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ostile, America-hating jihadists captured in battles in Afghanistan were shown U.S. hospitality in Guantanamo – given Qur’ans and a proper Muslim diet, offered exercise and prayer time.  Each individual’s case was carefully researched and heard, a lawyer by the jihadist’s side to represent his interests.  Many were simply freed after this process, others ascertained judiciously to be too dangerous and returned to their cells.

And for this process, Leftists in America and anti-Americans around the world howled and spat and said vile things about our country and our president.  Even our new president joined in the condemning chorus, staking out the most left-wing of all candidates’ position on the matter.

Now, with the capture of a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan, we have a sad and tragic opportunity to measure the behavior of America against the behavior of those who fight us on the battlefield, betray us on our shores, and denigrate us from the comfort of their protected European easy chairs.

We certainly can’t expect anything approaching equal treatment and respect from those jihadist thugs who captured the soldier. Here’s what WaPo reports on them:

“Our leaders have not decided on the fate of this soldier.” the AFP quoted the Haqqani commander, identified only as Bahram, as saying. “They will decide on his fate and soon we will present video tapes of the coalition soldier and our demand to media.”

So Haqqani leaders, not a tribunal, will decide his fate.  And he will be videotaped and used as a propaganda tool, a violation of the Geneva accords.  And they will use the soldier to make demands of us, rather than treat him as a prisoner of war.  Anyone who has followed these sorts of cases has to fear for the life of this soldier; I hope that is not the case, but he has suffered the great misfortune of being captured by people who are not Americans.

Check out the several stories posted on Memeorandum about this breaking event, and you will find no Leftist outlets or blogs listed; you will not be able to link over to any stories or posts from the Left, calling for justice and demanding compliance with Geneva. They are uninterested, just as they are suddenly uninterested in civilian deaths in Iraq or military operations in Afghanistan.  Hypocrites.

Don’t count on this story even breaking through the Michael Jackson storm in the European press, obsessed as it is with deviant behaviors – especially by Americans.

Those who demanded full rights don’t even much care about this soldier’s right to life.  Guantanamo was all about serving a purpose other than protecting jihadists; it was about destroying a presidency and denigrating America, nothing more – and the Left’s disinterest in the fate of this soldier is all the proof we need.

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“I don’t know anything about cars.” – Edward E. Whitacre, Jr., Newly Annointed Chairman Of GM

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really can’t believe I’m in America, reading in American media what an American president is doing to an American enterprise.  But I am.  It is true.  The government has named a new chairman for General Motors.  Not the GM board of directors, not the shareholders, but Steven Rattner, Obama’s car czar, who knows about as much about cars as the new chairman, Edward Whitacre.

This is far more radical than anything I thought Obama would be able to pull off, even in eight years, let alone 14 weeks.  Following on yesterday’s SCOTUS decision which said, basically, a contract is no longer a contract so investors can expect no protections, the critical condition of glorious American capitalism could not be more apparent.  I worry that it will not survive until 2010′s mid-term elections.

Whitacre was picked for two reasons.  The published one is that he guided AT&T through the transition from land-based wire telephone carrier to a leader in the wireless industry.  The Obamaites see a similar future for GM, with it transforming from a market-driven car company to a government-driven car company, manufacturing cars Big Brother wants us to drive, whether we want to or not.

The unspoken reason for his selection is because Whitacre can be counted on to do what government tells him to do, as was evident when he quickly (and rightly) acquiesced to government pressure to open AT&T’s hardware to the feds for post-9/11 surveillance purposes.  Not all telcom CEOs folded so quickly to government pressure, and since folding to government pressure is what’s in store for GM, Whitacre will make an ideal Obama-era chairman for the company.

The appointment should infuriate the Left.  Besides being a lackey to George Bush’s gestapo security machine, Whitacre received a peon-snubbing $158.8 million retirement package from AT&T and was involved in some pretty brutal corporate downsizings (probably in no small part due to shifting jobs overseas).  Oh, and let’s not forget that under his tenure AT&T censored (oops!) a Pearl Jam concert right when the band was blasting George Bush.

But Daily Kos has nothing posted on him as of his hour.  Democratic Underground? Mum.  [By the way, I typed "democraticunderground" instead of "democraticunderground.com," and was redirected to one of those stupid sponsored-link pages.  Guess who came out on top?  Barbara Boxer!] As for Huffington Post, which as I predicted in a tweet earlier today leads with how Homeland Security foresaw today’s attack on the Holocaust Museum in its report on right-wing radicalism, it also couldn’t find a reason to cover – let alone criticize – Whitacre’s appointment.

