Yes, No, Maybe...

The Obama administration - the folks that decided foreign nationals attemping to kill American soldiers abroad were entitled to "Miranda rights", legal counsel and their day in court - is apparently realizing that sitting in Chicago and talking about war is a little different from actually having to run the war.

It would appear that being nice to everyone and bowing to Saudi princes isn't enough to make radical muslims stop trying to blow up New York City. In an effort that harkens back to the stone age tactics of the tyranical Bush administration, Obama's legal advisers are considering asking Congress to allow the government to detain terror suspects longer before allowing them their initial hearing in front of a judge. I can see it now, ACLU vs. Obama in federal court.

According to Charlie Savage of the New York Times,

"If approved, the idea to delay hearings would be attached to broader legislation to allow interrogators to withhold Miranda warnings from terrorism suspects for lengthy periods, as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. proposed last week."

Hasn't it been less than a year since Obama ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities? Yes, it has.

The purpose of that move was outlined in a May 28, 2009 article in the Los Angeles Times,

"The FBI and Justice Department plan to significantly expand their role in global counter-terrorism operations, part of a U.S. policy shift that will replace a CIA-dominated system of clandestine detentions and interrogations with one built around transparent investigations and prosecutions.
Under the 'global justice' initiative, which has been in the works for several months, FBI agents will have a central role in overseas counter-terrorism cases. They will expand their questioning of suspects and evidence-gathering to try to ensure that criminal prosecutions are an option."

Given the advantage of one year of hindsight, I'd like to make two observations:

First, transparency (as in "transparent investigations and prosecutions") has proven to be something this administration is incapable of. They still don't know what's in the health care bill they jammed through Congress.

Secondly, "global justice" has nothing to do with fighting terrorism. The FBI isn't going to go to Syria and conduct a couple interviews, fly to Iran and talk to some folks, then arrest someone In Saudi Arabia for funding a terrorist training facility in Pakinstan. Not going to happen. This is exactly why we have the Central Intelligence Agency and why their operations aren't transparent.

Could this current shift be a sign that the administration has finally figured out that islamic terrorists are not criminals, they are fanatical (self-proclaimed) "soldiers" and fighting them should be the responsibility of the CIA and the military, not the FBI and law enforcement? Don't hold your breath - sixteen months to figure out the obvious is starting to look a bit quick for this bunch.

The Religion of Pieces

It amazes me that there are some people in the west that still believe islam is a religion of peace. I'm not sure how anyone that's been paying even the least bit of attention the last few years could still fall for that. Since I would never want to be accused of hate speech, xenophobia, or racism, I'll stick to the facts:

May 14, 2010: (Reuters) - Pakistani Taliban militants have warned America that it will soon "burn" while calling for Pakistan's rulers to be overthrown for following "America's agenda".
The United States is convinced Pakistani Taliban militants allied with al Qaeda and operating out of northwestern Pakistani border regions were behind an attempted car-bomb attack in New York's Times Square on May 1.
The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attempted bombing. If confirmed, it would be the first time their members were involved in an attempted attack in the West.

If the Obama administration and FBI say they're "convinced Pakistani Taliban militants allied with al Qaeda... were behind an attempted car-bomb attack in New York's Times Square", they're shifting blame and attemting to divert attention from the real problem. Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-born naturalized American citizen, is the man that built and emplaced the bomb. Pakistani Taliban may have "claimed responsibility for the attempted bombing" in Times Square, but it was an American citizen that built the bomb, loaded it into the SUV and delivered it to Times Square with the intent of killing dozens if not hundreds of Americans. While assimilation into western cultures after attaining citizenship would appear to be a low priority for most immigrants, continuing the jihad apparently still ranks pretty high.

Here's a few more fun-filled headlines:

March 2, 2010: Two killed as Indian newspaper sparks Muslim riots (Reuters) - A curfew was imposed on a southern Indian town on Tuesday after two people were killed when Muslims rioted to protest against a newspaper article they said offended Islam, police said.

July 5, 2009: Muslim Uighurs riot as ethnic tensions rise in western China (The Guardian) Three people were killed during rioting in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang, as thousands of Muslim Uighurs took to the streets during the biggest display of ethnic unrest in recent memory.

