Why does America always do stupid things like this?

I will never, ever understand why America does stupid things like this right here, ever!

The Obama administration on Friday made an emergency contribution of more than $20 million for urgent relief efforts in the Gaza Strip, a day after the United Nations launched a flash appeal for $613 million to help Palestinians recover from Israel’s three-week military operation there.
The State Department said President Barack Obama had authorized the use of $20.3 million from the U.S. Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance Fund for humanitarian assistance to the 1.4 million Palestinians in Gaza.
The money will go to U.N. agencies and the International Committee of the Red Cross, which are distributing emergency food assistance, providing medical care and temporary shelter, creating temporary employment and restoring access to electricity and potable water, the department said in a statement.
The Israeli offensive killed nearly 1,300 Palestinians, including hundreds of civilians, and caused an estimated $2 billion in damage, Palestinian officials say. The assault was launched to halt years of Hamas rocket fire on southern Israel.
via US puts up $20 million for Gaza relief – AP.

You want to know where this money is going to end up? In the hands of Hamas, the very terrorist organization that was attacking Israel, in the first place. This money is supposed to be reserved for American Citizens, not for foreign countries! You know, I find it absolutely amazing that the United States of America, would support a military attack on Gaza by Israel to defeat terrorists; only to have them send aid to the very people that Israel attacked. Not only this, our government is using money that is specifically earmarked for the people of the United States of America. This is an outrage! Someone should be complaining to the high Heavens about it!

The reason this outrages me so much is this; yeah, that money might go to American agencies approved by our Government, but ultimately, it will end up right back into the hands of the Hamas terrorists.

I will never understand why America continues to prop up those they claim are terrorists.

Liberals whine about Fox News asking Jackass Murtha's constituents "Would want these people in your backyard"

This pretty sad, and a bit stupid.

Rep. Jack Murtha (D-PA) said last week that the U.S. could hold the detainees in federal prisons, just like we hold thousands of other dangerous inmates. This morning, Fox and Friends responded by sending a reporter to Murtha’s district to flash photos of suspected terrorists — their only identification being Muslim headgear — and ask residents, “Would you want a guy like this living in your backyard?”
via Think Progress » Fox Shows Photos Of Muslim Men: ‘Would You Want A Guy Like This Living In Your Backyard?’.

Of course, my fellow Conservatives have a better idea.

Fox News Reports:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday shrugged off Republican suggestions that the federal government reopen Alcatraz prison in her San Francisco district to house detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
President Obama this week signed an executive order calling for the closure of the prison at Guantanamo within the year. Republican Rep. Bill Young then suggested to White House counsel Greg Craig that the prisoners who could not be released back to their home countries or sent to a third country be put up in “the Rock,” the famous military installation and prison that closed down in 1963 and is now part of the National Park Service.
Asked whether that was a serious proposal, Pelosi said, “It is — no.”

Hey, here’s a better idea, how about putting them all on a nice barge, in a cage; where they cannot escape. Tow the barge out to say the middle of the Atlantic or Pacific ocean , far enough away from land, where nobody will get hurt from the radiation and nuke the damned thing. Will save taxpayers money. I know, I really do not want my tax dollars being used to house, feed, and cloth a bunch of cold-blooded murders.

Of course, this will never happen, seeing that the Moonbat Liberals are terrorist appeasers and all.

Why we can never withdraw from Afghanistan, until the job is done

(Please note, when it originally wrote this post, I was very angry. After some thought and reflection; I felt it best to edit this posting and basically rewrite from a non-emotional stance. My apologies to those who read the original and were offended.)

It seems that the Liberals, seeing that Iraq is a non-issue and the rest of the United States and the World, and the media is focused on the Economy. The Liberals are attempting to garner support for a withdrawal and retreat from Afghanistan. Yes, Afghanistan.

via “The Nation”:

I want to let people know about a valuable coalition I’m working with. It’s focused on encouraging the Obama administration to rethink its plans to escalate militarily in Afghanistan. As I explain in Spencer Ackerman’s good piece today, I want this administration to succeed but I believe it risks endangering its promise and draining resources that are vital to economic recovery at home and abroad if it follows this course For more on what I believe is a smarter course– strategically, morally and politically–for what Obama and his team could do to get Afghanistan right (the name of the website this coalition just launched) check out my recent editor’s cut.

Here’s the The site promoting this absurd idea. What the Liberals want is for Obama to pursue a non-violent way of getting Osama Bin Laden.

You know, I must wonder aloud.

What would all 2,998 of the people killed in the attacks would think? What would the 6,291+ people, who were injured think about this?

