learning about the history of the RAF, WWII and Great Britian. Its interesting stuff that is for sure.

Reuters:

Miss Israel has been given permission not to carry her assault rifle during service in the Israeli army because she says it bruises her legs.

Reigning beauty queen Yael Nezri, a private who recently completed basic training, said the bruises were making it difficult for her to model in photo shoots.

The Jerusalem Post reported that Nezri, 18, had been granted an exemption by her commanders during her two-year army stint.

Huh? The standard Israeli infantry rifle is the M-16, which is about 40 inches in length. If it’s slung over your shoulder, unless you’ve got a freakishly-short torso, the barrel or stock is going to be clanging into your rear end at worst. If you’re carrying the rifle in “ready” mode (e.g., on patrol) and you can’t stop getting it tangled up with your legs, you’re soon going to have bigger problems than a few bruises.

the blog québécois

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Rupert Brooke – 1914

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By hanging. I would have prefered draw and quartering but you can’t have everything. I am sure they are celebrating in the Kurdish areas who suffered so much under the man.

Found and reported on by that right-of-centre rag The New York Times. I can expect a bunch of emails from people who has said vile things about me for believing that there were actually WMDs in Iraq before the invasion. Won’t hold my breath though, because that would be silly. I am guessing we will hear nothing from the BBC about this little tidbit because they do so hate to change their take on an event whatever the facts. Will be interesting to see if all the British comedians will change their acts now.

Allahpundit has a great round-up of the predictable reaction by the frothing left types. Doesn’t it just grate when there is documentary evidence to show just how wrong you are about something?