Bombing victim speaks out about Muslims and Terrorism

Glad to see this. 🙂

The Video is here. I was going to post it here, but it is an auto start embed and those drive people crazy! So, go to the link to view it!

The Story:

A Boston Marathon bombing victim hospitalized for weeks after the blasts lashed out at the mother of the accused bombers, calling Zubeidat Tsarnaeva “vile” for her jihad-laced rants and denials.

Michelle L’Heureux, a 38-year-old John Hancock consultant, told the Herald yesterday it’s time to stop being “politically correct” and speak out — making her one of the first victims to stand up to the terror-talking Chechen family.

“I feel a little bit of hatred towards her. I think she is a vile person,” L’Heureux said of the mom. “If you don’t like our country, get out. It’s as simple as that.”

L’Heureux lost most of her left knee in the blasts, and 30 percent of her hearing in her left ear. Her left arm is riddled with shrapnel scars, and there’s a piece of metal still inside her leg. She was 8 feet away from the first blast on Boylston Street. She came to the city to see her boyfriend cross the finish lin

via Bombing victim calls suspects’ mom ‘vile’ | Boston Herald.

If only more liberal Democrats felt this way, maybe we would have actually won the war on terror. Instead, because of the Democrat’s almost allergic reaction to war and because of the bungled methods of the Bush Administration — we lost it and badly. Oh, and BTW, I have seen where people have blamed this guy here for the loss of the Afghan war. Sorry, but that is bunch of flipping malarkey and I think the person that wrote that knows it; he is just looking to deflect the fact that Bush’s mishandling of the war in Afghanistan and the overselling of the war in Iraq.

Plus too, I believe we pulled out too early of Iraq and Afghanistan; we could have done it better, but we needed more time. But, when you have a war weary nation, what can you do?

Others: Weekly Standard, The Jawa Report and Instapundit

No, Sorry, Dick (head) Cheney, I do NOT trust you or your idiotic successor in the White House!

Ol’ Dick (head) Cheney says that we ought to just trust the Government.

The Video: (Via Think Progress)

Okay here is the little small problem with trusting Dick Cheney and his boss George W. Bush, they lied, as in like 935 times in a row, during their Presidency and Vice Presidency.

Prove it, you say? Sure.

Via The Center for Public Integrity, which is as follows:

The Center for Public Integrity was founded in 1989 by Charles Lewis. We are one of the country’s oldest and largest nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news organizations. Our mission: To enhance democracy by revealing abuses of power, corruption and betrayal of trust by powerful public and private institutions, using the tools of investigative journalism.

Anyhow, here is why I don’t trust Neocons, nor do I trust Democratic Party liberals or Neo-leftists:

President Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-highest total in the two-year period, with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each made 109 false statements, followed by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with 56), Cheney (with 48), and McClellan (with 14).

The massive database at the heart of this project juxtaposes what President Bush and these seven top officials were saying for public consumption against what was known, or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis. This fully searchable database includes the public statements, drawn from both primary sources (such as official transcripts) and secondary sources (chiefly major news organizations) over the two years beginning on September 11, 2001. It also interlaces relevant information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches, and interviews.

Consider, for example, these false public statements made in the run-up to war:

On August 26, 2002, in an address to the national convention of the Veteran of Foreign Wars, Cheney flatly declared: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” In fact, former CIA Director George Tenet later recalled, Cheney’s assertions went well beyond his agency’s assessments at the time. Another CIA official, referring to the same speech, told journalist Ron Suskind, “Our reaction was, ‘Where is he getting this stuff from?’ “

In the closing days of September 2002, with a congressional vote fast approaching on authorizing the use of military force in Iraq, Bush told the nation in his weekly radio address: “The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given. . . . This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year.” A few days later, similar findings were also included in a much-hurried National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction — an analysis that hadn’t been done in years, as the intelligence community had deemed it unnecessary and the White House hadn’t requested it.

In July 2002, Rumsfeld had a one-word answer for reporters who asked whether Iraq had relationships with Al Qaeda terrorists: “Sure.” In fact, an assessment issued that same month by the Defense Intelligence Agency (and confirmed weeks later by CIA Director Tenet) found an absence of “compelling evidence demonstrating direct cooperation between the government of Iraq and Al Qaeda.” What’s more, an earlier DIA assessment said that “the nature of the regime’s relationship with Al Qaeda is unclear.”

