Dughmush Now Dog Mush

I'm not sure exactly what dog mush is, but it's definitely nothing nice, so I couldn't resist the headline.

(IsraelNN.com) The Israel Air Force struck terrorist groups in Gaza in three separate attacks Tuesday afternoon, killing at least six operatives, including Army of Islam second-in-command Muataz Dughmush.

The head of the terrorist group, Mumtaz, is Muataz' half-brother.

Two of the strikes were carried out in the central Gaza town of Dir el-Balah, where IAF pilots successfully targeted the gunmen involved in the 2006 kidnapping of IDF Cpl. Gilad Shalit.

One of the missiles struck a vehicle carrying the Army of Islam terrorist cell, which included Muataz Dughmush. Five terrorists were killed, including Dughmush, and three others were wounded, one critically. The vehicle was completely destroyed.

Two other Army of Islam terrorists were wounded in the second strike, which occurred in the same area a short time later.

Of course, the news report I heard said merely that six Palestinians had been killed. Are we to assume that all Palestinians are terrorists? Of course not (at last report, there were 17 who didn't support terrorism). Are we to assume that every Palestinian killed by Israelis is an innocent? Of course not (go ahead and use that 17 number again).

The media could do a better job of reporting Israel/Palestinian issues. That said, please register me in the "Understatement of the Year" contest.

hat-tip: Jim

Terror-Chicks Not Welcome At Al-Qaeda

There's a curious debate going on among the most radical of the jihadists.

More and more, Islamist women are demanding equal rights to blow themselves up, but al-Qaeda's sticking to its fundamentalist Islamic guns and saying no way -- in the process sparking something of a feminist debate among the jihadists. From AP:

In response to a female questioner, al-Qaida No. 2 leader Ayman Al-Zawahri said in April that the terrorist group does not have women. A woman's role, he said on the Internet audio recording, is limited to caring for the homes and children of al-Qaida fighters.

His remarks have since prompted an outcry from fundamentalist women, who are fighting or pleading for the right to be terrorists. The statements have also created some confusion, because in fact suicide bombings by women seem to be on the rise, at least within the Iraq branch of al-Qaida.

A'eeda Dahsheh is a Palestinian mother of four in Lebanon who said she supports al-Zawahri and has chosen to raise children at home as her form of jihad. However, she said, she also supports any woman who chooses instead to take part in terror attacks.

Another woman signed a more than 2,000-word essay of protest online as Rabeebat al-Silah, Arabic for "Companion of Weapons."

"How many times have I wished I were a man ... When Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahri said there are no women in al-Qaida, he saddened and hurt me," wrote "Companion of Weapons," who said she listened to the speech 10 times. "I felt that my heart was about to explode in my chest...I am powerless."

A Muslim woman, Sara, has been chastising me lately for being ignorant of Islam. "Please educate yourself before you decide to write an article like this," she commented on a recent post. "You obviously know nothing about Islam. And the association you made between the prophet (peace be upon him) and the terrorist Muhammed Attah is just plain ignorance and stupidy [sic]." And this:

Those terrorist acts were initiated by extremist who are no better than heretics according to Islam. If you try to overcome your ignorant arrogance and read about the prophet you would know that he once made an explicit and clear statement that who ever kills an innocent person, including non muslims [sic] will literally go to hell.

Which Islam is it, Sara, which Prophet? Is Mohammed and his religion the Islam of peace you fantasize about, or is it this Islam:

"A lot of the girls I speak to ... want to carry weapons. They live with this great frustration and oppression," said Huda Naim, a prominent women's leader, Hamas member and Palestinian lawmaker in Gaza. "We don't have a special militant wing for women ... but that doesn't mean that we strip women of the right to go to jihad."

I wish Islam today were the Islam Sara says it is. More power to her; I wish there were more like her, and I hope that she and other Muslims who believe Islam should be a religion of peace will ultimately prevail.

They are our only hope because if "the girls who want to carry weapons" prevail over Islam's Saras, we will be threatened by Islam and killed by Islamists for the foreseeable future, and will have no choice but to fight back against the forced conversion to a religion that acts with such ugliness.

hat-tip: Jim

Caution: Islamists At Work

It's hard to believe there's a Christian school in Gaza, but there is -- so of course the Palestinian Freedom Fighters (you know, people who fight against freedom any chance they get) bombed it.

Add the school to the list: Islamists in Gaza have recently bombed internet cafes, music shops and that mighty threat to all that is Islamist, beauty shops.

How can anyone, anywhere, defend these brutes? And how, exactly, do you blame Israel or America for attacks like these?

The Unspeakable Foe We Face

Words sometimes just cannot express the rank ugliness of Islamic terror. As a communications professional, I've found in cases like this, it's best to let the ugliness speak for itself, so:

A young girl carrying explosives that killed her, an Iraqi captain and injured four soldiers was blown up by remote control, officials said today.

The incident happened as she approached an Iraqi command post in Youssifiyah, south Baghdad, earlier this morning.

Iraqi army Lieutenant Ahmed Ali confirmed that the girl, who had hidden explosives strapped to her, was the cause of the blast. ...

"The bomber was detonated by remote control, killing Captain Wassem al-Maamouri and injuring four soldiers," Ali added. (the Guardian)

Just to clarify for any confused readers out there, here's a photo of how we treat young girls in Iraq.

