Bible Search now available. See the sidebar.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
al-Maliki can handle it
Yahoo! News reported Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki shrugged off U.S. doubts of his government's military and political progress on Saturday, saying Iraqi forces are capable and American troops can leave "any time they want."
Where is al-Maliki? In Baghdad? Lets pull the troops out of Baghdad and go after al Qaeda and see how long it takes before al-Maliki is getting us to come back and save his ass.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Red Mosque army raid
Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported "The military action on the Red Mosque is causing hatred in the hearts of Muslims in Pakistan," former parliamentarian Hafiz Fazal Mohammad told hundreds marching in the south-western city of Quetta, near the Afghan border.
Think what moderate and secular Pakistanis felt when radicals from the Red Mosque blew up stores selling videos and CDs must have thought..... "The Red Mosque has been turned into pool of blood of innocent Muslims," Anwarul Haq Haqqani, a local leader of religious party Tahafuz Khatam-e-Nabowat Pakistan, said.
Radicals took over the mosque and were brainwashing children to become suicide bombers. Are they the innocent Muslims you speak of."This was a barbaric action."
Taking over the mosque, or freeing it..... "This was genocide, hundreds of innocent women and children died,"
Genocide is the systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group, not something that kills a few hundred in a military action to remove some radicals that took over a house of worship.cleric Mohammad Saeed, the head of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the political wing of the banned Kashmiri militant group Laskhar-e-Taiba, said. "It is state terrorism, it is extreme brutality and those who killed the innocent will have a horrible fate," Saeed said.
According to Quran 4.93 "If a man kills a believer intentionally, his recompense is Hell, to abide therein (For ever): And the wrath and the curse of Allah are upon him, and a dreadful penalty is prepared for him." That may apply to the soldiers, but it may also apply to the people the radicals killed trying to enforce their version of Shraia Law.
Can I have a hug?
WaPo reported A grand feast of marinated steaks and jumbo shrimp was winding down, and a group of friends was sitting on the back patio of a Capitol Hill home, sipping red wine. Suddenly, a hooded man slid in through an open gate and put the barrel of a handgun to the head of a 14-year-old guest. "Give me your money, or I'll start shooting," he demanded, according to D.C. police and witness accounts.
The five other guests, including the girls' parents, froze -- and then one spoke. "We were just finishing dinner," Cristina "Cha Cha" Rowan, 43, blurted out. "Why don't you have a glass of wine with us?"
The five other guests, including the girls' parents, froze -- and then one spoke. "We were just finishing dinner," Cristina "Cha Cha" Rowan, 43, blurted out. "Why don't you have a glass of wine with us?"
That is quick thinking, and something few would say when someone had a gun to a 14 year old's head.The intruder took a sip of their Chateau Malescot St-Exupéry and said, "Damn, that's good wine." Then he tucked the gun into the pocket of his nylon sweatpants. "I think I may have come to the wrong house," he said, looking around the patio of the home in the 1300 block of Constitution Avenue NE. "I'm sorry," he told the group. "Can I get a hug?"
That is better than getting shot.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Red Mosque
Yahoo! News reported Sporadic gunfire and explosions could be heard Wednesday from Islamabad's Red Mosque as a Pakistani military operation to seize the complex, which has left over 60 people dead, entered a second day. The army said it had taken control of 80 percent of the compound and was battling die-hard Islamist fighters holed up in basement rooms who were using women and children as human shields.
So generous of the brave Islamist fighters to let the women and children have their virgins.... Minister of State for Information Tariq Azeem said the intense fighting from fighters using automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades showed the mosque had been infiltrated by hard-core Islamic radicals.
So automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades are not normally found in mosques??? I thought that was normal."The way they resisted, the way they engaged our troops, our best trained army for 16-17 hours shows they were trained fighters,"
Not just trained fighters, but trained Islamic fighters, trained in the proper use of women and children as human shields.he told a news conference late on Tuesday night.
Next attack
Avedon wrote on Atrios Shouldn't it concern us that Republicans are constantly talking about how people will all wise up when the next terrorist attack at home comes?
Certainly the fecal matter will hit the revolving blades (the s#@t will hit the fan).I mean, they really seem to be looking forward to it, and they take great delight in the thought that, by God, people will see things differently when it happens.
Actually they wonder what the NYT will do to try to cover for the Dems stupidity. Especially if their building is hit this time.They relish the thought. They hunger for that terrorist attack they need to save their Party.