On May 29, 2003, in an interview with Polish TV, President Bush declared: “We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories.” But as journalist Bob Woodward reported in State of Denial, days earlier a team of civilian experts dispatched to examine the two mobile labs found in Iraq had concluded in a field report that the labs were not for biological weapons. The team’s final report, completed the following month, concluded that the labs had probably been used to manufacture hydrogen for weather balloons.

On January 28, 2003, in his annual State of the Union address, Bush asserted: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.” Two weeks earlier, an analyst with the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research sent an email to colleagues in the intelligence community laying out why he believed the uranium-purchase agreement “probably is a hoax.”

On February 5, 2003, in an address to the United Nations Security Council, Powell said: “What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. I will cite some examples, and these are from human sources.” As it turned out, however, two of the main human sources to which Powell referred had provided false information. One was an Iraqi con artist, code-named “Curveball,” whom American intelligence officials were dubious about and in fact had never even spoken to. The other was an Al Qaeda detainee, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, who had reportedly been sent to Eqypt by the CIA and tortured and who later recanted the information he had provided. Libi told the CIA in January 2004 that he had “decided he would fabricate any information interrogators wanted in order to gain better treatment and avoid being handed over to [a foreign government].”

The false statements dramatically increased in August 2002, with congressional consideration of a war resolution, then escalated through the mid-term elections and spiked even higher from January 2003 to the eve of the invasion.

It was during those critical weeks in early 2003 that the president delivered his State of the Union address and Powell delivered his memorable U.N. presentation.

In addition to their patently false pronouncements, Bush and these seven top officials also made hundreds of other statements in the two years after 9/11 in which they implied that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or links to Al Qaeda. Other administration higher-ups, joined by Pentagon officials and Republican leaders in Congress, also routinely sounded false war alarms in the Washington echo chamber.

The cumulative effect of these false statements — amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts — was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war. Some journalists — indeed, even some entire news organizations — have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, “independent” validation of the Bush administration’s false statements about Iraq.

The “ground truth” of the Iraq war itself eventually forced the president to backpedal, albeit grudgingly. In a 2004 appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, for example, Bush acknowledged that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. And on December 18, 2005, with his approval ratings on the decline, Bush told the nation in a Sunday-night address from the Oval Office: “It is true that Saddam Hussein had a history of pursuing and using weapons of mass destruction. It is true that he systematically concealed those programs, and blocked the work of U.N. weapons inspectors. It is true that many nations believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. But much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As your president, I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq. Yet it was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power.”

Bush stopped short, however, of admitting error or poor judgment; instead, his administration repeatedly attributed the stark disparity between its prewar public statements and the actual “ground truth” regarding the threat posed by Iraq to poor intelligence from a Who’s Who of domestic agencies.

On the other hand, a growing number of critics, including a parade of former government officials, have publicly — and in some cases vociferously — accused the president and his inner circle of ignoring or distorting the available intelligence. In the end, these critics say, it was the calculated drumbeat of false information and public pronouncements that ultimately misled the American people and this nation’s allies on their way to war.

Bush and the top officials of his administration have so far largely avoided the harsh, sustained glare of formal scrutiny about their personal responsibility for the litany of repeated, false statements in the run-up to the war in Iraq. There has been no congressional investigation, for example, into what exactly was going on inside the Bush White House in that period. Congressional oversight has focused almost entirely on the quality of the U.S. government’s pre-war intelligence — not the judgment, public statements, or public accountability of its highest officials. And, of course, only four of the officials — Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz — have testified before Congress about Iraq.

Short of such review, this project provides a heretofore unavailable framework for examining how the U.S. war in Iraq came to pass. Clearly, it calls into question the repeated assertions of Bush administration officials that they were the unwitting victims of bad intelligence.

Above all, the 935 false statements painstakingly presented here finally help to answer two all-too-familiar questions as they apply to Bush and his top advisers: What did they know, and when did they know it?

A video:

The real sick and sad part is this; the same people that are having a hissy fit on the right about this program existing under Obama, are the same ones who were perfectly fine with it existing under Bush. In other words, they trusted the program under Bush. like idiots. My question to that crowd is this; why do you not trust Obama? Because he is black or because he is a Democratic Party liberal?