How old is a "young" girl, anyway? Twelve? Eight? Younger? Whatever her young age, she was obviously too young to be counted on to be a noble martyr Hell-bound hooligan in Islam's war on all that is free and modern, so al-Qaeda in Iraq just murdered her instead.

Obama and the Left will look at this as more chaos, and more reason to leave Iraq. Who strapped the explosives to their intellect and detonated it remotely? Terrorist Islamists are not people who should be given the boost a US defeat in Iraq would give them.

Every day we're there, more of these scum are killed and their infrastructure becomes less effective, as is evidenced by the fact that they must resort to remotely detonating young girls and mentally retarded women -- actions far more pathetic than Japan's use of suicide pilots in their last gasp before defeat in the Pacific.

Sunday Scan

Lessons In New Politics From Barack

Barack Obama is leaving the old politics behind, supplanting it with a new, cleaner style that leaves the smarminess behind. Here, courtesy of The LA Times (which provides a darn good compendium of Obama-smashing news, in its usual blatant favoritism for Hillary objective style), is a tutorial in how Obama approaches politics the new, clean way:

1. Need money after your first unsuccessful campaign for Congress? Then get a sweet job from a big campaign supporter to supplement your state senate income. (Obama got a $112,000 job from Robert Blackwell Jr., about double his state senate salary of $58,000.)
   
   
2. In return for the favor, urge the state legislature to grant a Blackwell company, table tennis promoter Killerspin, a $50,000 tourism grant. (Pingpong tourism is such an important tourist market, and so deserving of state subsidies!) ((Shall we make, or avoid, the devilishly clever connection between the name "Killerspin" and the Obama PR machine?))
   
   
3. Then, to show that a cash-stuffed paper bag the system really does work, land $320,000 in state subsidies for Killerspin tournaments.
   
   
4. Finally, get new political contributions from Blackwell as soon as the grants go through.

There are business people who feel it is their responsibility to run a profitable company, and there are business people who feel it is the people's responsibility to make their company profitable. There are politicians who believe in the former, and politicians like Obama who, despite all their fine talk about new ways of doing things, definitely believe in the latter.

Islamist Horror Stories

Bubba, of What Bubba Knows, has put together a list of stories for Sabine, a gal who apparently doesn't get the threat posed by Islamist thought and action. Here's his intro:

For Sabine's education, today's stories of atrocities by Muslims.

May you come to realize who and what is the real threat to peace, may you learn to recognize the face of the real enemies of your peaceful, tranquil world.

And here are the story links:

¤ Please Let Me Marry Her and Then Kill Me
¤ The criminality against children in the koran
¤ German Charity Helps Turkish Women Escape Forced Marriages
¤ Europe or Eurabia?
¤ Home-grown 'champion of Islam'
¤ Saudi women 'kept in childhood'
¤ Not Child's Play: The Teddy-Bear Intifada

The first link one tells of a particularly heartless murder carried out by an al-Qaeda in Iraq thug, who is now in prison, awaiting his death sentence. Another prisoner wanted to identify the thug's victim:

So, he asked the killer to give him the name of the victim.

The killer replied he didn’t know, he asked from what tribe? The killer didn’t know, he asked from what sect? The killer didn’t know, he asked him from what province? The killer didn’t know.

Then he asked him, then why you killed him? The killer said he cannot remember, whether it was the victim's haircut or the way he was dressed or the music pouring from his car.

This is the enemy we're fighting, and this is why we're fighting this enemy. Islamist terrorists are the vilest villains we have ever fought, a fact the Left is quick to forget, despite unforgettable stories like this one.

Lessons In Environmental Hypocrisy

If you like the splendor and quiet, hot solitude of the desert, Anza Borrego is your state park. It's the state's largest park, stretching across most of eastern San Diego County almost all the way to the Mexican border, with 500 miles of dirt roads, 12 separate wilderness areas and untold miles of hiking trails.

Somewhere in that vastness, a long line of wooden power poles stretches from horizon to horizon, lost in the vastness, hardly noticed by most park visitors. Call the power lines the Maginot Line of the war between the Greenies and the rest of us.

San Diego Gas & Electric, in order to meet a state mandate that 20% of its power come from alternative sources by 2010 (that's less than two years away!), proposes to convert the current power corridor to a new Sunrise Powerlink, which would carry renewable power from the sun, wind and geothermal facilities to be built in the Imperial Valley.

The environmentalists, who demand that we stop using oil and go with renewable resources, are furious, of course. Here's Elizabeth Goldstein, prez of the California Parks Foundation, quoted in the LA Times:

"The idea that we're going to sacrifice critical pieces of our environment to protect other pieces of our environment seems a little ironic. That's an irony I cannot accept. We have to find a way to do both."

I think she means "protect both," not "sacrifice both," but the sentence's structure is a little hazy. The Sierra Club makes it more clear, talking about a "powerline juggernaut:"

Fare thee well, big skies and open vistas. To feed the energy demands of the West's inland megalopolises and crowded coasts, public lands in 11 Western states may soon be crisscrossed by a web of power lines and pipelines. These "energy easements," up to three-quarters of a mile wide, are slated for every sort of public property: national forests, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) holdings, state parks, even national parks. Since they'll be "preapproved," the easements will be ready to go at the energy companies' convenience.

Note that they don't say a word about these easements being required to comply with the alternative energy mandates they themselves demanded. So like a Kennedy attacking windmills, they attack the infrastructure required to make their alternative energy dream come true.