I do not like using images from the 9/11 attacks for political purposes, because I feel that it is disrespectful to the dead. But I think in the case, the people that died on September 11, 2001 deserve to be defended here.

I know it has been a long time, but has America forgotten?

Has it been that long now? Have the images been forgotten?

Have the memories faded that fast? Of the suffering the pain, the shock and grief, has it become a faint memory in the pages of humanity?

Have the September 11’th attacks become so linked to Iraq that we have forgotten what happened on 9/11 and where the attackers came from?

Has it all just slipped away?

Have the names of those who died just become names? …and not people?

People around the world mourned with us

(German School Memorial)

(Texas A & M)

( U.S. Embassy – London, England)

(Prague, Czech Republic)

(The American Embassy in Berne, Switzerland)

I could go on. But I think that you get it. Because of the shift in the political climate, we’ve forgotten what happened on that horrific day 8 years ago. We’ve allowed politics and the mistake in Iraq; take our eye off the ball and that is avenging the deaths of September 11’th 2001.

I only wish that the liberals understood this.

Trackposted to Rosemary’s Thoughts, Woman Honor Thyself, The World According to Carl, The Pink Flamingo, Leaning Straight Up, Democrat=Socialist, Conservative Cat, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

This right here; is why I do not support the war in Iraq

Seriously people, is this right here the sort of future that we want for our Country?

Via Reuters:

BAGHDAD, Jan 24 (Reuters) – U.S. troops shot dead a couple and wounded their eight-year-old daughter during an early morning raid on their house in northern Iraq on Saturday, a senior Iraqi police officer said.
Major-General Turhan Abdul Rahman, deputy chief commander of police in Kirkuk province, said U.S. forces stormed the house of Dhiya Hussein, a former officer in the Iraqi army under Saddam Hussein, in Hawija, 210 km (130 km) north of Baghdad.
A U.S. military spokesman confirmed that a man and a woman had been killed and a child wounded in the raid, but gave no further details.
The spokesman said the incident took place during a joint operation with Iraqi forces. The Iraqi police general said no Iraqi troops were present at the raid.
Kirkuk is one of the northern provinces where unrest persists despite a reduction in violence in the country. U.S. forces there have yet to hand over responsibility for security to Iraqi troops as they have done in most of Iraq. (Reporting by Tim Cocks and Khalid al Ansary; Writing by Tim Cocks; editing by Elizabeth Piper.

However, upon closer examination we find.

This part comes via the AP:

The U.S. military said the operation was “fully coordinated with Iraqi authorities (who were also present for the operation) and conducted with full respect for the Iraqi Constitution and the laws of Iraq .”
After a security agreement took effect Jan. 1 , the U.S. military can conduct operations on their own if Iraqi authorities approve them and they are coordinated with Iraqi authorities.
Ali Dabbagh , the Iraqi government spokesman, said he had no information on the raid.
Brig. Gen Abdel Kareem Khalaf , the spokesman for the Ministry of Interior , told National Public Radio that no Iraqi forces were present at the raid, and he demanded an investigation. It was unclear if the raid was approved, he said.
“We have asked for a joint investigative committee plus we have asked for an explanation from the American side regarding what happened,” he told NPR . “Up to now there were victims on the ground and we have to know why.”
In the small village where Dhia Hussein Ali lived, his children and his father questioned the reason for the raid. Ali was a modest farmer with a small fish pool where he raised the popular carp eaten in Iraq , they said. The man was a former officer in Saddam Hussein‘s army.
Omar Dhia Hussein , 14, was in shock Saturday night. He said in a telephone interview that in the morning he’d seen his parents’ bodies side by side in their bed, the sheets covered in blood. The wall was covered with his father’s blood, he said.
At 2 a.m. , Omar said, he heard a bang of a percussion grenade. When he opened his eyes he saw American soldiersIraqis standing over him in the room where he slept with his two sisters. Except for an Iraqi interpreter there were no with the Americans, he said.
The interpreter shouted at the young boy.
“You are hiding weapons,” Omar recalled the interpreter saying. “Where are you hiding the weapons? You are terrorists, you are hiding weapons in that unfinished house. Confess!”
Omar began to cry and his sisters wept with him, he said. Then the American soldiers left and he heard gunfire next door. The soldiers carried Omar’s wounded sister from the room and took the remaining four children, including Omar, to his uncle’s home. Outside were at least four U.S. Humvees and two SUVs, Omar said. His grandfather, Hussein Ali , who lives next door saw no Iraqi soldiers, either.