Anyone and I mean anyone, who puts their trust in this Government of ours, based upon partisanship is nothing more than a darned fool in my opinion. Both of these political parties are two sides of the same coin and that is corruption and big Government socialism. Both parties promote it, both parties contribute to it. Government hand outs are Government hand outs; whether it be in the forum of welfare or Government subsidies. It is big Government statist and it flies in the face of our Constitution and in the face of what this great Nation was founded upon.

Others: Prairie Weather

QOTD: Obama loses the NYT

WOW….just Wow… 😯

Within hours of the disclosure that the federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights.

Those reassurances have never been persuasive — whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency’s phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism — especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability.

The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it. That is one reason we have long argued that the Patriot Act, enacted in the heat of fear after the 9/11 attacks by members of Congress who mostly had not even read it, was reckless in its assignment of unnecessary and overbroad surveillance powers.

Poop, meet fan.

Others: Alan Colmes’ Liberaland, Politico, BuzzFeed, Yahoo! News, Washington Post, Hit & Run, The Monkey Cage, Washington Wire, The World’s Greatest …, The Daily Caller, Law Blog,VentureBeat, Business Insider, Mediaite, The PJ Tatler, Washington Free Beacon, Hot Air, Weasel Zippers, The Huffington Post, Salon, ComPost, The Week, Guardian, NO QUARTER USA NET, First Read, Mashable, American Spectator, New Republic, msnbc.com, Washington Monthly, Daily Kos,The Atlantic Wire, Firedoglake, TechCrunch, The Maddow Blog and Library of Law & Liberty – Via Memeorandum

The US continues spying on phones under Obama

There are a ton of opinions on this subject and we’ll get to those in a moment.

But first the story:

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America’s largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.

The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an “ongoing, daily basis” to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.

The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19.

Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered.

via NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily | World news | The Guardian.

But, there is a big difference this time:

Under the Bush administration, officials in security agencies had disclosed to reporters the large-scale collection of call records data by the NSA, but this is the first time significant and top-secret documents have revealed the continuation of the practice on a massive scale under President Obama.

The unlimited nature of the records being handed over to the NSA is extremely unusual. Fisa court orders typically direct the production of records pertaining to a specific named target who is suspected of being an agent of a terrorist group or foreign state, or a finite set of individually named targets.

Which sounds about right for the Democrats, because they are perfectly fine with Government of a massive scale.

Now there are two very important opinions on this subject that I want you to see. They are same political slant; however, the opinions are very different. Please go check out Michelle Malkin’s take and Ed Morrissey’s take on this subject. While I agree on Michelle Malkin’s assessment, I really do not agree with her narrative at all. If you are smart and read her a good deal, you will know what I am talking about.

Now there is one thing that Ed Morrissey wrote that I, as an Independent, and someone who believes that the war on terror is a very real thing and that we should at least try to keep America safe, without trampling on our constitutional rights. I believe this to be very true and very profound statement coming from someone like Mr. Morrissey:

Hypocrisy is an unfortunately ubiquitous condition in politics, but in the case of NSA seizing Verizon’s phone records, it’s particularly widespread. Some of the people expressing outrage for the Obama administration’s efforts at data mining had a different attitude toward it when Bush was in office. Conversely, we’ll see some people defending Obama who considered Bush evil incarnate for the same thing.

Either way, we’re left with the situation of having the federal government seizing private records without any meaningful civil due process that engages the citizens affected, whether that includes actual wiretaps or just cataloguing our calls and movements. Perhaps this will move this issue out of the partisan sphere and into a common ground in which we can all work to define exactly how far we’re willing to go in trading privacy for security. In order to get there, we’d all better recognize the hypocrisy that has abounded on this issue for far too long, and start thinking about higher principles than party affiliation when it comes to national security and constitutional protections.

Now that last part that I underlined, is something I wholeheartedly agree with. When the story broke about Bush and Co. came about the wiretaps, I remember Keith Olbermann doing a special comment on it and I admired him for standing up. Now, where’s Keith? Where are the liberals who thought that this was much too intrusive? Where are they now? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

My hat tip goes to Glenn Greenwald for putting principles over partisanship and getting this story to the masses. Glenn has been about the only liberal who has stood up and pointed out that Obama Administration has continued the policies of the George W. Bush Administration and in some cases; like this one here — has expanded them to an alarming degree. Yes, this is overreach and it is alarming and I do hope the Congress does something about it.