But you see, having 20% alternative energy isn't their dream, not if it means conventional power solutions. They wanted growth to stop, grids to be ripped out, and Americans to change the way they live. Nothing less will do.

So they will fight this power line, even though there really isn't a good alternative route. They would rather condemn private land than use public land for a public use. And the public, I hope, will see the Greenies for what they are: Demanding and totally inflexible, demanding the world without giving up a square inch, and self-righteous but thoroughly hypocritical.

McCain Won't Stop Using "Islamic Terrorist"

Subtract "Islamic" from "terrorism" and what do you get?

The hundred-plus attacks by the Tamil Tigers and a couple Basque separatist bombs. That's pretty much it. All the rest of terrorism in the modern era is Islamic -- or Islamist -- terror, but that doesn't stop so-called "moderate Muslims" from trying to force a language change on all of us who see jihad for what it is:

A coalition of American Muslim groups is demanding that Sen. John McCain stop using the adjective "Islamic" to describe terrorists and extremist enemies of the United States.

Muneer Fareed, who heads the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), told The Washington Times that his group is beginning a campaign to persuade Mr. McCain to rephrase his descriptions of the enemy.

"We've tried to contact his office, contact his spokesperson to have them rethink word usage that is more acceptable to the Muslim community," Mr. Fareed said. "If it's not our intent to paint everyone with the same brush, then certainly we should think seriously about just characterizing them as criminals, because that is what they are." (Washington Times)

Criminals? Criminals are people who perpetrate crimes -- usually very small crimes that don't result in deaths -- for the purpose of monetary gain. Islamic terror fails to comply with that common definition.

Conversely, when I think of "religious fanatic," I think of someone who's no earthly good because their head's in heaven. This mindset typically has no violence attached to it; rather, it has an over-abundance of religious enthusiasm. What harm it causes is typically within the family, and is psychological, not physical.

But Islam has managed to bring the two together under its jihad-tent, creating religious fanatic criminals who use the actual words of the Qu'ran to justify heinous attacks on innocents.

Besides, McCain is hardly painting everyone with the same brush. He says "Islamic terrorists," which is different from "Islamic peaceniks," "Islamic supporters of Israel's right to exist," "Islamic counter-terrorists," "Islamic people who think it's OK for the West to publish Mohammed cartoons," and other pretty much non-existent Muslims. And yes, it's also different from "Islamic folk who go to mosque and raise their kids and don't want a part of all this political mess."

To his credit, McCain is sticking to his guns:

An aide to Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee who is counting on his pro-Iraq war stance to attract conservative voters, said the senator from Arizona will not drop the word.

Steve Schmidt, a former Bush White House aide who is now a McCain media strategist, told The Times that the use of the word is appropriate and that the candidate will continue to define the enemy that way.

"Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda represent a perverted strain of Islam at odds with the great many peaceful Muslims who practice their great faith peacefully," Mr. Schmidt said. "But the reality is, the hateful ideology which underpins bin Ladenism is properly described as radical Islamic extremism. Senator McCain refers to it that way because that is what it is."

It makes more sense, much, much more sense, for us to call on Obama and Clinton to start addressing Islamic terror than it does for McCain to stop using the phrase. To listen to the Dem candidates and debates, terror just isn't an issue, which may be the way Muneer Fareed and ISNA would like it, but if they really want to make terror a non-issue, they should focus on their religion's sicknesses, not McCain's statements.

On Anniversary Of Beirut Bombing, WaPo Blames Bush

The Washington Post sure has a strange way to honor the dead.

Acknowledging (in the very last line!) that the State Department will hold a ceremony this morning marking the anniversary of Beirut Marine barracks suicide bombing that killed 241, causing the largest loss of American military life in a single incident since the Battle of Iwo Jima, reporter Robin Wright tees off on an America-blaming piece on suicide bombing, not a piece that honors the fallen.

The piece quotes a study by Mohammed Hafez of the Naval Postgraduate School showing a big increase in suicide bombing as a tool in the new warfare.

The unpublished data show that since 1983, bombers in more than 50 groups from Argentina to Algeria, Croatia to China, and India to Indonesia have adapted car bombs to make explosive belts, vests, toys, motorcycles, bikes, boats, backpacks and false-pregnancy stomachs.

Of 1,840 incidents in the past 25 years, more than 86 percent have occurred since 2001, and the highest annual numbers have occurred in the past four years. The sources who provided the data to The Washington Post asked that they not be identified because of the sensitivity of the tallies.

The data show more than 920 suicide bombings in Iraq and more than 260 in Afghanistan, including some that killed scores of U.S. troops. All occurred after the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003.

Of course, the Left knows who is to blame for all this. Rising Hegemon sums up their position with a question, "Is there nothing the Bush Administration cannot do?"

Always good for an off-base inanity, Juan Cole goes academic (i.e., too intellectual to be smart) on us:

542 [attacks] out of 658 is about 83% [in Afghanistan and Iraq], lending further testimony to Chicago Political Scientist Robert Pape's theory that suicide bombings tend to occur in countries under foreign military occupation by an otherwise democratic government. (That is, they are staged for the public in the occupying country to some extent; people tend not to bother to blow themselves up when occupied by a dictatorship.)

My gosh. Can't these people see something idiotic for what it is? This is the most a$$-backwards thinking I've seen since ... well, probably since whatever leftist dribble I was reading yesterday.