Of course not.  They know what’s going on.  Their long-awaited revolution is happening and they don’t want to crow about it too early because suddenly they’re very concerned about the enemy getting wind of our intentions.  Not al-Qaeda – tell them anything - they don’t want their enemy, normal Americans, to wake up to what’s going on.  No, they want to be much further down the road to economic ruin in the name of wealth redistribution before they haul out the red flags and have a victory parade.

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I would like for you to present your clear concise plan for our Foreign Policy. There is a resurgent Russia pursuing Nuclear Arms. Iran is still in a two year deal with Russia for ballistic missile tech. The Middle-East remains in turmoil, Afghanistan is a wreck, Pakistan threatens destabilization. At the same time China tests our resolve. What’s the plan Mr. President?

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hat’s one of the better questions up at Ask The President, a new Web site that lets you ask and vote thumb up or thumbs down on others’ questions. Most are stacked one way or another, as the one above is, obviously reflecting a pro-strong defense viewpoint.  More are like this one:

Polls consistently show the majority of Americans strongly support a single-payer healthcare system. In a recent survey conducted by New York Times/CBS (1/11-15/09), respondents indicated they preferred a single-payer model 2 to 1 over a privatized system. Why then, is a single-payer model not being seriously considered and discussed as part of the major healthcare reform proposals under your administration?

The site is just barely up; very few votes have been cast. Astonishingly (perhaps not) the vote on the first question, on defense, was 0-4 when I logged on (It’s 1-4 now).  No one thought Obama should have a clear policy towards states that pose a threat.  The vote on the healthcare question: 1/1, with my vote.

Log on, have some fun, do some mischief.  Flag that healthcare question as obscene, and answer the question I just posted:

Mr. President, will you immediately stop rushing bills through Congress, blaming a trumped-up need to act quickly, and allow the substantial changes you are proposing to have a fair and public hearing?

UPDATE: At noon today, the vote on my question was 13 for an open process as the president promised us during the campaign … and 38 who think rushing through 1,000-page, gazillion-dollar bills before anyone has read them just the perfect thing for our country and democracy.

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Lawfare

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‘ve been doing a bit of Facebook “wallfare” over Guantamo with liberal blogger Dan Chmielewski.  He knee-jerks on the subject, seeing Gitmo as a blight on America’s honor, without giving much more thought to the consequences of closing it other than disputing the recent report that 61 detainees released from Gitmo have been identified to be back at work trying to advance jihadism. Dan probably wouldn’t agree with this assessment of Gitmo, from a post on Civilian Irregular:

Our Nation is at war, and JTF-Guantanamo serves as an integral component of OPERATION Enduring Freedom. We are the model organization for safe and humane enemy combatant detention operations, and for the collection and dissemination of strategic intelligence supporting the Global War on Terror. We operate under the watchful gaze of the Nation and the world. We are a strategic asset operated by a highly trained and patriotic team of military and civilian professionals, dedicated to supporting our Nation’s interests in the Global War on Terror.

The post goes on to describe two reasons for keeping detainees at Gitmo. The first is gaining intelligence, which we all can understand and which has been written about ad nauseum from all sides of the political spectrum. The other is lawism, a new term for me.

If it weren’t for lawfare we could execute them when their intelligence value has been exhausted. Lawfare, according to Colonel Charles Dunlap,

describes a method of warfare where law is used as a means of realizing a military objective. There are many dimensions to lawfare, but the one ever more frequently embraced by U.S. opponents is a cynical manipulation of the rule of law and the humanitarian values it represents. Rather than seeking battlefield victories, per se, challengers try to destroy the will to fight by undermining the public support that is indispensable when democracies like the U.S. conduct military interventions.”

We are struggling to find a way to combat lawfare without either providing terrorists with information they should not have, or stepping on the rights of American citizens.  We don’t have the solution, and we shouldn’t be forced to close Gitmo because of political deadlines until we have a viable lawfare strategy – and a strategy to keep ourselves safe from the damage these vicious animals can foist on us. Continue Reading »

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here’s a plane in the Hudson. I’m on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy.” – Twitter tweet and cell phone photo from Janis Krums of Sarasota, FL, transmitted within minutes of the crash.

For more on how Twitter was involved in the earliest news dispatches of the crash, check out this brief in Silicon Alley Insider.

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Great Moments In Black African Nationalism

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h, for the good old days when white colonials ran a pretty good show in Africa! What a mess the black leaders plutocrats have made of Africa. Here’s the latest:

HARARE, Zimbabwe (CNN) — Zimbabwe’s central bank will introduce a $50 billion note — enough to buy just two loaves of bread — as a way of fighting cash shortages amid spiraling inflation.

The country’s acting finance minister, Patrick Chinamasa, made the announcement in a government gazette released Saturday.