Others: Hullabaloo, Yahoo! News, Washington Wire, Washington Monthly, New York Times,ThinkProgress, Politico, Firedoglake, BuzzFeed, CNN, Forbes, Joshua Foust, The World’s Greatest …, msnbc.com, The Atlantic Wire, JustOneMinute, American Spectator, Democracy in America,WorldViews, TIME, Business Insider, Examiner, The Fix, News Desk, Associated Press, New Republic, Daily Kos, The Maddow Blog, Mashable, Wake up America, Wonkblog, The Huffington Post, Taylor Marsh, The Volokh Conspiracy, Mediaite, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Library of Law & Liberty, Moon of Alabama, The Daily Caller, TechCrunch, Wall Street Journal, Engadget, Betsy’s Page, Patterico’s Pontifications, AllThingsD, Outside the Beltway, Post Politics, Informed Comment,Nice Deb, Real Clear Politics, Wired, The Gateway Pundit, The Week, Illinois Review,AMERICAblog, Pirate’s Cove, CANNONFIRE, VentureBeat, No More Mister Nice Blog, First Read,Prairie Weather, The PJ Tatler, Telegraph, The Hinterland Gazette, Alan Colmes’ Liberaland, Weasel Zippers, Jammie Wearing Fools, GigaOM, Corrente, The Spectacle Blog, Gawker, Boing Boing, The Raw Story, Shakesville, Secrecy News, The Verge, Conservatives4Palin, susiemadrak.com, Sense of Events, Taegan Goddard’s …, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, The BLT, emptywheel and Overlawyered Via Memeorandum

Sad: A soldier’s dying letter

If this one does not make you misty eyed, nothing ever will. Sad Crying

Via AlterNet: (Update: Original found here)

I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

[…]

I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.

I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.

My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.

This letter saddens me to my core. The Republican Party should read this, and really take stock of whom they choose for President of the United States of America. This above is why I started “The Populist” back in 2006. Because I knew what George W. Bush was doing in Iraq was simply wrong. Furthermore, I knew he was moving the goal posts on Iraq as well.

In 2007, my blog was hacked, either by Conservatives who didn’t like me or by hackers from another Country. Either way, by that time, I had began to feel that the Democrats had begun to lose it anyhow. So, I started “Political Byline” for two reasons. One, to continue where I left off with the earlier blog and secondly to go after some of the more idiotic elements of the left. What that blog became, however, was a “Tea Party” blog and sometimes, I sort of regret that. I fully admit, that at time, I got caught up in the furor of Anti-Obama’ism. At some point, I realized that I was not writing what I truly felt, and because of that; I backed away from the right.

In 2011, after President Obama declared, for all intents and purposes, the Iraq War over; I ended Political Byline’s tenure and put it into inactive status. I wrote there for from December of 2007 till October 2011. I fought the fight that I came to fight against. My politics did change a good deal. I never was much of a partisan at all, which was, most likely my downfall. Which might explain why this blog here, is not very popular at all. Sad

I did, however, come to respect what Bush did, and why he did it and I also learned that a good deal of what the liberal left says about Iraq; this letter above being a perfect example of that — was and still is, a big lie. Some of it is true, and some of it; is nothing more than anti-war propaganda.

Still again, I believe that the Republican Party and the Democratic Party both, their leaders; need to read this letter above and really think long and hard about electing a Wilsonian Presidential candidate. Because this above ought to be a textbook example, of why the United States of America should never pursue an Wilsonian foreign policy agenda, ever again.

My thoughts and prayers go to this young man, may he find the peace and comfort; and yes, even rest, that he truly deserves. Praying

I dedicate this video, to ALL of the Military people that we lost in a very, very unpopular war:

Quote of the Day

Over the past 10 years, there have been few days when the war in Iraq was absent from my thoughts. People often ask me whether I have regrets. It seems absurdly presumptuous to answer the question. I could have set myself on fire in protest on the White House lawn and the war would have proceeded without me. And yet … all of us who advocated for the war have had to do some reckoning. If the war achieved some positive gains, its unnecessary costs—in human life, in money, to the prestige and credibility of the U.S. government—are daunting and dismaying. If we’d found the WMD, it would have been different. If we’d kept better order in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam, it would have been different. If more Iraqis had welcomed the invasion as we expected, it would have been different. If the case for the war had been argued in a less contrived and predetermined way, it would have been different.