Dec 2, 2007: France stunned by rioters’ savagery (TimesOnLine) - Called to the scene of a traffic accident in the Paris suburbs last Sunday, Jean-François Illy, a regional police chief, came face to face with a mob of immigrant youths armed with baseball bats, iron bars and shotguns.
What happened next has sickened the nation. As Illy tried to reassure the gang that there would be an investigation into the deaths of two teenagers whose motorbike had just collided with a police car, he heard a voice shouting: 'Somebody must pay for this. Some pigs must die tonight!'
The 43-year-old commissaire realised it was time to leave, but that was not possible: they set his car ablaze. He stood as the mob closed in on him, parrying the first few baseball bat blows with his arms. An iron bar in the face knocked him down.
'I tried to roll myself into a ball on the ground,' said Illy from his hospital bed. He was breathing with difficulty because several of his ribs had been broken and one had punctured his lung.

Feb 6, 2006: Muslim cartoon fury claims lives (BBC News) - At least five people have been killed in Afghanistan as protests against European cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad swept across the country.
Meanwhile in Somalia, a teenage boy died after protesters attacked police.
Iran announced it was halting trade with Denmark, as protesters pelted the Danish embassy with petrol bombs.
The violence follows attacks on Danish embassies in Syria and Lebanon over the weekend. The cartoons were first published in a Danish newspaper.

Nov 5, 2005: As Youth Riots Spread Across France, Muslim Groups Attempt to Intervene (The Washington Post) - SEVRAN, France, Nov. 4 -- By dusk Friday, the streets of Sevran were deserted. Inside high-rise apartments and stone cottages here on the outskirts of Paris, residents waited for the explosions and sirens to begin.
Night after night, youths armed with rocks, sticks and gasoline bombs have confronted police and set cars, businesses, government buildings and schools on fire. Police officers said Friday that approximately 1,260 vehicles had been torched in the Paris area in the past week.
The attacks were triggered when two Muslim teenagers were electrocuted last week after they leapt into a power substation in an attempt to evade a police who had set up an identity checkpoint.

These are just a few of the 1,480,000 hits I got from doing a google search of "muslim riots". I got over 4 million hits when I searched "Christian riots", but those had headlines that ready "anti-Christian riots" or "Christian riot victims" and talked about riots being conducted by - you guessed it - muslims. I didn't read all 4 million, I just scanned the first 50-60, so there might actually be Christians rioting somewhere and I missed it. It's hard to miss all the muslims rioting. I wonder if the koran calls for rioting as a fundamental duty, right up there with killing civilians and blowing up women and children.

Of course, no discussion about the religion of peace would be complete without mentioning the 9/11 attacks, the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in 2000 that left 17 sailors dead, the 1998 bombings of the embassies in Tanzania and Kenya that left hundreds dead, the 1995 attack on Khobar Towers that killed 19 U.S. servicemen, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six and injured 1,042 people, or the 1983 bombing of the Multinational Forces barracks in Lebanon that killed 241 U.S. servicemen and 58 French servicemen.

Apparently the religion of peace is peaceful only if everyone in the immediate area is of the same religion, and by "everyone" I obviously mean every adult male because women are mere property and they don't matter anyway.

Peace.

Viva California

Last week in Morgan Hill, California, five teens were sitting at a table in the Live Oak High School break area when Assistant Principal Miguel Rodriguez asked two boys to take off their American flag bandannas. Rodriguez then took all five boys to his office and, in a matter of minutes, had sent four students home for wearing T-shirts with
American flags on them to school on May 5th.

Hispanic students said they felt it was an insult for the other students to have worn the American flag on Cinco de Mayo. According to the Morgan Hill Times, "The (latino) students say they want people to know they're proud of their heritage and they believe wearing red, white and blue on Cinco de Mayo is disrespectful." In response to the perceived disrespect, at 11:00 the next morning about 200 hispanic students walked out of school and marched through downtown to the school district headquarters. Along the way they got a police escort from six police cars and a motorcycle officer.

The moral of the story is that while students in California may not wear American flags to school without being reprimanded for offensive behavior, they can walk out in the middle of the school day and not be punished for truancy. In fact, if they walk out of school because they feel "disrespected", they might get a police escort.

God Bless America and Hug a Vet

I got up this morning, got cleaned up, and put on an Army uniform for the first time in eight months. The last group of cadets that I instructed at the Army ROTC program at the local university were having their commissioning ceremony today. Seven of the ten young lieutenants that were commissioned today asked me to give them their first salute as an officer, a great honor that I couldn't pass up and had been planning on (and committed to) for over a month.

I went in and attended the ceremony, watched them take their oath of office, watched moms and dads pin lieutenant rank on their sons and daughters, and I finally rendered my salutes to those young officers about to go off into the Army. After the ceremony I posed with each of them individually for pictures, spoke to the parents and grandparents and got all the handshakes and "thank you for all you did for little Jimmy" bits. Then I excused myself, changed clothes and headed to Briarwood church.

