Heads on pikes

Yeah, looks like the NYT did indeed get a hold of classified info and did indeed publish it.

I want heads... on pikes!

Does anyone know what would happen to me or my brothers in arms if we pulled a stunt like that? We'd be put in a very deep hole where nobody would see us again. Still, I've seen some people even go so far as to defend this leak... okay, this is no leak. This is treason. Anyway, it's WAY too easy for people sitting around in their living rooms and offices to make light of this. We don't look out the windows and see the war that has been on us for the last 30 years or so. We see America. Everything else seems so far away. Well, it isn't. Just because you don't have to subsist on rationed gasoline and paltry allowances of sugar and butter does not mean that our nation is not engaged in a struggle with an enemy that will kill you if you do not bow to them.

These secret programs, the secret program that the NYT aired for the world to see, these things are here to protect us. They are here to give us an egde on an enemy that does not fly a flag, wear a uniform, or even claim a nation as home. They are secret so they can be effective. They are secret so the enemy does not see them coming!

Sometimes, I wish this war was a lot more obvious and that it would be fought in the open, with conventional weapons, in the U.S., if only to show people that there is indeed a war and that what individuals do can harm or help the effort... and that the success of the war effort directly relates to the safety of all Americans.

Heads on pikes, folks. This sabotage of our war effort should not go unpunished. Such arrogance should not go on without a decisive blow against it. Let's fire some people send them to the deep, dark, hole where all traitors belong.

Just so you know...

If I believe what I read, there are some disturbing things going on outside of my windowless room, which ought to be redesignated 'my windowless world' in light of recent work habits...
Anyway, what's this I hear about classified information getting out by way of the NYT, LA Times, and WaPo? Is this true? I'd totally believe it from the NYT...
Don't 'they' shoot people for giving classified information to any enemy (publishing it in a newspaper is just that)? Isn't that treason? A better question, though, is who told them? They can't publish what they don't know... so who told them? If this thing about classified info is true, I want that man/woman's or those peoples' head(s) on a pike! I don't need to explain why classified information is classified or why it's release is so damaging.

Rest assured, though. In a world where classified, sensitive, information is leaked and published, there are some people (yours truly) who will never give away the classified information that we are entrusted with. There are some people who take seriously the promises that they made, as in the promise that anyone etrusted with classified information makes which says 'I won't give it up'. Most, maybe all, of us in the military, at least in my end of the rabbit hole, see things this way.

I stand partially corrected

AI came through on the condemnation. I'm surprised, but pleased.

Watch for it

I am pissed. I am enraged. I am disgusted.
I wonder if the same 'human rights' groups that have decried/decry the treatment of the prisoners at Gitmo will have the same reaction to the grissly, brutal, inhuman, downright demonic treatment suffered by American soldiers this week. Personally, I strongly doubt it. Said 'human rights' groups were utterly silent about the abuses perpetrated by the Baathists. They were silent about the Taliban. They continue to be louder about Guantanamo Bay than about any of the hot spots in Africa. They are silent about the prison camps of North Korea. They do not stand up for the Falun Gong, at least not like they stand up for the rat vermin that are incarcerated at Gitmo. They say nothing about the Christians that are subject to systematic kidnapping and murder in southeast Asia. They say nothing of the PLO/Hamas bombing of civilians... women... children. No, I do not think that it is reasonable to expect them to do anything about a group of people that think it's okay to chop off the body parts of other humans, to cut those humans, to maim them, to remove their organs, and finally to behead them. They are too busy trying to 'spotlight' the 'abuse' that the Americans heap on some lower than life pond scum that for some reason are getting better fed than their guards and enjoying a greater budget for care than the men who leave their families and the comfort of their homes to sit around in a tiny section of a hostile island.. men who have done nothing wrong.

I rambled there... that happens when I'm pissed. But for crying out loud, just who's side are these 'human rights' watchdogs on, anyway? It's a world upside down, I'll tell you what. Maybe, as I pointed out about those fruits and nuts that were going to storm the White House back in March, they are chicken. They want to fight for human rights, they really do, but they are too cowardly to take on the real abusers because those abusers tend to kill people who disaggree with them. China and North Korea have entire camps full of people who's only 'crime' is disaggreement. The U.S., on the other hand, is an easy target. We are fasionable to hate, we don't shoot dissidents, we have no prisons for people who like yoga and yin-yangs, and most of all, we are fighting against an army that has no country and that likes to exploit our good nature for their own ends. Because this army has no country, it's easy to portray our fight with them as tyranny and cruelty. Because this army takes advantage of our good nature, it's easy to portray us as the baby killers... even when it's our enemy that kills the children and even uses children in places that they know they will die... just so they can blame us for a crime that they have no compunctions whatsoever about committing.

