Gore's Inconvenient 911 Truth

Nobel laureate Al Gore, we are to believe, has the technical acumen analyze complex data, assess risks, and identify the right countermeasures. He must be able to critically sift through mountains of data, distinguish between reliable and unreliable climate models, and astutely analyze volumes of esoteric scientific reports and studies to determine with something like crystal clarity what will most assuredly happen in the future. On an ongoing basis, as new data comes in.

Read the rest at American Thinker.

The Global Warming......War?

Yup, the Goreacle has won the Nobel Peace Prize, for negotiating the peace between the Artic Polar Bear Liberation Front and the......what the heck....

Take that Vaclaw Havel and Lech Walesa, who've tried for years to get the Nobel folks to give it, posthumously now, to Pope John Paul II, who had a bit of something to do with bringing down the Iron Curtain - peacefully!

Last American to win the Nobel?

Carter, 2002.

The Nobel Peace prize has devolved into something like a self esteem program consolation prize for the American left.

I'm personally overjoyed! The rumors have been floating about that if the Goracle won the Nobel that would compel him to enter the Democratic primaries, since the endorsement of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee translates into as many as seven, maybe eight votes in the USA.

If Gore runs, that's great news! Anybody care to guess how much dirt team Clinton and team Gore have on each other? Which they'll use.

Winter Soldier Investigation and a Correction

Correction: in the article 'Investigate the Winter Soldier Investigation' published today in The American Thinker, I made an error. I claimed that Al Hubbard, the executive director of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) ended his relationship with VVAW when he was exposed as having lied about his military record. Scott Swett of WinterSoldier.com has let me know that I was in error on that. Hubbard continued as executive director of VVAW for another year.

Excerpt from: Investigate the Winter Soldier Investigation:

It's being called ‘Winter Soldier Syndrome.' The phrase refers to slanders of American soldiers and Marines made by people who also make fraudulent claims about their own military experiences. Michelle Malkin writes:

"Winter Soldier Syndrome will only be cured when the costs of slandering the troops outweigh the benefits."

She is right up to a point, but it is more serious than that. It is not just the perpetrators who are causing the problem. A large and sometimes influential part of our society has been enabling and protecting these attacks on those who risk their lives to defend ours. This has been going on for almost four decades.

Winter Soldier Syndrome uses the same mechanism as racial and ethnic bigotry: tarring an entire group because of the misbehavior of a few. To understand why this is happening today, we have to understand how this came about, and why.

Continue reading at American Thinker.

The Soldier and the Sheik: Lest We Forget

Army Captain Travis Patriquin was killed by an IED during an operation near Ramadi in Iraq’s Al Anbar province on December 6, 2006. Sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, a Sunni Muslim, was also killed by a bomb in Al Anbar nine months later, on September 13, 2007. The two were connected to each other in this life, and share a connection that will continue after their passing.

BLACKFIVE provides the background on Capt. Patriquin. He was a remarkable man, conversant in Pashtun, Dari, Arabic and Urdu. He was Special Ops trained and was awarded the Bronze Star with Valor device for his part in OpAnaconda in 2002, when he was attached to the 101st Airbirne in Afghanistan.

In 2006 he was in Al Anbar Province in Iraq. In 2005, the top Marine intelligence officer in Al Anbar thought the province to be all but lost to the terror-insurgency. Capt. Patriquin was one of those men with an affinity for understanding other cultures and seeing things from their point of view. He understood the dynamics of why Al Anbar was intractable.

He had made a PowerPoint presentation that has since widely used by the Army in Al Anbar. Most of us who have been in business for some years or decades understand the PowerPoint presentation to be something of a dumb-downed thing. It’s meant to be. Generally such presentation intends to highlight and drive home a few important points, facts or understandings.

Capt. Patriquin’s presentation is all at once funny, dumbed down so that a fourth grader or a “General in the 4th Infantry Division” could understand it and yet it made more tactical and strategic sense than we’ve heard from almost any politician for years.

Be absolutely sure that you view the presentation,”How to Win the War in Al Anbar”, available here in pdf, before proceeding. It’ll only take a minute or two.