You see, I was told last night about a funeral taking place today. A young man who had enlisted in the Marine Corps after graduating high school was killed in Afghanistan on April 28 while serving on his second combat deployment. Lance Corporal Rivers was a 2007 graduate of Briarwood Christian School and had gone to school and played football with my wife's cousin Matt, which was how I found out.

I spoke to Matt last night and discovered that Westboro "Baptist Church" had announced that they were going to be at the funeral (I will refer to them as "WBC" from this point on because I can only call this group a "church" once). In case you haven't heard, WBC is a group out of Kansas that travels nationwide to protest at the funerals of young men and women killed in combat. They explain their actions by saying that God is allowing American men and women to be killed in combat because America has become a pit of depravity, specifically for allowing homosexuality to exist in our country. That's right, because there are homosexuals in America, God is killing American servicemen in Iraq and Afghanistan. (What, you don't see the connection? That's two of us.)

There was a kind of counter protest, more like a show of support for the family, being organized and Matt called to ask if I wanted to go. I told him I had a prior engagement but that I would definately be there as soon as I could.

As I pulled off the interstate at the exit to Briarwood Church there were cars lining both sides of the road along the quarter mile from the interstate to the church. The median of the road looked like a parking lot (the above picture was taken while standing in the median). A couple hundred people had shown up, all carrying flags, to show their support for the family. The fire department had two fire trucks out there with the ladders elevated and a huge flag flying from the top between them. What a great show of support. There was no sign of WBC.

We knew it was almost time when, about an hour after I arrived, two police SUVs came by with lights on, went up the on ramp to the interstate and stopped traffic in all four south-bound lanes. It was kind of surreal to see hundreds of cars parked on the interstate. "We don't care. This is Alabama and we're gonna bury a young Marine today. Nothing you have to do today is as important as that."

When the funeral procession pulled out of the church to make its way toward the cemetary, you could have heard a pin drop. Every hat was taken off, right hands over hearts while left hands held flags - it was beautiful. A police vehicle led the way, followed by three cars and a limosine - presumably the immediate family - followed closely by the hearse. I stood there and saluted for the eighth time today, this time in civilian clothes, as the hearse drove by with Lcpl Rivers' flag draped coffin visible through the back window.

The silence only lasted for a minute though, because directly behind the hearse were probably 200 Harley Davidson motorcycles. The Patriot Guard had come to town to ensure WBC did not come within view of the church. Patriot Guard is a motorcycle club consisting exclusively of veterans that have made it their mission to serve the families of lost servicemen by putting themselves between the protestors and the family. They travel the country to serve as a buffer between the mourners and the lunatics.

If WBC had by-passed the church and was waiting at the cemetary, they were about to have a rude awakening.

What an emotional rollercoaster. From swelling with pride as those young kids took their oath as new lieutenants to seeing that flag draped coffin and needing every bit of strength inside me to hold back tears (a battle I've lost since getting home). Seeing those riders with license plates from as far away as Kentucky, Florida and Indiana - at least half of them obviously Vietnam-era vets probably old enough to have been Rivers' grandfather - following the casket of a fallen brother-in-arms to his final resting place.

As I left and got on the interstate heading north through unobstructed traffic, I looked over at the southbound lanes that were backed up for at least five miles. I thought about all those people sitting in those southbound cars in the 90 degree heat, undoubtedly furious because they had somewhere to be that was so terribly important, completely oblivious to the fact that a family was burying their 22 year old son today.

It's days like this that make you remember why you did what you did and make everything you ever dealt with while wearing a uniform so worth it, whether anyone else realizes it or not.

Responsible Journalism, As Usual

The Republican Governors Association has started an ad campaign entitled "Remember November" in an effort to get American people energized about the upcoming election. Their first video aired April 23rd:


The wacko liberal media is comparing it to Guy Fawkes, a 17th century British terrorist that attempted to blow up Parliament while both Houses and King James were inside. Really? That's a bit of a stretch isn't it?

Check out Remember November's new video, a response to the coverage the first video got:

Act II from Republican Governors Association on Vimeo.

In the U.K., "Guy Fawkes Night", a celebration consisting of bonfires and fireworks and Fawkes being burned in effigy, takes place every November 5th to commerate the failure of Fawkes and his cohorts. Four hundred and five years later the British still celeberate his failure; I doubt the RGA titled their new campaign to bring to mind a failed terrorist!

I thought blogs were the realm of opinions and hyperbole and that news reports were for, well, reporting actual news.