It's hard to tell by Cole's garbled structure whether Pape is referring to Iraq's democratic government or America's, but the fact is there would be no democratic government in Iraq were it not for us. We are not occupying; we have a fraction of the troops in Iraq or Afghanistan required by an occupation, and we are encouraging the strengthening of the Iraqi government, not controlling it.

And "people tend not to bother to blow themselves up when occupied by a dictatorship?" Did it not occur to these two academic muddle-heads that "occupied by a dictatorship" does not describe pre-war Iraq? "Controlled with an iron fist by a 100% Iraqi dictatorship" does. There's no occupation now, there was no occupation under Saddam. What is this ridiculous fixation with a word they can't even define?

As quoted by WaPo, you would never know that the study deals almost exclusively with Islamist bombing. Nothing is said about the rise of Islamist terror, preceding Iraq and Afghanistan.

No context is given from the Palestinian use of suicide bombs in their war on terror against Israel, even though they and the Tamil Tigers pretty much invented the suicide technology. No effort is made to explain the bombings in Algiers or China within the context of Iraq and Afghanistan.

And worse, there is no mention that there's a war going on. When there's a war, both sides need weapons or one side will summarily win. We have plenty of weapons that are capable of trouncing any conventional weapons the Islamists can raise against us, so they utilize a weapon that we have difficulty deterring: suicide bombs.

If there were weapon parity, suicide bombing would not be used; AK 47s, RPGs and other conventional weapons would be used by both sides.

So here's the story WaPo didn't write:

Islam has been actively at war against democracy since the 1980s and they have found that there most effective tactic is terror and their most effective weapon is the suicide bomber. These bombers -- recruited from the dregs of society and doped up before they're sent off -- are effectively keeping the war going, killing thousands of innocent civilians and thousands of our troops in the process.

Is the enemy, then, George Bush or Islamist warriors? For all but the intellectually befuddled and Bush-deranged, the answer is obvious.

Quote Of The Day: Simple Enough Even For Carter Edition

"I find it hard to understand what is to be gained by having discussions with Hamas about peace when Hamas is in fact the impediment to peace."
-- Condi Rice

I guess you have to make it pretty simple if you want the worst president in US history to understand it. But I doubt that Jimmy Carter will get it at all.

After all, why shouldn't Carter talk to Hamas if his long history of actions against Israel (here, here, here, ad infinitum) has resulted in such a lucrative "friendship" with the Arabs (here, here, here, ad infinitum)?

The Reuters article from which the quote above comes from is also host to one of the most bizarre, fawning sentences I've ever read. Get ready; gird up those loins! Here it is:

Carter, 83, served one term as president from 1977 to 1981, and has a long history in Middle East peacemaking.

"Peacemaking?!" Let's say it the right way:

Carter, 83, drummed out of office by the American people at their first opportunity, has a long history of miserable failures at trying to broker a Middle Eastern peace, but in a personification of a famous saying about insanity, he keeps trying anyway.

Former presidents should not engage in foreign policy initiatives without the current president's support, it's that simple -- no matter how much money Carter stands to make from this round of personal diplomacy money-grubbing.

Orlando Bomb Suspect Probably Not A Terrorist, But ...

The man arrested Tuesday at Orlando's airport with bomb-making materials is an Army vet who apparently has no direct ties to terrorists groups, according to an Orlando Sentinel article.

Kevin Brown served in the Army from 1999 to 2003 as a logistics specialist, serving stateside and in Germany, but not in any combat zone. He later went to Iraq as a logistics contractor -- basically a warehouse guy -- under contract to the company KBR.

He told the FBI he had the bomb-making materials because he wanted to show friends in Jamaica how to build bombs "like the kind he saw in Iraq."

Does that put the story to sleep or raise more suspicions? The latter, for me.

How would a warehouse contractor see bombs in Iraq? Granted, some contractors are at risk of explosive devices -- but that's because they're driving by them, not because they are involved in their seizure or disposal. The story is made up.

And when stories are made up, there's still a need to get to the truth.

BTW, if the MSM tries a "troubled vet" meme on this story, slap them upside the head. Brown obviously had some serious troubles, but the only fair "troubled" story would be the "troubled Army contractor" story.

BTW II, if you're scratching your head at the cost of the Iraq war, you might find this passage of the referenced article enlightening:

He worked there as an equipment parts receiver from July 2007 to late 2007, according to LSI and Houston-based KBR Inc., the contractor that hired the Georgia firm for military support work in Iraq. Contractor tours typically last at least 12 months, with base pay of $90,000.

$90,000! That's just a tad more than the average Army private makes, eh? There was a day, before Clinton decimated the military, when equipment parts receivers for the Army were the Army; now they're $90,000-a-year contract workers.

The war is expensive not just because of military ops, but because of the wealth of high-paying civilian jobs it's created!

See also: Reporting All But The Key Facts

Quiet Violin Teacher Or Domestic Terrorist?

Is Briana Waters (center) "a quiet 32-year-old violin teacher" as Salon describes her ... yes ... but is she something more, an eco-terrorist, as well?

A jury could have said no with a standard no higher than "reasonable doubt," but it didn't, finding instead that Waters served as lookout for a seasoned and destructive cell of Earth Liberation Front (ELF) terrorists as they burned down the Center for Urban Horticulture building on the University of Washington campus in 2001.