There is a good chance that the sheik in the presentation is based loosely (or not so loosely) on Sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, whose tribe occupies the area in and around Ramadi. Capt. Patriquin and Sheik Sattar Abu Risha worked together to turn Al Anbar around. It was their relationship that largely led to Capt. Patriquin’s realization that the Sunnis would join the police, from which organization they could protect their families, rather than the army, which could send them away.

WaPo recently reported that 30,000 tribals, overwhelmingly Sunni, have volunteered to work with the Iraqi police, army and coalition forces, and that is spreading to other areas of Iraq. Capt. Patriquin didn’t live to see what he had begun come to fruition. Sheik Sattar Abu Risha did not live to see AQI completely defeated in Al Anbar. Both men, though, gave their lives in giving others hope and a path to fulfill that hope.

Last August, in Tameen, a district in heavily Sunni Ramadi, the police station was named after and in honor of Captain Travis Patriquin.

This last month, a school in the Shia center of Iraq, Nejaf, was named after and in honor of the Sunni Sheik Sattar Abu Risha.

What is going on here? Sunnis name a place in honor of an American soldier who gave himself for Iraq, and Shias name a place for a Sunni who did the same. Does that sound like what we’ve been hearing from the Democrats? Sunnis and Shias can’t get along, so let them have their civil war! Iraqis hate us, and want us out! The presence of our troops fuels the insurgency and recruits terrorists! Brave men have put the lie to those claims.

Remember John Kerry’s statement to college students:

“You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

Kerry was not speaking of President Bush. He reads his own press, and well knew that it had been reported more than a year before that his college grades and those of President Bush were almost the same, with a slight edge to Bush. He meant the soldiers, and the members of the 1/34 Brigade Troops Battalian of the Minnesota National Guard serving in Iraq knew it.

Senator Schumer did all he could to besmirch and denigrate the efforts and memory of men like Captain Patriquin and Sheik Sattar Abu Risha.

Senate Democrats, wedded to the liberal notion of liberal elites making decisions for those simple folks down below, all but frothed at the mouth about this idea of improvement and solutions coming from the bottom and working up! Such is an inconceivable and threatening concept to them

Capt. Travis Patriquin and Sheik Sattar Abu Risha were better men, and smarter men, than the bunch of them. They died giving people hope and a way out of misery. Those Democrats just want a way out.

When I was a child growing up in the Bronx, NYC, I got interested in early American history. I don’t remember exactly when I put it together that all those street names were clues left to me, so that I could learn about people who had done things noteworthy to those who came before me. I would go to the public library, and look up those names, and read about them: Webster, Decatur, Marion, Bainbridge, Lafayette, Rochambeau, Hull, Perry, Sedgewick, Sherman, MacClellan, Sheridan and on and on.

That’s why people name places and things after others. So that those who come later will know that someone did something, something you are well served to know about.

In the 1949 classic John Ford movie “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon”, John Wayne played the aging and about to be forced into retirement commander of a calvary company, Captain Nathan Brittles. On the day of his retirement, the old officer leaves his billet and finds his troops assembled as if on parade. They give him a present they’ve all chipped in for, a silver watch. The captain looks at it, and nods and smiles at the troopers he is about to leave. One tells him that there is a sentiment engraved on the watch. Sheepishly, Brittles puts on his spectacles that the men have never seen before and reads the words ‘To Captan Nathan Brittles...”.and his voice cracks as he reads “Lest we forget.”
To Captain Travis Patriquin and Sheik Sattar Abu Risha, whose names will be known to many thousands who will see the buildings named in their honor, and to the rest of us who should know of them – lest we forget.

Haditha Has Gone Nuclear

Well, if I thought Haditha required a full Congressional investigation before, that could turn out to be a gross understatement.

Nathaniel Helms at Save Our Marines has uncovered what may be a nuclear warhead as opposed to just a bombshell. The story is being picked up in all the right places in the blogosphere (LGF, Michelle Malkin, Clarice Feldman at American Thinker) but breath holding until the MSM latches on to this is not advised.

It appears that the incidents at Haditha may well have been "an intentional propaganda ploy planned and paid for by Al Qaeda foreign fighters". " In other words, a set-up that would intentionally draw the Marines into a fight in an area where civilians were bound to get killed.

Congressman John Murtha's office has refused comment.

Well, I don't know if they've been asked, but I am sure that'll be the responce.