Although Chinamasa did not give the date on which the $50 billion and new $20 billion notes would come into circulation, an official at the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe said the notes would be distributed to all banks by the end of Monday.

And all the world’s horses and all the world’s men can’t get Robert Mugabe out.  If the United Nations were indeed united for the good of the people, he would have been out long ago, but it’s really the United Despots, and a majority of delegates are afraid that if Mugabe goes, they’ll soon follow.

h/t: What Bubba Knows Continue Reading »

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nteresting … here the chart of Twitter tweets on “Blago,” with the first bump occurring as news broke of his impeachment by the  members of the Illinois state Senate (all unimpeachable ladies and gentlemen, I’m sure) followed by next to nothing until a few hours later when off it goes, stratospheric.

What’s up with that?  Tweat-lag?

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he Israeli Defense Forces are learning from the media-savvy Palestinians – they’ve created their own page on YouTube – IDF Spokesperson’s Unit – and filled it with videos showing the pin-point accuracy of their attacks and their targeting of terrorists.  Here’s video of the destruction of Hamas’ HQ:

And in a deft PR move, here’s a clip of an Israeli aid shipment to Gaza:

Unfortunately, the most popular clip – on that shows Hamas as the terrorists they are, and worthy of attack – was removed by YouTube.  Here’s Noah Pollak at Consensus:

[Showing] Israeli humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza and airstrikes that prevented terrorists from firing rockets at Israeli civilians … was apparently too much for YouTube, which moments ago removed several videos from the IDF’s channel, including the most-watched video, which showed a group of Hamas goons being blown up in an air strike as they loaded Katyusha missiles onto a truck. The point of such footage, as if it needed to be said, is not to revel in violence — it is to show the legitimacy of Israeli self-defense.

The rank double-standard that YouTube has applied to Israel is disturbing. YouTube hosts all manner of similar footage — much of it far more gory than the grainy infrared images posted by the IDF — of U.S. air strikes. Why is YouTube capitulating to those who do not wish for Israel to be able to tell its side of the story?

Why indeed?

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f you want to get a sense of what it’s like to go through a plane crash – actually the post-plane crash process – check out 2 Drinks Behind’s Twittered account, reproduced (ripe profanity and all) in Silicon Valley Insider.

2 Drinks Behind is Mike Wilson, who was aboard the Continental Airlines 737 that slid of the runway in Denver Saturday night.  The tight word limit on Twitter transmittals makes for a staccato presentation. Read from the bottom up.  This account ends six hours ago (6:50 a.m. PST); if you want more recent entries, go here, to Wilson’s Twitter page.

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signed up for Twitter some months ago at the behest of Bookworm, but it laid idle since then as I played around with Facebook and did numerous actually important things instead. Then in the last week a couple funny things happened, ending up in me re-establishing my Twitter account and sending out a bunch of explanations last night.

My friend Patrick the paragraph farmer emailed me this morning in an unusual state – confusion:

I love your blog, but I’m not sure I see the point of Twitter, or should make the time to log daily activity there. I’m willing to reconsider that. I know our mutual friend Bookworm is another Twitterer, but I don’t remember her actually making a case for it. Got any good reasons?

To which I answered:

Patrick:

I honestly don’t have a good case, but I’ve had a twittery week.

First I was at a water district conference seminar on new media as communication tools for districts. One panelist had been evacuated in the recent Yorba Linda fires, so I asked her how she got her information during the fire. She said Twitter, and I couldn’t have been more shocked. I thought it was a goofy teen networking thing – “Going to mall, join me” type stuff – but apparently within a few minutes of the fire hitting the city, there was an “OC Fire” group up on Twitter and they were sharing information. I was impressed.

Then, the very next day I heard Hugh Hewitt talk about it in the context of the Dem’s trouncing of the GOP in the area of new media, and how the GOP needs to get ahead. I checked out Hugh’s site last night and saw that someone’s built a conservative blogger Twitter network that’s got over 400 people on it already. I can see the potential there for quickly compounding a message … and also for being clones.

Now if I were up and running with my own friends network on Twitter, I might think, “Hmmm, I’m going to write a post this morning on the failure of liberal social policy, based thus far solely on an AP story on Amsterdam I just saw. I could Twitter my friends and ask if they have links I could use to further flesh out the story. Why not use email? Because Twitter goes to their email address and their phone.

That’s different than keeping friends updated on my comings and goings – why would they care? Do I think so much of myself? Besides, I’ll be 58 in 20 days and am trying desperately to stay young. This is cheaper than buying a Corvette and less vain than having my hair colored.

Laer

Will I become a Twitterer? Or is it all just for twits? Time will tell. Meanwhile, you can Twitter me.

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