No one died. Indeed, ELF took its usual cautions to reduce the risk of inadvertently killing someone, timing their incindiary device to go off at about 3 a.m. -- the same time of night when an incendiary device went off in a University of Wisconsin building some 30 years earlier in another protest, killing my second cousin.

ELF and the liberal left howl about being called terrorists, railing against stepped up federal powers over their ilk. As Salon explains:

Historically, the crime of terrorism has required civilian deaths. In fact, the State Department defined terrorism as "premeditated politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatants." But the USA Patriot Act created a new category of domestic terrorism, which is defined as an offense "calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government" or "to intimidate or coerce a civilian population." Under this broad definition, eco-saboteurs become terrorists if their crime seeks to change government policy or action.

The Salon definition is bizarre and revisionist. First, an intent to cause civilian deaths was often sufficient before 9/11 to cause an act to be considered terrorism. Indeed, international law contains no legal definition of terrorism.

Second, Salon makes it sound as if any action designed to influence the conduct of government or intimidate or coerce the population is illegal under the Patriot Act, while in fact violence is required. The point is a simple one: America provides many opportunities to state your case, but in the end, if you are not persuasive in a democratic forum, you do not have the option of blowing up things or people to prove your point.

And that's for good reason, as ELF itself proved. They burned down the urban horticulture building because they thought genetic research was going on there, and they thought that could result in doctored genetic material being released into the environment, and they thought that would be a bad thing.

As it turned out, the University of Washington Horticulture building was a poor target for arson. Among the items destroyed were hundreds of photographs documenting plant regeneration on Mount St. Helens after the volcanic eruption, research on wetlands and prairie restoration, and a collection of rare showy stickseed plants that were being raised to replenish dwindling wild stocks in the Cascade Mountains. Bradshaw, the targeted professor, has said that although he had considered doing genetic engineering, he was not at the time of the fire. Rather he was conducting basic research on hybrid poplars, a fast-growing species that could reduce the pressure for logging in natural forests.

This is why we have an open government and public processes. Had ELF brought a public action against the horticulture operation, and in the process evidence could have been presented that would have deterred their action (assuming ELF idiots would believe anything the establishment would say in its own defense).

Instead, Briana Waters and four others planned and carried out an arson attack that very well could have resulted in deaths, in an effort to change things in a way the democratic process had not.

Salon raises questions about the case against her, but in the end she was convicted under the scrupulous provisions of our legal system which are designed to protect the innocent from false prosecution, and she is now branded a convicted terrorist.

It's nice that she teaches kids to play violin. It's not nice that she thinks she knows more than everyone else in America, that her views trump our legal system, and that violence is a justifiable means to an end in a democratic society.

Slam the door, lock it, and let her think about her crime for a minimum of five years in prison.

The Silent Sound Of Reporters Guffawing

Every once in a while you read a line in a news story, presented straightforwardly, cool, and oh, so reportorially, and you just know the reporter was slapping his knees and laughing out loud as he typed it.

Here's one such line:

There was no immediate comment from rebels to the PETA's letter.

Here's what leads up to it:

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) - An international animal rights group called on Sri Lanka's separatist Tamil Tigers to "leave animals out" of the armed conflict, two weeks after a grenade attack blamed on rebels at the island's main zoo.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, said in a letter dated Feb. 15 to Velupillai Prabhakaran, the reclusive rebel leader, that "the explosive device that was set off near the zoo's bird enclosures terrified many animals at the zoo."

PETA president Ingrid E. Newkirk pleaded with the rebel leader "to leave animals out of this conflict," the letter said.

Newkirk added that the group has been inundated by messages from people saddened by the attack.

Drum roll, please ...

There was no immediate comment from rebels to the PETA's letter.

Note that no birds were even killed in the Tamil Tiger attack; they just had their feathers ruffled. Yet the animal rights wing of the Lefty insane asylum -- which from the billboard appears to view terrorism as a big hoot -- is a-tizzy with outrage. Of course, they weren't particularly worried about dead people, just bothered birds.

PETA fans will remember that this is hardly the group's most egregious animals-over-people debacle. That came when in their protest to al-Aqsa TV -- the station that brought us Farfur, a character who resembled Mickey Mouse and advocated Palestinian attacks against Israelis until his poor little electrons were beaten to death by an actor depicted as an Israeli.

PETA got mad at the station because an actor verbally harassed some animals at a zoo as part of a show that was teaching children not to be cruel to animals! As I wrote at the time:

Apparently, PETA isn't antisemitic; if it were, and it didn't consider Jews to be fully human, it would rally for their protection. But thinking Jews mere humans, PETA finds itself admonishing the Palestinians for taunting some animals, but not admonishing them for blowing up buses filled with school kids.

Hat-tip: Jim

Forgot The Box-cutter, But Not The Prayer Book

Benjamin Baines, Jr. is in a world of trouble, since the hollowed out book he uses to stash his drugs went through a TSA X-ray machine at Tampa International and, lo and behold, a box-cutter was stashed inside.

"I'm moving to Las Vegas and I forgot the box-cutter was in the book," Baines told authorities, according to the Tampa Tribune's Web site, TBO.

That's about as reasonable an excuse as the guy who said, "Sorry, I thought it was my nose" when he was caught picking someone else's nose. Baines was at an airport; that might have sent a reminder. On his way to X-ray, he would have passed numerous signs saying what was prohibited, including, of all things, box-cutters. He would have seen the X-ray machine and the TSA agents screening.

