Showing posts with label national review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label national review. Show all posts
07 April 2012
Politically Correct Rules at National Review
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12 October 2011
05 December 2010
The Seymour Hersh Myth of "breaking" the Abu Ghraib Story
 |
| Via dailymail.co.uk |
The 2004, Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse in Iraq story is generally credited as "broken by" Seymour M. Hersh.
False. The US Army Central Command broke the story themselves in January, 2004, long before Hersh wrote a single word about the affair.
Hersh's Chain of Command seems to return to the scene of his first and biggest success: war crimes. But this time facts and logic are rather scarce. Ever since the Pentagon released the news of the investigation of prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib in January 2004, Hersh has been taking credit for "breaking" the story. Now, in his new book, he's arguing that since late 2002, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice have met and made decisions that amounted to ordering the prisoner abuses that later occurred at Abu Ghraib.
CENTCOM briefed reporters, broadcast live, that an investigation of prisoner abuse was recently initiated. The announcement was ignored for months as the Army conducted their investigation. Hersh came along a few months later, with false accusations of a cover-up, and "broke" the story that he and his peers ignored for weeks.
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| John and Suki help the Israel and her allies kick Iran's ass in the mid-2030s. Only $2.99 on Nook or Kindle. Also in paperback. |
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11 September 2010
Imagining Islam - Article - National Review Online
Imagining Islam - Article - National Review Online by ANDREW C. MCARTHY:
The rest is must read stuff.
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"If only the fantasy were true: If only there actually were a dominant, pro-American, echt moderate Islam, an ideology so dedicated to human rights, so sternly set against savagery, that acts of terrorism were, by definition, “un-Islamic activity.” Imagine an Islam that, far from a liability, proved an asset (indeed, an indispensable asset) in combating the threat against us. Imagine that we could accurately call the threat mere “extremism” — no “Islamic” (or even “Islamist”) modifier being necessary because the “extremists” truly were a tiny, aberrant band, fraudulently “hijacking” a great religion."
Suki Series Tech
Order the paperback edition of Suki V: The Collection
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24 August 2010
‘Because I Said So’ Is Not Enough to Prove Torture - The Corner - National Review Online
". . . especially if you decline to take the stand and be cross-examined about your claim that you were subjected to hair-raising abuses.
At the Standard‘s blog, Tom Joscelyn has the story of a military court’s rejection of Omar Khadr’s empty allegations of torture."
Leftists call this sort of thing "torture" (not safe for work): A Nina Hartley Bondage and Discipline video featuring a technique called "walling". From a post last year.
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John and Suki's news and comment area, from a Libertarian perspective.
Copyright 1970 - 2010, SJE Enterprises, all rights reserved.
19 August 2010
Free Cities - Article - National Review Online
"Free Cities is a new private-sector development paradigm that would allow the United States to offer millions of people in developing countries the same freedom and non-corrupt prosperity that Hong Kong enjoys — without the baggage of colonialism.
Hong Kong was always different from other colonies. It began as a minor trading post, surrounded by empty territory. Over time, more and more people moved there, attracted by opportunity and freedom — just as they were drawn to the United States. In 1984 Hong Kong became a free city under a 50-year agreement between Britain and China. The Chinese government let Hong Kong retain its self-government, all its existing laws, and its free-market economy. Post-colonial Hong Kong has been a spectacular success, energizing and accelerating the transformation of Communist China itself.
China calls this remarkable arrangement “One Country, Two Systems.” It provides a model the U.S. can use to seed new outposts of freedom and prosperity around the world."
This is excellent! Go to the link and read the rest. Series tie-in? Sounds a whole lot like the way John writes Northern Virginia in the 2030's.
Suki Background Suki Series Tech
Order the paperback edition of Suki V: The Collection
Browse the series on Google: Suki I, Suki II, Suki III, Suki IV, Suki V
Fan Fiction: John and Suki: Vacation Fun
John and Suki's news and comment area, from a Libertarian perspective.
Copyright 1970 - 2010, SJE Enterprises, all rights reserved.
08 August 2010
More Moderate Muslims
ANDREW C. MCARTHY
More Moderate Muslims
For a preview of the the Ground Zero Mosque, check out Virginia.
. . .
Mayor Bloomberg is clearly ready for prime time in the State Department’s production division: It was only last year that our foreign service used your tax dollars to broadcast, on its website, a little movie called “Eid in America.” Eid, the occasion for this exercise in cinematic hagiography, is the feast that ends what our government takes pains to call “the holy month of Ramadan” and commemorates with gala dinners around Washington. The star of the video was the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center — and accompanying mosque — in Falls Church, Va.
