Here’s more of that mess left in Iraq by the Neoconservatives and Bush:
BAGHDAD (AP) — A suicide bomber blew himself up among a crowd of Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad and another detonated his explosives inside a cafe north of the capital, the deadliest of several attacks across Iraq on Saturday that killed at least 66 people.
The killings, which also included attacks on journalists and anti-extremist Sunni fighters, are part of the deadliest surge in violence to hit Iraq in five years. The accelerating bloodshed is raising fears that the country is falling back into the spiral of violence that brought it to the edge of civil war in the years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
The extent of the carnage from the evening attack on the pilgrims became clearer as midnight approached, when officials sharply revised the death toll upward to at least 42. Another 80 were reported injured.
The bomber detonated his explosives at a checkpoint as the pilgrims passed through the largely Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah en route to a prominent Shiite shrine in the nearby neighborhood of Kazimiyah, according to police officials. At least four policemen manning the checkpoint were among the dead, the officials said.
Around the same time, another suicide bomber blew himself up in a cafe in the town of Balad, a largely Shiite town surrounded by Sunni communities about 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Baghdad. Balad Mayor Malik Lefta said at least 13 people were killed and 22 were wounded in that attack.
He said the cafe was the same one hit by a deadly suicide bombing in August.
This is what happens when you start wars based upon bad intelligence from Germany; and then do not bother to “trust, buy verify.” You get an unstable middle east and a country racked by violence. This is what happens when you allow a group of people, who make up 2% of the population of the United States and even less of the rest of the World; direct your foreign policy. When they are not doing this, they are persecuting Christians.
They, like the Muslims; are truly a menace and should be treated as such.
The story via DailyMail in the UK and I highly recommend that you go over and look at those pictures, they are riveting as hell.
British and American nationals have undoubtedly been caught up in the ‘callous and cowardly and brutal’ terror attack at a shopping centre in Kenya that has left 39 people dead and 150 injured, according to Foreign Secretary William Hague.
Mr Hague said ‘we should be ready for that and aware of that’ as he revealed a rapid deployment team is being sent to Kenya to help in the aftermath of the atrocity at an upmarket shopping centre in the capital.
According to the Sunday Telegraph, a pregnant woman was among several Britons caught up in the attack.
Somali-based militant group al-Shabaab has now claimed responsibility for the atrocity in which men armed with guns and grenades stormed the mall and targeted non-Muslims.
Terrorist gunmen remain at the scene and police officers supported by the army are still fighting to bring the situation to an end.
Mr Hague added the Government’s security committee COBRA had met and was sending a deployment team to ‘re-enforce’ the British Consulate team in Nairobi.
‘Our High Commission staff in Nairobi are working very hard, visiting hospitals, trying to make sure that they are aware of British nationals who might have been in the area or caught up in this,’ he said.
‘We are sending a rapid deployment team to reinforce that work, which will be particularly important if the situation carries on. We have offered the Kenyan authorities any other assistance and of course we will keep in touch with them about that.’
Hannah Chisholm, a Briton visiting Nairobi, said she and 60 others barricaded themselves into a large storeroom.
She told the BBC: ‘We kept running to different places but the shots were getting louder so we barricaded ourselves along with about 60 others into a large storeroom. There were children hiding with us as well as someone who had been shot.’
She added: ‘The gunfire was loud and we were scared but at that point we thought the gunmen were thieves so we assumed they wouldn’t try to reach the storeroom.’
Unreal. So much for that whole thing of, “we have to fight them there, so we don’t have to fight them here” eh? Unbelievable.
One picture that really stands out is this one here:
The look on that man’s face says it all. He is obviously a Muslim and he is watching these people kill in the name of his religion. My heart goes out to him, as you have to know that this is killing him inside. So sad. 🙁
There needs to be reform in Islam and these people need to be called out on a daily basis in the middle east.
Florida officials have arrested radical anti-Islam preacher Terry Jones as he was on his way to a Sept. 11 event where he planned to burn 2,998 Korans, according to local news reports Wednesday.
Jones is best known for stoking Muslim anger by publicly desecrating the religion’s holy book, sometimes with international consequences.
This time law enforcement officials intervened before Jones could carry out his plans for a ceremonial Sept. 11 burning.
Jones had planned to set alight 2,998 Korans at a Polk County park for the 12-year anniversary, with each Koran “representing one of the victims, every person who was murdered by Islam,” according to one of his news releases — a casualty total that perhaps accidentally included the 19 hijackers.
County officials had reportedly denied Jones’ permit application to use the Loyce E. Harpe Park near Mulberry for the burning.
Before the event, which Jones had planned to attend anyway, the Gainesville-based preacher was reportedly arrested for driving with kerosene in a barbecue grill, officials told The Ledger, a Polk County newspaper. A local ABC affiliate reported that Jones had Korans inside the grill.
The Polk County Sheriff’s Office couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
Now, about why I say this: The answer is found in a video that is found on my long bio page:
That, and that alone is why Terry Jones belongs in jail. He is trying to stoke the ire of the Muslim community. Contrary to what some might actually believe, there are peaceful honorable Muslims that live here in America. Burning the Koran simply is insulting all Muslims for the sake of a small number of radicals.
Last time this idiot did this, America Military staff were killed in Afghanistan. This should not be allowed to happen. There is a personal responsibility that comes with our freedoms; and if someone like this guy misuses the freedoms that he has, he should be punished for it.
This is not a liberal or progressive opinion, this is simply a matter of common sense. You don’t yell fire in a movie theater; so why stoke the ire of the Muslim community? It is idiotic and does nothing to advance the cause of Liberty. Sadly, we live in a time, where knee-jerk reactionaries exist and because of this, America is much poorer place.
American version of it or not. I simply do not trust it and this here is why. This comes via Memri TV:
Some of you might say, “But, aren’t you a Buchananite type?” Yes, indeed I am. Which simply means that I am not a fan of Wilsonian Foreign Policy and that’s all it means. If Al-Jazeera TV is putting this sort of garbage on it’s Arab speaking network, it has zero business being in the United States of America. This is nothing more than Anti-Jewish propaganda and it furthers the blood libels that the terrorists thrive on and use to commit acts of carnage.
If our President were actually worth a tinkers damn, he would tell Al-Jazeera TV, “You either do something about that, or you can pack your little network up and go back to mecca, where you truly belong.” But, because we have a President who kowtows down to Arabs and their religion, instead of defending Jewish Americans, you have this network Al-Jazeera TV here to brainwash Americans into believe that 9/11 was somehow justified.
…and that, my friends, is a great American tragedy.
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
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?
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.
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.
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
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. 😡
“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.
Yet, they call we Christians and the Jews the backward, intolerant types:
It shames me that I am part of a society that not only sanctons this savagery, but demonizes and destroys those of us who speak against it. This will not end well, folks. The horror is unspeakable, the silence is monstrous.
Instead they run this kind of nonsense.
“Eleven dead, 30 injured in Nigeria church attack” Bangkok Post, November 25, 2012 (hat tipto Armaros)
Two suicide attacks on a church in an army barracks in the northern Nigerian town of Jaji on Sunday left eleven people dead and 30 injured, the army said.
“Eleven people, mostly worshippers, were killed while 30 are in the hospitals with various degrees of injuries,” national army spokesman Brigadier General Bola Koleosho told AFP.
A military officer who did not want to be named said the Protestant church was hit by two explosions.
“The first blast caused no casualties and curious worshippers gathered around the scene looking at the debris… and that was when the second blast happened,” he said.