Bells? Any bells going off? He would like us to believe that no, he just plain forgot that he was trying to pull off a Mohammed Atta.

Am I jumping to conclusions? Well, his backpack contained a few books that didn't have pages cut out, including one called The Noble Qur'an ("The English translation of the meanings and commentary") and another called The Prophet's Prayer. Amazon doesn't have the latter yet, but you can view it here: It's a detailed tutorial on every aspect of Muslim praying, including:

STANDING IN PRAYER

The Prayer of a Sick Person in a Sitting Position
Prayer on a Ship
Sitting and Standing in the Night Prayer (Tahajjud)
Prayer Wearing Shoes and the Command to do so
Prayer on the Pulpit (Minbar)
The Sutrah, and the Obligation to have one
What Breaks the Prayer
Prohibition of Prayer Facing the Grave

It goes on and on, including quiet prayers, Friday prayers and how to assume the position (sujood); it is not the sort of book someone who isn't serious about Islam would read.

As near as I can tell, there isn't a "Praying on Planes" chapter, though -- with a good defense attorney, that must might get Baines off.

He faces up to ten years in prison on the federal offense of trying to smuggle a weapon onto an aircraft. Great. While he's there, Saudi-funded Wahhabi radicals will push him further and further over the edge ...

... unless he starts reading that other book that was in his backpack. You might have heard of it. It's called The Bible.

hat-tip: Hugh Hewitt

Padillo Sentenced; Let's Hear It For Guantanamo

Jose Padilla, accused of conspiring to plant an al-Qaeda dirty bomb on our shores, was sentenced today in U.S. courts ... to a whopping 17 years and three months.

That means that for that amount of time or less he will be free to attempt to indoctrinate other misfits in our prisons, then will be released back into our population a free man -- as if he were fully cleansed, completely safe and ready to be a good citizen.

Maybe if he accepts Christ while in prison ...

That's reason enough for all but the most foggy-minded to understand why you don't want to let terrorists into our court system, but it's nothing compared to the reason U.S. District judge Marcia Cooke gave for not sentencing Padilla to life:

Prosecutors had sought life in prison, but Cook [sic]said she arrived at the 17-year sentence after taking into consideration the "harsh conditions" during Padilla's lengthy military detention at a Navy brig in South Carolina.

"I do find that the conditions were so harsh for Mr. Padilla ... they warrant consideration in the sentencing in this case," the judge said. (AP)

Why do the conditions warrant consideration? Do those conditions somehow make him any less dangerous? Of course not! In fact, the conditions were what they were just because he his so dangerous.

Padilla is a US citizen, so he has a right to stand before this judge, who unfortunately also has a right to do the idiot thing she did.

But why, pray tell, should we extend this same lunacy to non-citizen enemy combatants?

But watch -- the Left will declare Padilla dodging a life sentence a great victory, and will use it to demand similar treatment for the bloodthirsty warriors of the Religion of Peace we are now holding securely removed from judges like Miss Marcia.

Sunday Scan

Cloverfield, Nevada Style

The film Cloverfield has used viral internet marketing to become quite a sensation -- but at its heart, it's just a Godzilla movie, with a big mean monster wreaking havoc in New York.

And yesterday, a little, pale monster wreaked havoc in the glitter gulches and dusty desert towns of Nevada. And today, just as I predicted, we are suffering through the media coverage of it:

Boy, oh, boy! Hidden behind all the hoopla, headlines and the Nevada caucus victories of Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton is one little-noticed but stunning political development and number:

Ron Paul, the one-time Libertarian candidate and 10-term Republican congressman from Texas, was in second place. That's right, Second Place. The 72-year-old ob-gyn who's always on the end of the line at GOP debates or barred altogether, was running ahead of John McCain, Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, in fact, ahead of....

all other Republicans except Romney, who easily captured his second state in a week after Michigan.

Uh-huh. But let's keep our heads on straight. It was Romney with 51% of the votes (all 22,659 of them!) followed by the pale imp with 14%, attracting a whopping 6,087 to his cause -- a full 436 more people than John McCain attracted.

Photo clipped from: Dino's Forum

Marking History

They laid an historical marker outside a house in Port Arthur, Texas today. Here's the story.

In that house there once lived a little four-year-old girl who grew up to live far too short a life as Summer of Love diva Janis Joplin. There was another house she lived in earlier, but it's gone now, so this is her official childhood home.

The marker was placed today as opposed to any other day you might think of because it marks what would have been Joplin's 65th birthday.

Whoa, am I feeling old.

I was 17, I think, when I first put Big Brother and the Holding Company's Cheap Thrills on my little stereo and heard her gravely voice. And I'm still 17 in my head when I think about her ... how could she have been born 65 years ago?

New Euro-Islamist Threat

This is not something I'm quite prepared to think about:

The source implied that the [Spanish intelligence agency] CNI had specific information on itinerant terrorists heading for the UK, France and Portugal.

The squib, from a London Times article, troubles me not just because Incredible Daughter #1 is in Paris, but because I've never seen the words "itinerant terrorists" before. We have in America a tradition of itinerant preachers and judges; from sick Islam, we get itinerant terrorists, travelling from place to place, killing innocents in the name of Allah.

Terrorists Get 72 Raisins?