I hope I'm wrong, but I say there is a 99% chance that Amnesty International and their ilk will say nothing to condemn the tactics, the cruelty, the ghoulishness of this nationless army. I can guarantee with near certainty that they will not act. They don't have the guts. That's why they condemn a place where prisoners get three squares a day while ignoring a place that sometimes feeds out cabbage laced with chemical warfare agents... when they are not starving people to death (Mr. Kim Jong Il's worker's paradise, if you didn't know).

Top Washington Leaders Call for Pullout.

June 16th, 1944.

Many leaders in Washington are demanding a pullout of American troops from France, citing examples of how badly the war is going. The situation has been described as a quagmire, unwinable, and many are questioning why American troops were sent into France in the first place. Further, the attack on England a few days ago by a cruise missile shows that the French don't want us in their country. In fact, many of the French are working for the Germans. They must want the Germans there. It's their way of life.

Every hedgerow is a killing field, making progress imposible. We have failed to make it even as far as as Cherbourg. We have failed to make it to Caen. We can never make it to Paris.

We've broken into France, now it's up to the French to kick the Germans out. As American casualties climb, it is more and more a reminder that we have to pull out.
Pull out, pull out, pull out, for God's sake pull out! We can't win! President Roosevelt's policies for France have failed and we need to rethink... pull out... can't win... Americans dying... can't win... quagmire... policies failed...

62 years later...
Pull out, pull out, pull out, for God's sake pull out! We can't win!
SHUT UP! This last week has been HUGE for free people in Iraq and DEVASTATING for the terrorist forces. We have broken Al-Qaeda in Iraq's (AQiI from here on out) leadership, gathered large ammounts of paper inteligence generated by Al-Qaeda at Large, killed a few hundred terrorists, and captured almost a thousand more. AQiI is complaining that they are ineffective, that they are failing. They are lamenting their poor communication and many in their ranks are now saying that their cause is lost.

You can't plan events like this. You can only work toward them with constant effort. The U.S. House seems to get it, at least. Others are not as in-touch: there is an American congressman (his name escapes me... I'm sleep deprived) who described the total... TOTAL accomplishments of the American and free Iraqi troops as 'not much'. Nancy Pelosi says that the Iraq policy has failed...

Well, if this is 'not much' and a 'failed' policy, I want to see even less! I want to see dismal failure in all policies! It's the third quarter and we're ahead by, oh, about 50 points. Yeah, let's throw the game: we can't win.

Oh, Please...

Bullets do not kill people. Guns do not kill people. Bombs do not kill people. While some are tempted to think of such tools as weapons and as the causes of death, this is not true. The only weapon that a man wields is the mind. People kill people, the mind is the weapon. The tools will be whatever is at hand. When people don't have guns, it's true that they don't shoot other. That's when they start using machetes, fire, screwdrivers, bare hands, and even famine as the tools of the death trade. Exhibit A: Pretty much any of the African genocides... entire villages hacked to bits or starved.

I do not at all like the escapist notion that the world wold be a peaceful place but for these things called (guns/bullets/grenades/tanks/bows/arrows/knives/chemical blister agents/atomic bombs). I reject it out of hand, but I also hate it because it's an attempt to go around a problem, take the easy way out, not face it and go through. I think that to believe that man is not the root of evil and the cause of his own suffering is to live in a fantasy land, but it's such a nice fantasy to live in. Believing as such, you would never have to confront the difficult problem of what to do with a person that has decided the life of another is there for the taking. You would not have to face the demons that live in your own heart, and never have to be put in the position of realizing that eutopia can never come. Wake, dreamer.

Albert Einstein once said something to the effect of that he did not know what sort of weapons would be used to fight World War 3, but that he knew that World War 4 would be fought with sticks and stones. The mind is the weapon, it is the only weapon. The mind is what makes matter subservient to human will, and it is the mind that takes life. When men run out of bombs and bullets, there will still be death. There will still be murder.

Take the step to address the evil within the human mind, and you will do more to end war than if you could somehow, magically, make all the guns, bombs, bullets, and blades go away. You can try to do the latter, but you will fail. The 'Bullet Trade' will never leave us. You have a chance if you go with the former.

Aside: I have personally used over 250,000 rounds of military grade ammunition. I have not once taken a human life. Bullets do need to be fired at people.

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the planet...
I was not aware that the U.S. was planning to attack Venezuela... We, after all, have intergalactic wars to start.

Hmmmm...

DeLay (R, TX): Presumed guilty, if only by association with some unsavory people.
Jefferson (D, LA): Presumed innocent, despite the massive wad of cash in his freezer and the bribe caught on tape.

Just saying...