….and now the part that bugs the living hell out of me, it’s from the same article:

After the Americans left, Omar and his sisters returned to their home with their grandfather. In his parents’ bedroom, Omar said, he saw his father’s body at the very edge of the right side of the bed, motionless and bloody.
His mother lay in the middle of the bed in a pool of her own blood. She’d been shot in the head, the family said.
“I will avenge my father’s death,” Omar said calmly Saturday evening.

Seriously people, is this the sort of America that we want to leave to our children? An America where people in other countries hate our damned guts, because we came in and just fucking slaughtered people, because we happened to believe that the person was a terrorist? “I will Avenge my father’s death” It’s those words that brings me chills. I mean, that kid is not going to be 14 years old forever. He will grow to be man, a damned bitter man. One who will grow up to hate us.

I sometimes have to ask myself. Who are the real terrorists? Could it be that our actions caused September 11’th 2001? Could it be Osama Bin Laden was paying us back for acts committed by our Military, in the name of democracy?

I’m not saying cut and run, but damn it, something wrong, seriously fucking wrong. 😡

(Via Anti-War)

Living proof that Neo-Cons are flippin' stupid

Neo-Con Tony Blankley calls for a National Mandatory draft.

Watch it:

That’s about 75 degrees worth of stupid. What we need to do, is send a drone or a squadron of fighters into that Region where Osama Bin Laden is holed up, bomb everything that fucking breathes and call it a war and get our fucking people out of there, that’s what we ought to do!

Damned idiot Neo-Cons, they’re about as fucking stupid as liberals!

(Via Anti-War)

Uh-Oh! – Two ex-Guantanamo inmates appear in Al-Qaeda video

This cannot be good, at all.

via AFP: Two ex-Guantanamo inmates appear in Al-Qaeda video

Two men released from the US “war on terror” prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba have appeared in a video posted on a jihadist website, the SITE monitoring service reported.
One of the two former inmates, a Saudi man identified as Abu Sufyan al-Azdi al-Shahri, or prisoner number 372, has been elevated to the senior ranks of Al-Qaeda in Yemen, a US counter-terrorism official told AFP.
Three other men appear in the video, including Abu al-Hareth Muhammad al-Oufi, identified as an Al-Qaeda field commander. SITE later said he was prisoner No. 333.
A Pentagon spokesman, Commander Jeffrey Gordon, on Saturday declined to confirm the SITE information.
“We remain concerned about ex-Guantanamo detainees who have re-affiliated with terrorist organizations after their departure,” said Gordon.
“We will continue to work with the international community to mitigate the threat they pose,” he said.

…and these guys aren’t exactly tickled pink about being imprisoned at Guantanamo either.

On the video, al-Shihri is seen sitting with three other men before a flag of the Islamic State of Iraq, the front for Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
“By Allah, imprisonment only increased our persistence in our principles for which we went out, did jihad for, and were imprisoned for,” al-Shihri was quoted as saying.

Something tells me that this is bring the releasing of these prisons to a screeching halt, or at least intensify the effort to screen them much better; before releasing them.

Al-Qaeda 1 – Obama 0

Of course my fellow Conservatives are all over it. The silence from the left is quite deafening.

Others: ParaPundit, Flopping Aces, Atlas Shrugs, Weekly Standard, MsUnderestimated, Gateway Pundit, RedState and Sweetness & Light

Freed from Gitmo, Saudi Becomes a Al-Qaeda Chief

This is not good at all, and timing could not be worse.

The emergence of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.
The militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, is suspected of involvement in a deadly bombing of the United States Embassy in Yemen’s capital, Sana, in September. He was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing with Al Qaeda in Yemen.
His status was announced in an Internet statement by the militant group and was confirmed by an American counterterrorism official.
“They’re one and the same guy,” said the official, who insisted on anonymity because he was discussing an intelligence analysis. “He returned to Saudi Arabia in 2007, but his movements to Yemen remain unclear.”
The development came as Republican legislators criticized the plan to close the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detention camp in the absence of any measures for dealing with current detainees. But it also helps explain why the new administration wants to move cautiously, taking time to work out a plan to cope with the complications.
Almost half the camp’s remaining detainees are Yemenis, and efforts to repatriate them depend in part on the creation of a Yemeni rehabilitation program — partly financed by the United States — similar to the Saudi one. Saudi Arabia has claimed that no graduate of its program has returned to terrorism.
“The lesson here is, whoever receives former Guantánamo detainees needs to keep a close eye on them,” the American official said.
via Freed by the U.S., Saudi Becomes a Qaeda Chief – NYTimes.com.