Amidst a lengthy and interesting story at Act! For America covering the suppression of ancient Islamic texts in Germany, so anyone interested in a revisionist view of the Koran cannot get access to them, was this interesting tidbit:

According to an Islam tradition, Muslim martyrs will go to paradise and marry 72 black-eyed virgins. But some Koran scholars point to a less sexy paradise. While beautifully written, Islamic texts are often obscure. The Arabic language was born as a written language with the Koran, and growing evidence suggests that many of the words were Syriac or Aramaic.

Specifically, the Koran says martyrs going to heaven will get "hur," and the word was taken by early commentators to mean "virgins," hence those 72 concubines. But in Aramaic, hur actually meant "white" and was commonly used to specifically mean "white grapes."

It's easy to crack a joke over this, but if there's any question at all about the nature of so critical a text -- a text that is responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocents a year -- why does the keeper of the archive, Angelika Neuwirth, protect them from anyone other than pro-Islamist researchers?

For more on this fascinating story, see Andrew Higgins' WSJ article, The Lost Archives.

hat-tip: What Bubba Knows

Pulling The Plug On Terrorists

Just wait 'til some Palestinians start crying about having to eat cold falafels in the dark -- oh, how the anti-Israeli press will rain an ink-storm on Israel. Here's the story, from Sky News:

Large parts of the Gaza Strip have been plunged into darkness after its main power plant shut down.

It comes after Israel blocked fuel supplies to the Hamas-run territory and closed its borders.

Israel says the blocklade is a response to rocket attacks by militants.

It claims 230 rockets have been fired at border towns in a new wave of aggression.

"It claims?" I don't suppose we can expect the media to actually report that rockets are falling like locusts on Israel.

Already, the Palestinian PR machine is busy maximizing the impact:

"The catastrophe will affect hospitals, medical clinics, water wells, houses, factories, all aspects of life."

Oh, boo hoo. First, stop sending rockets into civilian neighborhoods, especially when there's no war going on. And second, get your act together, Palestine. You've had 60 years to provide for yourself, but here you are, dependent on Israel for your power ... with fuel purchased by Europe.

How these people garner so much sympathy and so little criticism amazes me.

Human-Animal Embryo Research

Two research companies in England have been granted licenses to mix up human and animal embryos, reports Science Daily.

One is going to take the genetic matter out of cow embryos and mix 'em up with human embryos, in a quest for better human stem cells.

The scientists would attempt to extract stem cells from the blastocyst after six days. Stem cells are building blocks that can grow into any type of tissue such as liver, heart and muscle cells. The quality and the viability of stem cells would then be checked to see if nuclear transfer technique has worked. The scientists would also be observing the way that the cells are reprogrammed after fusion to see if there are useful processes they could replicate in the laboratory. The embryo would have to be destroyed at 14 days old in accordance with the licence.

I have to admit, this all goes way, way over my head. I understand that there's nothing about this license that will allow any intermingled animal/human embryonic material to (1) live or (2) get into humans, but the research is taking the science to another new level, and after that will be another new level.

At some time, a mistake will occur or a license will be granted that shouldn't have been. That's just the way it goes with us inquisitive humans. All this going too far will make a great novel ... and it's one work of nonfiction I hope I never read.

George Clooney, Messenger Of Peace

Position to fill: International shell game operator needs good looking individual with real swoon-power, a hard-left orientation and a history of supporting the wrong side in global causes to cover up organization's myriad global failures.

Position filled! The Rosett Report reports:

As Hollywood buffs and UN money-raisers already know, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has just named actor George Clooney as the UN’s newest Messenger of Peace, with a “special focus on UN peacekeeping.” Clooney, currently visiting Sudan, is expected to “receive his designation” Jan. 31st at UN headquarters in New York.

Oh, great. We get to see even more of Clooney opening his mouth and letting his politics spew out. Rosett's not expecting much good of it to come, either:

This would all be great if UN peacekeeping actually produced peace. But the illusion that the UN is a grand force for good in this world deserves to be catalogued somewhere between World’s Most Amazing Scams and Believe It-Or-Not Best-in-Special-Effects. The reality of today’s UN is more like a cross between “Animal House” (the movie, with John Belushi) and “Animal Farm” (the book, by George Orwell).

Her post is a gem. Do read the whole thing.

Hon, Let's Cancel That Trip To Yemen

Did these folks not see Babel?

Do they not read newspapers?

Suspected al-Qaida militants opened fire on a convoy of tourists in a remote desert mountain valley Friday, killing two Belgian women and their Yemeni driver. It was the second recent militant attack on foreign tourists in Yemen, the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden.

The victims were traveling in a convoy of at least four vehicles through an ancient, ruin-filled desert valley called Wadi Daw'an in Yemen's eastern Hadramut region when the gunmen attacked, a security official said. Four people were wounded.

Karina Lambert, who survived the attack, said it was carried out by four gunmen hiding behind a pickup truck parked by the road.

''They wanted to kill, that's sure, because after the first bursts of machine-gun fire, they approached the vehicles and fired into the cars,'' she told Belgium's RTL-TVI television network. (AP)

In case you're wondering about the attraction that would drive tourists to the Yemeni desert, here's a lovely shot:

So darn pretty it kinda makes you want to risk getting your head blown open by some crazies junked up on Mohammed, doesn't it?

I'm beginning to think I'll never understand Europeans.