Or maybe for something that will absolutely destroy the Dems.I, Not Atrios, think Democrats would be wise to talk on TV about how the last thing we need is to put people in power who have such a stake in having terrorists attack Americans.
Oh please, Br'er Fox, please don't throw me in that briar patch. I would love to see the Dems take that position. Even a left wing commentator would have to mention that we had not been attacked for five years, and ask whether the Dems really don't want to fight the Islamoterrists in Baghdad and Basrah and would they prefer Boston, Baton Rouge, Birmingham, Bismarck, Boise, Buffalo, Broken Arrow, or Beaumont; not fight them in Mosul and would they prefer Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Mobile, Memphis, Muskogee, or Mesquite; not fight them in Karkuk and Karbala and would they prefer Kansas City, Knoxville, Ketchum, or Kilgore; not fight them in Tall Afar and Tikrit and would they prefer Tulsa, Tallahassee, Tampa Bay, Terre Haute, Toledo, Topeka, Tucson, Tahlequah, Texas City, or Texarkana..
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Sandra Day O'Connor
Dahlia Lithwick wrote in Slate Magazine How Sandra Day O'Connor became the least powerful jurist in America.
She left. Duh.During the final weeks of the Supreme Court term, it was hard not to be struck by one recurring theme: Former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor—a few short years ago the "most powerful woman in America," a "majority of one," the "most powerful person on the court," and the most "powerful Supreme Court Justice in recent history"—had somehow become the most disregarded.
Should they have ignored the law just to let a former justice's opinion prevail.With the court's newly dominant conservative wing focused pretty much on whether to ignore or overrule her outright, it's clear that one real casualty of the new Roberts Court is O'Connor's lifetime of work on an extraordinary range of constitutional issues. What can we conclude about the court's swing voters, about O'Connor herself, or about the Roberts Court, from the speed with which her legal legacy is being dismantled?
That is the priblem with having judges legislate, When they are gone, their effect is gone. What should happen is that the Legislative Brahch should legislate, and the Judicial branch should JUDGE.So far, the court has explicitly minimized—or, more frequently, stepped distastefully over—O'Connor's theoretical framework for abortion, campaign finance, and affirmative action.
A justice should not have a theoretical framework for anywhing. The theoretical framework they work with is the laws passed by the legislature, and howmthey comport with the Constitution.That's to name just a few. My friend Marty Lederman predicted as much when O'Connor first retired two years ago; still, the speed of it all is proving to be unsettling, if not downright unseemly.
Growing Talk of Jordanian Role in Palestinian Affairs
NYT reported Inside a drab cellphone shop, set deep inside the sprawling Baqaa refugee camp on the outskirts of this city, Muhammad Khalil and his friends were as gloomy as the fluorescent lights that flickered on the ceiling. “Everything has been ruined for us — we’ve been fighting for 60 years and nothing is left,” Mr. Khalil said, speaking of the Palestinian cause.
I wonder if he will ever figure out that it was the big Arab countries that moved them out of their homes in the first place so they could try to destroy the newly formed Israel, and when they were defeated, could have easily resettled them in their own countries, instead forced them to live in refugee camps for 60 years.Just weeks earlier, he might have been speaking enthusiastically to his friends here, in their usual hangout, about resistance, of fighting for his rights as a Palestinian and of one day returning to a Palestinian state.
Returning? There has never been a Palestinian state. They were always ruled by someone else, from Romans, to Babelonians, all they way to Ottomans and then Jordanians. And they never thought to ask for their own state, until Israel won the land in a war.Last Wednesday, however, he spoke of what he saw as a less satisfying goal for the Palestinians here and one that raises concerns for many other Jordanians: Palestinian union with Jordan.
Jordanians are worried because they like peace with Israel, and they have forced these people to live in squaller for so long. The same is true of Gaza and Eqypt.“It would be better if Jordan ran things in Palestine, if King Abdullah could take control of the West Bank,” Mr. Khalil said, as his friends nodded. “The issue would be over if Jordan just took control.”
But does Jordan want you.Even a few months ago, talk of some kind of Palestinian union with Jordan would have sounded quaint or even conspiratorial, 40 years after Jordan lost control of the West Bank in the 1967 war and nearly two decades after King Abdullah’s father, King Hussein, formally ceded administrative control of the territory to the Palestinians.
To get rid of you.But as the Palestinian territories have been engulfed in turmoil, with Gaza and the West Bank now divided economically and politically, as well as physically, talk of a less ambitious, but no less delicate, federation between Jordan and the West Bank has begun rippling through many Jordanian and Palestinian circles.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