But it wasn’t different. Those of us who were involved—in whatever way—bear the responsibility.

Has CPAC gone politically correct?

It appears so:

For the last four years, Pamela Geller of AtlasShrugs.com and the American Freedom Defense Initiative have held events at CPAC featuring guests she invites to discuss the influence of Islamism on America. But this year, the American Conservative Union (ACU) has no room for Geller or her message.

In 2009, she brought Geert Wilders, who is the head of the third largest party in the Netherlands and has spoken out against the Islamization of his country.

In 2010 she held an event that her organization, The American Freedom Defense Initiative, hosted, titled “Jihad: The Political Third Rail”, with speakers like Allen West, Wafa Sultan, Simon Deng, Anders Gravers, and Steve Coughlin.

In 2011, she hosted an event discussing the Ground Zero Mosque with 9/11 families. In 2012, the event was titled “Islamic Law in America.”

In years past, the events were standing room only thanks to their popularity, but that apparently was not enough to counter pressure brought to bear from somewhere to exclude Geller’s message.

Geller and her coworkers recently won a court battle allowing them to post ads that countered the #Myjihad ad campaign that posited that jihad was a peaceful word. Yet despite the law’s defense of her rights, the ACU will not stand up for her against critics

via CPAC Turns Away Pamela Geller.

You know there is nothing more that I despise more than racism, from blacks and towards blacks — and that is political correctness. I have not always agreed with Pamela Geller; her words and sometimes her tactics; but damn it, Freedom of Speech, is freedom of speech is freedom of speech! 😡 If CPAC is now starting to squish Anti-Jihad bloggers right to point out the truth, then they can just take the one-way train to irrelevancy!

For the record: I have never been to a CPAC, nor most likely will I ever be attending one. More so now that something like this is going on. Also too, this buffoon here can go play in the kiddy pool. Idiot Morally depraved buffoons. I got no love them nor their lifestyle, nor does God. 😡

Others: Atlas Shrugs, Jihad Watch, The Other McCain, American Power

Update: Counter Jihad Report Links in, as does I am 41. Thanks Ya’ll! 😀

Update #2: ‘Da Tech Guy Links in, Thank You! 😀

The Further Consequences of Wilsonian Foreign Policy in Iraq

This is what happens when you invade sovereign nations based upon bad intelligence and do not bother to verify said intelligence.

BAGHDAD – Car bombs struck two outdoor markets and a group of taxi vans in Shiite areas across Iraq on Friday, killing at least 36 people and wounding nearly 100 in the bloodiest day in more than two months, as minority Sunnis staged large anti-government protests.

Sunni protesters have rejected calls to violence by an Al Qaeda-linked group, but there is concern that Sunni insurgents could step up attacks ahead of the April 20 provincial elections — the first country-wide vote since the U.S. troop withdrawal more than a year ago.

via 4 car bombs at outdoor markets in Iraq kill at least 36, wound 100 | Fox News.

Now I am not going to sit here and write a posting blaming Bush for all the above. Yes, Bush was wrong about Iraq; but Bush has not been President since 2009, when he left office. Obama took the reigns of the Country and he now is the President, so, basically, Iraq was Obama’s baby when he took office. There are some who believe that Obama removed our troops too early; to be quite honest with you, I really do not agree with that at all. Because to be honest with you, our presence there was causing a good deal of friction in that Country, or at the very least, adding to the friction that was already there. Now the total anti-war people say that, if we would have never invaded Iraq, this above would not be happening; because Saddam would not tolerate it. This is true, but Saddam also was a brutal dictator, who did horrible things to his people as well. So, while it is not a good thing that we invaded that country, we did get rid of someone who was a horrible tyrant. This is why I never took, and still do not take a hard stance on the Iraq War and the middle east; because it is such a complex subject, and seems to get more complex by the minute. This is why I never really bought into the, “blood for oil” meme by the Democrats and the anti-war crowd. I did feel however, that once we got Saddam, we should have started making the moves to leave the Country.