JUST LIKE THE MARINES
Dar al-Hijrah (which means “Land of Migration”) was presented as the moderate face of Islam in America — exactly what Bloomberg and other government officials assure us the Ground Zero mosque will become. Prominently featured was Johari Abdul-Malik, Dar’s soft-spoken “director of outreach,” who positively glowed as he spoke about his community’s growth.
There were, however, a few lines that Foggy Bottom evidently decided were best left on the cutting room floor. Like imam Abdul-Malik’s call for “sabotage” terrorist attacks against Israel. As he put it in 2001:
. . .I am gonna teach you now. You can blow up bridges, but you cannot kill people who are innocent on their way to work. You can blow up power supplies . . . the water supply, you can do all forms of sabotage and let the world know that we are doing it like this because they have a respect for the lives of innocent people.
Read the rest. This is very informative. Andrew McCarthy is one of the many national treasures at National Review.
Suki Background Suki Series Tech Order the paperback edition of Suki V: The Collection Browse the series on Google: Suki I, Suki II, Suki III, Suki IV, Suki V Fan Fiction: John and Suki: Vacation Fun
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Copyright 2009, 2010, SJE Enterprises, all rights reserved.29 July 2010
An Abominable Decision - Mark R. Levin - The Corner on National Review Online
An Abominable Decision - Mark R. Levin - The Corner on National Review Online
Suki Series BackgroundSuki Series TechOrder the paperback edition of Suki V: The CollectionBrowse the series on Google: Suki I, Suki II, Suki III, Suki IV, Suki VFan Fiction: John and Suki: Vacation Fun
John and Suki's news and comment area, from a Libertarian perspective.
Copyright 2009, 2010, SJE Enterprises, all rights reserved.
This is a typical example of a judge stating the correct legal standard, but then ignoring it and applying the test in a fashion completely divorced from the facts of the case in order to reach a predetermined decision.Read the rest The Great One on NRO.
First, the court states correctly that the sort of constitutional challenge brought here — a facial challenge — is the most difficult challenge to mount successfully. It requires that the plaintiff (here the federal government) must demonstrate that the law can never be applied in a constitutional fashion. The test cannot be met with hypothetical arguments — yet that is exactly what the court relies on in its ruling: the assertion that the AZ law will impose an impermissible burden on law enforcement, which is to determine the legal status of a person detained pursuant to the AZ law on the reasonable suspicion that the person is in the country illegally. The court does not provide any empirical basis to support its conclusion. It’s pure supposition.
Suki Series BackgroundSuki Series TechOrder the paperback edition of Suki V: The CollectionBrowse the series on Google: Suki I, Suki II, Suki III, Suki IV, Suki VFan Fiction: John and Suki: Vacation Fun
Copyright 2009, 2010, SJE Enterprises, all rights reserved.
11 November 2009
The Infiltrator
It is sad to write something like this on Veterans Day. It is sad to have thirteen dead heroes, over thirty wounded heroes and one live, treasonous traitor at Fort Hood, Texas. Maybe if I were a little quicker on the draw I could have had it done yesterday.
The media spin is both incredible and not unexpected. I shall call it uncredible. So many of them seem to think that every single one of us who have served are some sort of ticking time bomb. Brain damaged goods. Unbalanced from the “horrors.” Horrors that they imagine and amplify, as if sitting in an office and writing about others is the only worthwhile pursuit that there is. Anything else is just evil, bad, or greedy, which is fortunate for them because that is their raw material.
In the media saturated part of Virginia where I live and work, a large swath of the residents not in media have the same notions. Many of them spread propaganda, most I suspect from their ideology, some I am sure through being on the payroll of some foreign or domestic enemy. I refuse to believe that any of them do it purely for money, for most it is probably some ratio of money and ideology that turns them.
Revealing that I wanted to deploy with the last unit I was in, before I was discharged (for my own failing to meet the military education requirement for promotion and being an Officer too long generating the discharge) is met with disbelief and astonishment, that I usually respond to with an eye roll and an attempted subject change.
So, now, let us turn to the case of Major Nidal (AbduWali) M. Hasan, US Army Medical Corps and begin with a few facts:
Completed basic Infantry Training at Benning in 1988, as Private Hasan, shortly after graduating high school. Here, look at the diploma;
Became a Commissioned Officer 22 June 1997 direct commission Combat Casualty CRS (AMEDD);
He continues service in the Army today, even under arrest in his hospital room;
In 2001 he was attending a radical Mosque, at least a Mosque with a radical Imam (who has since praised Maj. Hasan's terrorist acts), the same one members the 9/11 terrorist crew attended. Hundreds of people attending that Mosque don’t do anything bad, that we know of, but now we know of three who did commit acts of terrorism. He was still maintaining contact with the radical Imam recently via email;
Major Hasan was verbally counseled for proselytizing to a patent at Walter Reed Army Hospital and had a history of preaching radical Islamic Jihad to his peers;
He publically praised the attack by Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad at a recruiting station in Arkansas;
He gave away many of his belongings in the days leading to the terrorist attack he performed.