The Not So Grand Inquisitor

Henry ‘Little Torquemada’ Waxman is determined to investigate corruption in Iraq! This is another sign of things going well there. If Democrats can no longer charge that the Iraqis are not bearing a fair load when the news is full, even if reluctantly, of Iraq military and police taking on the terror-insurgents (see previous post) and now Sunni tribals are gunning for Al Qaeda in Iraq, there must be something else with which to discredit an ally. I’ve thought for some time that if we pull off something that looks, walks and talks like victory in Iraq, Democrats will have to do everything in their power to discredit the Iraqi givernment on the principle that American could not have accomplished any good through military force.

No doubt there is corruption in Iraq’s government. Maybe a whole lot of it. Maybe even as much as in the U.N., if that’s possible. Or the Clinton campaign, which is probably impossible!

Iraq is engaged in a war for its survival. Members of its political class, unlike ours, have been assassinated on a regular basis and their families are targets of terrorists. A State Department spokesman said “details of anti-corruption efforts must be secret to protect investigators and Iraqi allies.” That makes sense in a place where you can get very dead very quickly.

Of course, the bottom line is that Waxman hopes that if his investigation provides enough cover for Democrats in Congress to stop aid to the corrupt Iraqi government, Iraq may yet fail. That worked before when the Democratic Congress progressively cut back on aid to South Vietnam after our troops were out of the fight. Our forces never lost while they were in South Vietnam, but Congress made sure Vietnam fell after they left.

Snapshot: Iraq, October 6

A snapshot in time of anything can't tell the whole story or firmly establish things like patterns. Yet they can give an indication of what is happening. Reuters offers a daily round-up of news from Iraq, much if not most of which doesn't get much coverage. Here is October 6:

(Reuters) - Following are security developments in Iraq at 10:00 a.m. BST on Saturday.

NEAR HAWIJA - Gunmen killed a police lieutenant and wounded a civilian when they shot at their car outside Hawija, 70 km (43 miles) southwest of Kirkuk, police said.

RIYADH - A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol wounded two policemen and one civilian in central Riyadh, 60 km (40 miles) southwest of Kirkuk, police said.

KIRKUK - A car bomb targeting a police patrol wounded four policemen and a civilian in southern Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

SAMARRA - Iraqi army, police and local groups working with U.S. forces known as "concerned citizens" killed eight gunmen, detained 37 and liberated 27 truck drivers held hostage during an operation on Thursday southwest of Samarra, 100 km (62 miles) north of Baghdad. Four members of the Iraqi security forces and four concerned citizens were killed, U.S. military said.

FALLUJA - Iraqi police killed a gunman and detained 12 others in an operation in Falluja, 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad, on Friday, police said.

BAGHDAD - Four bodies were found in different districts of Baghdad on Friday, police said.

KHALIS - Iraqi and U.S. forces arrested an insurgent company commander on Friday in the town of Khalis, 80 km (50 miles) north of Baghdad, U.S. military said. Continued...

ISKANDARIYA - Beheaded body with signs of torture belonging to member of Sunni Arab tribe working with U.S. forces was found in Iskandariya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

MUSSAYAB - Body of a child with gunshot wounds was found in Mussayab, 60 km (40 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

MAHAWEEL - Gunmen killed an off-duty member of Iraqi special forces in Mahaweel, 75 km (40 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

Three things come across clearly. One, the Iraqi police are deep in it, as targets and as actors. Two, the incident in Samarra is of a type that we wouldn't have read about since the invasion until fairly recently. Iraqi army, police, local civilians and U.S. forces kill eight hostage takers and capture another 37, while rescuing 27 hostages. Four uniformed and four civilian Iraqs died in the gunfight against the bad guys. Even as a snapshot, what does that say about where popular sentiment is leaning? Three, the last three incidents, at Iskandiriya, Mussayab and Mahaweel, all south of Baghdad, indicate a high intensity fight at the local level, with identified individual targets.

It is also worth noting, even if just in a one day snapshot - no attacks on coalition military forces or even the Iraqi military other than an individual assassination of an Iraqi Special Forces soldier. Where the Iraqi and coalition forces were involved in some numbers, they were the ones taking the attack to the enemy.