I suppose you all think that I am going to point blame on Obama or Bush. Well, Surprise. I am not going to do either. Because, quite frankly, it is stupid to point fingers. The sobering truth is, that you take a horse to the water, but you cannot make them drink.

Put another way, you can send someone who’s convicted as a terrorist, to rehab and try to deprogram them, you can beat them over the head and tell them to stop; but they have to want to stop. Truth is, you cannot control people. If they’re going to be a terrorist, they’re going to do it, irregardless of what we or any other country does.

We troubles me is the fact that the far left is blaming Bush, and the far right is screaming that Obama is selling out America, or something like that. I think that want needs to happen is that there needs to be a independent review of each and every case, and the right thing done about it. This should not be a Political situation, but rather something that is right for the country.

I don’t claim to be an expert. So, take my opinion for what it is worth. There are a good number of opinions on this, and I encourage you to read them all.

Others: Washington Monthly, Room for Debate, Weekly Standard, Firedoglake, Balloon Juice, The Strata-Sphere, The Washington Independent, Hot Air, Newshoggers.com, FinkelBlog, Political Machine, A Blog For All, Gateway Pundit , The Huffington Post, Boston Globe, The Corner, Washington Times, The Plum Line, Little Green Footballs, Atlas Shrugs, Flopping Aces, Wizbang

President Obama to order gitmo closed in 12 months

This is a big change from Bush’s policies.

President Barack Obama will begin overhauling U.S. national security policy Thursday with orders to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, review military trials of terror suspects and end harsh interrogations, two government officials said.
Together, the three executive orders and a presidential directive will reshape how the United States prosecutes and questions al-Qaida, Taliban or other foreign fighters who pose a threat to Americans.
A senior Obama administration official said the president would sign an order Thursday to shutter the Guantanamo prison within one year, fulfilling his campaign promise to close a facility that critics around the world say violates domestic and international detainee rights. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because the order has not yet been issued.
A draft copy of the order, obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, notes that “in view of significant concerns raised by these detentions, both within the United States and internationally, prompt and appropriate disposition of the individuals currently detained at Guantanamo and closure of the facility would further the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice.
via Sources: Obama to order Guantanamo closed – Yahoo! News.

I have mixed feelings about this. I think it is good that this nightmare for the United States is basically going to be going away. But on the other hand, I do not like the idea of releasing possibly terrorists, who might want to harm us again.

Either way, it is quite the mixed bag. I just hope this new Presidential Administration makes the right call.

(via Memeorandum)

Obama should, but most likely won't

Before I start this, let me simply say from the outset, that I am not a George W. Bush fan, nor will I ever be. I am not a part of the Conservative wing that believes that George W. Bush is some sort of hero. Having said all Paul Krugman and Rep. John Conyers have both written articles calling for Obama to fully investigate the actions of George W. Bush during his tenure as President.

First off Paul Krugman writes:

Last Sunday President-elect Barack Obama was asked whether he would seek an investigation of possible crimes by the Bush administration. “I don’t believe that anybody is above the law,” he responded, but “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”
I’m sorry, but if we don’t have an inquest into what happened during the Bush years — and nearly everyone has taken Mr. Obama’s remarks to mean that we won’t — this means that those who hold power are indeed above the law because they don’t face any consequences if they abuse their power.
Let’s be clear what we’re talking about here. It’s not just torture and illegal wiretapping, whose perpetrators claim, however implausibly, that they were patriots acting to defend the nation’s security. The fact is that the Bush administration’s abuses extended from environmental policy to voting rights. And most of the abuses involved using the power of government to reward political friends and punish political enemies.
At the Justice Department, for example, political appointees illegally reserved nonpolitical positions for “right-thinking Americans” — their term, not mine — and there’s strong evidence that officials used their positions both to undermine the protection of minority voting rights and to persecute Democratic politicians.
The hiring process at Justice echoed the hiring process during the occupation of Iraq — an occupation whose success was supposedly essential to national security — in which applicants were judged by their politics, their personal loyalty to President Bush and, according to some reports, by their views on Roe v. Wade, rather than by their ability to do the job.
Speaking of Iraq, let’s also not forget that country’s failed reconstruction: the Bush administration handed billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to politically connected companies, companies that then failed to deliver. And why should they have bothered to do their jobs? Any government official who tried to enforce accountability on, say, Halliburton quickly found his or her career derailed.
There’s much, much more. By my count, at least six important government agencies experienced major scandals over the past eight years — in most cases, scandals that were never properly investigated. And then there was the biggest scandal of all: Does anyone seriously doubt that the Bush administration deliberately misled the nation into invading Iraq?
Why, then, shouldn’t we have an official inquiry into abuses during the Bush years?