I am sure this is not the end of the list. Time will tell. Just from the information above, I can see that this Officer was no Sudden Jihad Syndrome victim. He was going along with a plan, for years, to undermine the morale of the Soldiers around him. He was working inside our Army for our enemies.
The excuse that he suddenly was worried that he was being deployed to a Muslim country and it is against his faith hold no water at all. Forces there have been at war with us there since 2001 and he sure as hell did not need to stay in our Army if he thought so strongly against our public policy, of defending ourselves from and retaliating against terrorists, even if they are Muslim. He could have quit whatever program he was in then. There are plenty of other ways to get out of the Army, even as a Psychiatrist during a war that he had yet to deploy for. He even could have left our Army and joined his. But he didn't. He stayed in our Army to continue disrupting it.
He hung around the Army for over TWENTY YEARS, spewing his vile bile and being a general pain in the ass to his peers and patients. I have seen no reports of when he started preaching this radical (mainstream for him and his peers) nonsense, but I suspect it was earlier than what is being reported as of this writing. No wonder he got ‘harassed’ and that is a sarcastic quote, because I don’t believe he was harassed at all. When people tell you to shove it and get lost because you are annoying them with your Jihad advocacy, that is NOT harassment. Someone needs to tell many other Palestinians, besides Maj. Hasan, this too. Like the ones I knew in college, that not even their Muslim brothers from other countries could stand. If I don’t agree with you I am not harassing you. If you persist, you are harassing me. Calling me a Zionist is not the way to germinate sympathy for you or your cause either. Actually, it is 'unpossible' for you to get me to like that cause, so just shut up already.
As Rush Limbaugh asked on the radio today, what does it take to call this a terrorist incident? Dick Durbin (D-IL), who called American Soldiers terrorists (falsely), is calling on people not to rush to judgment in this case. What the hell is wrong with that man? There is already plenty of evidence that this Major was a terrorist in the ranks of our own military. He was engaged in a systematic plan to disrupt our forces. He was not acting like the normal, patriotic Muslims and Troops of other faiths that we have throughout the Services. He was acting as an agent of a foreign enemy. The President and others in the command chain do need to refrain from certain speech to avoid a Command Influence defense, getting the case against Major Hasan thrown out. Senators, columnists, newscasters, Civil Servants and private citizens do not.
Another apparent tragedy is the way he was investigated for his actions. From current media reports, the intelligence and law enforcement agencies did not staff the evidence very well to the Pentagon and the analyst in the Pentagon appears to have not staffed it in his section, summarily dismissing the series of emails between Major Hasan and his radical Imam friend. Time will tell on that one too.
I know this will fall on blind eyes, but please, mainstream media, see this even for what it is: A Terrorist Act On American Soil.
Other articles on this topic:
Sometimes, an extremist really is an extremist by Jonah Goldberg
The PTSD Evasion by Rich Lowry
When Nidal Hasan Reached Out to Al-Qaeda, Why Was Nothing Done About It? by Melissa Clouthier
Dare to Call It Terrorism by Andrew C. McCarthy
http://sukisite.com/
http://SlashSlashDotDot.blogspot.com/
Browse the series on Google:
Suki I, Suki II, Suki III, Suki IV
The media spin is both incredible and not unexpected. I shall call it uncredible. So many of them seem to think that every single one of us who have served are some sort of ticking time bomb. Brain damaged goods. Unbalanced from the “horrors.” Horrors that they imagine and amplify, as if sitting in an office and writing about others is the only worthwhile pursuit that there is. Anything else is just evil, bad, or greedy, which is fortunate for them because that is their raw material.
In the media saturated part of Virginia where I live and work, a large swath of the residents not in media have the same notions. Many of them spread propaganda, most I suspect from their ideology, some I am sure through being on the payroll of some foreign or domestic enemy. I refuse to believe that any of them do it purely for money, for most it is probably some ratio of money and ideology that turns them.
Revealing that I wanted to deploy with the last unit I was in, before I was discharged (for my own failing to meet the military education requirement for promotion and being an Officer too long generating the discharge) is met with disbelief and astonishment, that I usually respond to with an eye roll and an attempted subject change.