$6 Billion Ruling Against Libya In Flight 772 Case

Eighteen years after a Libyan suitcase bomb exploded in the cargo hold of the French airline UTA's Flight 772 over the Tenere Desert in Niger, a U.S. Court has ruled Libya responsible and has assessed $6 billion in damages against Moammar's Desert Playground.

The bombing killed 170 people, 100 less than Libya's Lockerbie undertaking, but it was one of history's largest acts of aircraft terrorism nonetheless. Seven of the dead were Americans, including Bonnie Pugh, the wife of US ambassador to Chad Robert Pugh.

Yesterday's court order by U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy follows the judge's ruling last April, in which he found that Libya was directly responsible for the bombing. He based his decision on detailed and mostly undisputed evidence from both the French criminal case as well as information provided by the State Department.

A news release from the law firm winning the case said,

Stuart H. Newberger, the lead lawyer for the victim families and a senior partner at Crowell & Moring, said, “This award proves that the rule of law will always prevail over state-sponsored terrorism. At the end of the day, all 170 victims of UTA Flight 772 will be remembered and honored by this decision. Indeed, it is because of rulings like this that Libya has rejected terrorism and re-joined the civilized nations of the world.”

A complicated statement, that. Is there a bit of a Bush-dig in it? Anti-Bush warriors want the war on terror to be fought in the courts, not on the battlefield, so it's either an odd, or a deliberate, word selection. And I'm not at all sure it was legal decisions that got the Libyans to cower away from terror-sponsorship. I believe seeing us take after their former terrorist-in-residence Osama bin Laden had something to do with it as well.

But it's great news even if the news release isn't well worded, made possible by US law that strips state sponsors of terrorism from the protections normally afforded sovereign states.

If you're interested in Kennedy's 104-page ruling, you'll find it here.

"Everyone Has His Flaws." Terrorism Was This Guy's

A third would-be terrorist plead guilty today in federal court in Santa Ana, admitting that he had robbed gas stations in order to fund jihad attacks he planned to carry out on military sites, synagogues and Jewish centers in Southern California.

The terror ring, created in prison via Saudi-funded programs, was on the verge of action when it was busted by a joint federal/local task force.

The jihadist who plead guilty today is Gregory Patterson, a 23-year-old college student. Patterson's attorney executed a spin session that would have dazzled a Sufi, as described in the OC Register:

[Patterson's] attorney, William McKesson, said his client was an easily impressionable youth who become involved with the terrorist group after he was "manipulated" and "abused" by [Levar Haley] Washington [who plead guilty last week].

Patterson – who lives in the South Bay, and took classes at El Camino College in Torrance and California State University, Northridge – was raised Christian but was studying Islam when he met Washington, who was a guest speaker at an Islamic center attended by Patterson, McKesson said.

"He led a typical middle-class lifestyle, he never was in trouble with the law,'' the attorney said. "But everyone has flaws, and his (flaw) was that he was a follower."

Yeah, that's all that's wrong with him; he's just a follower.

What sort of person becomes interested in Islam after 9/11, the Mohammed cartoons and teddy bears, the Daniel Pearl beheading, Ahmadinejad's declarations on the Holocaust and Israel, and the continuous news of Islam's misogyny?

Oh, just a typical, middle-class Christian kid, right?

Gregory Patterson has a flaw all right. He is violently disturbed. He hates Jews, women and his country. He loves repression, violence and the killing of innocents.

He is a soldier of jihad, no different from any of the other crazies, really, who are nothing more than followers ... of Mohammed.

Those Whacky Palestinians!

Israel may be a "vile little state" in the eyes of the Islamic world, but it doesn't generate news like this:

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Hamas security forces opened fire Monday at a rally commemorating Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, killing five at the largest show of support for the rival Fatah movement in the Gaza Strip since Hamas seized control in June.

At least 31 people were wounded, three critically, including a Hamas policeman who was shot in the head, medical officials and Fatah said.

The violence erupted after tens of thousands of Fatah supporters carrying pictures of Arafat, yellow Fatah flags and wearing trademark black-and-white Arab headdresses, gathered in a courtyard in downtown Gaza City.

Or to recap: The terrorist government of the Gaza Strip got mad that the terrorist citizens were celebrating the wrong terrorist, so they terrorized them.

It's as if Ehud Olmert sent troops out to "bullet-quell" supporters commemorating Yitzak Rabin. Unthinkable ... anywhere but in the wonderful world of Islamist despotism.

Things You Don't See In The U.S. And Israel

Insurgents detonated a bomb in a car with two children in it after using the children as decoys to get through a military checkpoint in Baghdad, an American general said Tuesday.

Speaking at a news briefing at the Pentagon, Maj. Gen. Michael Barbaro, deputy director for regional operations at the Joint Staff, said American soldiers had stopped the car at the checkpoint but had allowed it to pass after seeing the two children in the back seat.

“Children in the back seat lower suspicion,” he said, according to a transcript. “We let it move through. They parked the vehicle. The adults run out and detonate it with the children in back.” (NYT)

Go ahead. Ask a Lib if we are fighting an evil enemy. They'll just tell you Bush and Israel are evil.

No Virgins For Him!

Sulejman Talovic, the punk who killed five innocent people on a rampage in a Salt Lake City mall, lies in his casket in the village of Talovici in Bosnia. The soul of the 18-year-old is already burning in Hell -- no virgins for him!