However, I will say this; this Wilsonian bungle that did happen in Iraq, will be a black mark on America for a very long time to come. The Wilsonian foreign policy crowds biggest flaw, is that they cannot see past the end of their noses. They never look past the “here and now.” They always live in the moment. They do not stop to think about what might happen down the road; they never do. All they care about is defending Israel, no matter the cost of life or money. This is their fatal flaw and they have ruined America’s credibility around the World. What gets me is, how the Republicans like to blame Obama for ruining America’s standing in the World. The problem is, Obama is a very little part of that; the Neoconservatives, with their Wilsonian foreign policy ruined America’ reputation in just eight years time. True the Democrats did destroy the housing market and the economy. But, our standing in the World was done by Bush and the Neocons.

Anyone that tells you anything different than that, is either lying or a partisan. But, then again, I repeat myself.

New book says My Lai massacre was not an isolated incident

I did kind of suspect this.

The Nation reports:

The My Lai massacre, in which US soldiers gunned down hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians, shocked America and helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War. Now, a new book by Nick Turse, an Investigative Fund Fellow at The Nation Institute, has revealed that My Lai was not an isolated atrocity: The United States deliberately killed civilians throughout the course of the conflict.

The killing of non-combatants “stemmed from deliberate policies that were dictated at the highest levels of the US military” and was amplified by excessive firepower, Turse said in an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air. The author also recounted how he slept in his car in the National Archives parking lot for several nights in order to copy files on atrocities that were later removed.

Check out the NPR interview:

[powerpress]

I am not quote from the NPR story, go over and read it, please. It make for some seriously riveting reading. This massacre right here, is why I never really cared to go involved with the Military. Because I know that sub-culture very well and it is not a Christian one, I can tell you that much. Another reason was a bullying incident, that happened when I was about 19 years old and working my first job. I really do not want to get into details about it. But, after that happened, I decided I wanted nothing to do with the Military at all.

All I will say about it is this: It is a good thing that I was not armed with a gun, the day that little incident happened. Because if I had been, I would have written this as a former prison convict, who went to jail for second degree murder of two Military recruiters. What happened to me, should never happen to American citizen, who decides that Military is not for them. But, it did, and it made a very lasting impression on a 19-year-old kid, namely me.

Now do you understand?

Taking Religion out of the Military?

I have mixed feelings about this one:

“Soldiers with minority religious beliefs and atheists often feel like second-class citizens when Christianity is seemingly officially endorsed by their own base,” American Atheists president David Silverman told Fox News. “We are very happy the Pentagon and the Army decided to do the right thing.” A military spokesman told Fox News the cross was literally dismantled and will be removed from the base to be in “compliance with Army regulations and to avoid any misconception of religious favoritism or disrespect.” “After a Christian prayer, the cross was removed from the roof of the chapel,” the spokesman said. “During the removal, the cross was dismantled; however the cross was reassembled and currently awaits transportation to a larger operational base.” The military told Fox News the cross will only be brought out during Christian services and will be designated as a “non-permanent religious symbol.” Silverman said a Christian chapel on an Army base in Afghanistan could have put American troops in danger. “It inflames this Muslim versus Christian mentality,” he said. “This is not a Muslim versus Christian war — but if the Army base has a large chapel on it that has been converted to Christian-only, it sends a message that could be interpreted as hostile to Islam.” An Army spokesman said all chapels must be religiously neutral. “The primary purpose of making a chapel a neutral, multi-use facility is to accommodate the free exercise of religion for all faith groups using it,” he said. “We take the spiritual fitness of our Soldiers seriously and encourage them to practice their faith and exercise their beliefs however they choose.” Retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, of the Family Research Council, told Fox News a Christian cleansing of the military is under way. “I don’t think you can categorize it any other way,” he said. “There is a strong effort, led partially by the Administration as well as by atheist groups to destroy the identity of who we are as a nation and that means robbing us of our history.” —- Military: Crosses Removed ‘Out of Respect for Other Faiths’ | FOX News & Commentary: Todd Starnes

On one hand, I would hate to think that having Christian symbols on a battle front could be putting our Military at risk. On the other hand, I would hate to see Christianity being removed from the Military entirely. However, we are in a Muslim Nation is Afghan region; one would think that the Military would want to be respectful of those people and their culture.

It is a mixed bag, and all the more reason why we really need to get out of that Country. Our mission is done there; we killed Osama and we need to leave. We do not want to make the same mistake the Russians made there. Besides all that, Al-Qaeda has moved into other regions and is much more a threat to other interests in other parts for the world now.

So, to this Independent, the quicker we leave, the better.