So, now, let us turn to the case of Major Nidal (AbduWali) M. Hasan, US Army Medical Corps and begin with a few facts:
Completed basic Infantry Training at Benning in 1988, as Private Hasan, shortly after graduating high school. Here, look at the diploma;
Became a Commissioned Officer 22 June 1997 direct commission Combat Casualty CRS (AMEDD);
He continues service in the Army today, even under arrest in his hospital room;
In 2001 he was attending a radical Mosque, at least a Mosque with a radical Imam (who has since praised Maj. Hasan's terrorist acts), the same one members the 9/11 terrorist crew attended. Hundreds of people attending that Mosque don’t do anything bad, that we know of, but now we know of three who did commit acts of terrorism. He was still maintaining contact with the radical Imam recently via email;
Major Hasan was verbally counseled for proselytizing to a patent at Walter Reed Army Hospital and had a history of preaching radical Islamic Jihad to his peers;
He publically praised the attack by Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad at a recruiting station in Arkansas;
He gave away many of his belongings in the days leading to the terrorist attack he performed.
I am sure this is not the end of the list. Time will tell. Just from the information above, I can see that this Officer was no Sudden Jihad Syndrome victim. He was going along with a plan, for years, to undermine the morale of the Soldiers around him. He was working inside our Army for our enemies.
The excuse that he suddenly was worried that he was being deployed to a Muslim country and it is against his faith hold no water at all. Forces there have been at war with us there since 2001 and he sure as hell did not need to stay in our Army if he thought so strongly against our public policy, of defending ourselves from and retaliating against terrorists, even if they are Muslim. He could have quit whatever program he was in then. There are plenty of other ways to get out of the Army, even as a Psychiatrist during a war that he had yet to deploy for. He even could have left our Army and joined his. But he didn't. He stayed in our Army to continue disrupting it.
He hung around the Army for over TWENTY YEARS, spewing his vile bile and being a general pain in the ass to his peers and patients. I have seen no reports of when he started preaching this radical (mainstream for him and his peers) nonsense, but I suspect it was earlier than what is being reported as of this writing. No wonder he got ‘harassed’ and that is a sarcastic quote, because I don’t believe he was harassed at all. When people tell you to shove it and get lost because you are annoying them with your Jihad advocacy, that is NOT harassment. Someone needs to tell many other Palestinians, besides Maj. Hasan, this too. Like the ones I knew in college, that not even their Muslim brothers from other countries could stand. If I don’t agree with you I am not harassing you. If you persist, you are harassing me. Calling me a Zionist is not the way to germinate sympathy for you or your cause either. Actually, it is 'unpossible' for you to get me to like that cause, so just shut up already.
As Rush Limbaugh asked on the radio today, what does it take to call this a terrorist incident? Dick Durbin (D-IL), who called American Soldiers terrorists (falsely), is calling on people not to rush to judgment in this case. What the hell is wrong with that man? There is already plenty of evidence that this Major was a terrorist in the ranks of our own military. He was engaged in a systematic plan to disrupt our forces. He was not acting like the normal, patriotic Muslims and Troops of other faiths that we have throughout the Services. He was acting as an agent of a foreign enemy. The President and others in the command chain do need to refrain from certain speech to avoid a Command Influence defense, getting the case against Major Hasan thrown out. Senators, columnists, newscasters, Civil Servants and private citizens do not.
Another apparent tragedy is the way he was investigated for his actions. From current media reports, the intelligence and law enforcement agencies did not staff the evidence very well to the Pentagon and the analyst in the Pentagon appears to have not staffed it in his section, summarily dismissing the series of emails between Major Hasan and his radical Imam friend. Time will tell on that one too.
I know this will fall on blind eyes, but please, mainstream media, see this even for what it is: A Terrorist Act On American Soil.
Other articles on this topic:
Sometimes, an extremist really is an extremist by Jonah Goldberg
The PTSD Evasion by Rich Lowry
When Nidal Hasan Reached Out to Al-Qaeda, Why Was Nothing Done About It? by Melissa Clouthier
Dare to Call It Terrorism by Andrew C. McCarthy
http://sukisite.com/
http://SlashSlashDotDot.blogspot.com/
Browse the series on Google:
Suki I, Suki II, Suki III, Suki IV
02 May 2009
The Chrysler bankruptcy
Update: Arguably the most interesting dimension to the story is the way the Obama White House is openly working the P.R. ropes against foot-draggers in this process.Lots of good links in the article too.
The National Review notes: Oppenheimer Funds Didn't Cave
Yesterday, Obama said, “I stand with Chrysler’s employees and their families and communities,” and not “those who held out when everybody else is making sacrifices.” Does that mean he doesn't stand with the thousands of Americans who have retirement plans withOppenheimer Funds?
And Suki reminds me that I need to change a book detail. Her Jeep is a 2023 Wrangler and I am quoted by her saying it is a collector's item from the last year of Nazi rule over that brand. Need some different phrasing. Mentioned in the Hit & Run discussion above too.
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