Lived and died by the bomb...

Of course, the collateral damage of the U.S. Air Force's smart bombs (pair of 500 pounders, dropped one at a time) was near zero. Musab al-Zarqawi's style was collateral damage. Jordanian weddings, anyone? His days of beheading people, gunning down people as they go to work, blowing up children, and killing people for voting are over.

I don't want to meet the person that misses this guy.

06 JUN 06

I realized from listening to the radio what today's numerical designation was... hmm... six-six-oh-six... or just 666. People are acting wierd. By that I mean a bit wierder than usuall because people always act wierd. Side note: If people always act wierd... that would mean that my view of wierd is normal and that I'm wierd. Oh well, it's my show and I say that people are acting wierd.

For an example of wierd, there were some mothers that tried to either induce labor yesterday or hold out until tomorrow because they are afraid of the date.

So much for a modern, enlightened time. I guess superstition never dies.
In my arrogant oppinion, today is just a day. I mean, it's D-Day, but other than that, it's just hot day in June... just like yesterday or tomorrow. Also, whose calendar is the right one? Today is also 10 Sivan(3) 5766. You could say 9 Jumaada al-awal(5) 1427 with equal credibility. So we have 6-6-06, 10-3-66, 9-5-27, 2453892, 3-16-28... I could go on. It's just a day, a number is just a number, even when it's a clever/really dumb marketing device for yet ANOTHER remade movie.

666 does show up in the Bible as a number connected with some really bad stuff, and being a believer in that book, I have to take what it says seriously. What I don't take seriously is the idea that today somehow belongs to Satan or any other such nonsense.

The number itself is as insignificant as any other. If you insist on believing that the day now called 6-6-06 is bad, consider this: God beat Satan twice. Once when he kicked him out of heaven and again when Jesus came back to life. On top of that, God is winding up for the hat trick that is the aftermath of the end of days. If you don't believe in God, well then believing in Satan is a few meters past too stupid to live. So what are people afraid of?

I sit back, observe, and am ammused and confused. The only significance I give this day is the D-Day 62nd aniversary.

For some fun with the number 666, see NRO and IMAO, and doutbless about 10% of blogs in general.

Canada, of all places

Canadian police have just foiled a plot to detonate somthing like 3+ tons worth of fertilizer bombs in several Canadian cities.

Now, my first question is WHAT THE HELL? Is there a nicer, more laid back, less intrusive, less offensive nation than Canada? What did they do to incur this? Haven't they bent a long way towards appeasing the Sharia types?

On some level, I can understand why Islamic crusaders (would lunaders be the more appropriate term? Or is the crescent of Islam related to something other than the moon? Anyway...) would attack the U.S. We're big, we're loud, we're successful, our culture seems to be infectious, we are very un-Muslim as a nation, yada yada yada. But why oh why attack Canada? COME ON!

Okay, now I'll be serious. I know exactly why they got targeted. They are a free (mostly) nation and they have not bowed to Sharia law. The entire world faces this, this crusade that says 'convert or die'. The crusaders are not open to negotiation. Convert or die. It's much like the Inquisition's treatment of Jews. It is much like the behavior of some other religeons years ago. They were rightly condemned by modern man.

This just goes to show why we fight the wars we fight. Those who would not live as peasants under tryanical hands administering unjust law have three choices. We concede, we die, or we fight until there is nobody left willing to crusade against us. I don't like any of those options, but living at letting live is not an option when some nut job decides that since you are not worshipping his god, you must die. There is no way to negotiate with that. I can't concede to such injustice, I don't want to die, and I don't want to kill people. I want everyone to live in peace, but no ammount of hope or even example can stop a merderous crusade. So, I'm left with and we should all be left with the conclusion that the sort of people who tried to attack Canada, the sort that attack Israel, the sort that have blown up people in Spain and England, the sort that tried to blow up the WTC and who later crashed planes into it... they must be fought until they are all dead or they quit killing people who disagree with their concept of god.

If Canada is not safe, nobody is.

D-Day

62 years ago, a force of American, British, and Canadian soldiers assaulted the beaches of Normandy, France, kicking off the campaign that would bring the end of the Nazis and their Third Reich.
A lot went wrong 62 years ago, and legion men died... men from literally all over the world. But ultimately, tenacity won the days.
Remember that our successes in the past were long fought and hard won, won by perseverance and a refusal to concede. No significant victory has ever been easy or ever will be easy, but we are better for these victories and sacrifices today. We are all better for what happened 62 years ago today.

The wisdom of Glenn Beck

"Will Wal-Mart hire more or less people if they are forced to pay higher wages?"

Duh!

That's why I listen to him... okay, I listen because he's funny AND smart.

American Idol sucks!