The answer to this question is very simple. Obama simply does not want the political firestorm. As much as it is great thing to see an African-American man for President, I think it would be counter-productive to Obama’s term in office to do something like this. Because you just know; that the Neo-Conservative political machine would swing into action against Obama, if he did try and do something like this. I mean, I might have many reservations about Neo-Conservatives, but their organizational and fund raising abilities is not one of them. If Obama went for a full blown investigation against the Bush Administration, the Podhoretz and Kristol funded minions would be out in full force.

So, while the idea of a full blown investigation with charges being filed is a noble idea; I just highly doubt that it will ever materialize. Obama just does not want to be viewed as a vengeful partisan President.

John Conyers writes basically the same thing, and I can understand his feelings. But again, what is very important; is how this sort of thing will be perceived by the rest of America. Would be it perceived as justice, or would it perceived as a partisan witch hunt? Sure, if your a partisan or a liberal ideologue it would be viewed as justified, but what about those who are not? What they think; matters greatly.

One thing that all Democrats and all Liberal-minded people must remember is, that not all of America is of a Liberal mindset. Just because Congress is of a Liberal majority, does not mean that all of America is. Some just voted for Obama, because he represented a change from George W. Bush, not because they wanted to see a Liberal witch hunt trial.

Others: The Moderate Voice, JustOneMinute, The Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, No More Mister Nice Blog, Washington Monthly, Washington Post, Matthew Yglesias, Right Wing News, The Seminal, Democrats.com, The Sideshow, Comments from Left Field, The Note, The Immoral Minority, Riehl World View, Gateway Pundit, American Street, Hullabaloo, Seeing the Forest and The Impolitic

(via Memeorandum)

Uh-Oh: U.S. Official says Gitmo detainee was tortured

I have much mixed feelings on this one.

Via Washington Post:

The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial has concluded that the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, interrogating him with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a “life-threatening condition.”
“We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani,” said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. “His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that’s why I did not refer the case” for prosecution.
Crawford, a retired judge who served as general counsel for the Army during the Reagan administration and as Pentagon inspector general when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense, is the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured.
Crawford, 61, said the combination of the interrogation techniques, their duration and the impact on Qahtani’s health led to her conclusion. “The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. . . . You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive. Clearly coercive. It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge” to call it torture, she said.
Military prosecutors said in November that they would seek to refile charges against Qahtani, 30, based on subsequent interrogations that did not employ harsh techniques. But Crawford, who dismissed war crimes charges against him in May 2008, said in the interview that she would not allow the prosecution to go forward.

Is this woman a far lefty loon? A Democrat? Um, No.

“I sympathize with the intelligence gatherers in those days after 9/11, not knowing what was coming next and trying to gain information to keep us safe,” said Crawford, a lifelong Republican. “But there still has to be a line that we should not cross. And unfortunately what this has done, I think, has tainted everything going forward.”

Which is another way, perhaps more artful way of saying that our Government essentially flipped it’s collective shit after September 11’th. We blew it, and we will have to deal with consequences down the road too. Ron Paul, in his book, “Revolution – A Manifesto”, refers to a CIA term that is used to describe what happens when the United States does things of this nature. It is called “blowback”. I look for the United States to experience blowback because of what happened during the Presidency of Bush. I just hope like hell, that Obama is prepared to deal with such an event. It is truly a sad thing to know, that our Government did engage in such activities that is forbidden under the Geneva Conventions.

I highly suggest that you go read this, because it is, quite frankly, a sobering read. God Help this country in the coming years.

Others: : Jeffrey Goldberg, The Daily Dish, Reuters, Washington Monthly, PoliGazette, Balloon Juice, Pat Dollard, Hullabaloo, Newshoggers.com, Gawker, Jules Crittenden, Brave New Films blog, TalkLeft, Obsidian Wings, No More Mister Nice Blog, Philly.com, Associated Press, Guardian, ACSBlog, theheretik.us, Emptywheel, Sister Toldjah, NO QUARTER, ATTACKERMAN, democracyarsenal.org, TIME.com, JONATHAN TURLEY, The Raw Story, The Atlanticist, Firedoglake, On Deadline, Infidel Bloggers Alliance, Stop The ACLU, Macsmind, Fox News and TPMMuckraker

(via Memeornadum)