http://frontpagemag.com/2012/kenneth-levin/from-surf-to-serfdom/print/ Unemployment in my home state of Massachusetts is less than the national average. In August, it stood at 6.3% compared to 8.1% nationally. The state benefits from very robust high-tech sectors. But, of course, low-tech industries also figure in its economy. Particularly hard hit among the latter in the current downturn has been the […]
US Army Colonel Reveals Failure of COIN and Barbarism of Afghans: Daniel Greenfield….see note please
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/us-army-colonel-reveals-failure-of-coin-and-barbarism-of-afghans/print/
DIANA WEST HAS BEEN WRITING ABOUT THIS FOR YEARS NOW PUNCTURING THE MYTHS OF DAVID PETRAEUS OF ARABIA AS A GREAT GENERAL AND COMMANDER….THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT PUT FORTH BY THE COIN DOCTRINE HAVE PUT AND CONTINUE TO PUT AMERICAN SOLDIERS AT GRAVE RISK IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN ALL IN THE SERVICE OF “NATION BUILDING.”….AND THIS ONE CAN’T BE BLAMED ON OBAMA BUT RATHER ON GEORGE BUSH WHOSE WHINING ABOUT THE “GREAT RELIGION OF PEACE HIJACKED BY THE TEENY, TINY, MICROSCOPIC MINORITY” DHIMMIFIED AMERICA’S RESPONSE TO JIHADISTS….RSK
The letter from Colonel Harry Tunnell is making its rounds around the internet, but here are some choice and relevant excerpts. But first a shot bio of Tunnell.
Tunnell had been gravely wounded in Iraq, where he led a battalion of paratroopers with the 173rd Airborne Brigade. In October 2003, his convoy was ambushed by insurgents near the city of Kirkuk.
Despite his emphasis on education, Tunnell had a dim view of the intellectual underpinnings of counterinsurgency theory. He didn’t think insurgencies were defeated by protecting villages and winning over residents through reconstruction and development projects. He believed that the top priority was to kill the bad guys.
By the time Tunnell took over the brigade, every other infantry commander preparing to go to Iraq or Afghanistan was using Gen. Petraeus’ COIN manual as his lodestar. But not Tunnell. He told his soldiers that their approach to security operations would be drawn from an Army manual that outlined counterguerrilla operations, which had long been superseded by Petraeus’ playbook. Instead of emphasizing the protection of civilians, it instructed commanders to “give priority to destroying the guerrilla forces.” He called his unit the “Destroyer Brigade” and ordered that its vehicles be painted with the motto SEARCH AND DESTROY.
The Colonel speaks generally on the conflict
“The willingness to combat an enemy cannot be turned on and off like a light switch. Leaders are willing to conduct operations at the tactical and operational levels of war to decisively defeat the enemy or they are not. Soldiers join the military today to protect the United States, yet they are told once in Afghanistan that we are fighting for the Afghan people– this is a rather mercenary outlook and ignores the fact that the United States was attacked on September 11, 2001. If we have an army led by people unwilling to defeat a disorganized illiterate adversary such as we face today, even after a despicable surprise attack on our nation, there is little hope that we can defeat a modern sophisticated enemy that we may face in the future.”
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/davidhornik/frances-anti-jewish-terrorism-epidemic/print/
Last March, when the French Muslim terrorist Mohamed Merah murdered a teacher and three children at a French Jewish school in Toulouse, a media firestorm resulted. Things have not gotten easier for French Jews since then. As the New York Times noted this week, French Jews say anti-Semitic threats have in fact escalated since March, Merah’s act having stirred “empathy” and “emulation.”
Indeed, the main thing that appears to have prevented further catastrophes is good police work. On Saturday French police raided the Strasbourg apartment of a 33-year-old French Muslim named Jeremy Sidney and ended up killing him in a shootout. Sidney’s DNA had been found on a grenade that, in September, was thrown into a kosher supermarket in Sarcelles (near Paris), wounding a customer.
Sidney, it turns out, was born in Melun, France, got a two-year sentence for drug trafficking in 2008, and converted to Islam while in prison. And he was no isolated case. As part of the same far-reaching operation on Saturday, police arrested twelve other suspected Islamic terrorists in Paris, Tours, Strasbourg, and Cannes.
“All,” reports CNN, “are being held on suspicion of…manufacturing deadly explosives, illegal possession of weapons and attempted homicide of police officers. Three of them have criminal records for drug trafficking, theft or violence….” AP says all of them were, like Sidney, “French and recent converts to Islam.”
CNN also tells us: “Police seized a number of items such as ammunition, a list of ‘Israelite’ organizations in and around Paris, a publication produced by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, wills, computer equipment and 27,000 euros ($35,000) in cash….”
As part of the probe, on Wednesday police also found bomb-making materials in an underground parking lot near Paris.
Israeli commentator Boaz Bismuth notes that one of the cell members, Jan Ansako, “was addicted to fundamentalist websites and uploaded [to his own site] photos of dead Palestinian babies and a photograph of an Israeli soldier aiming his weapon…. ‘How can you not hate this cursed nation?’ he wrote.”
The above-quoted New York Times article reports that these suspects “were described in various news reports as admirers of Mr. Merah, and some of them even called his actions ‘the battle of Toulouse.’”
Bismuth adds: “Although Jews are not the only targets on this terror cell’s list, they appear at the top.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/329969/mainline-churches-vs-israel-elliott-abrams In July, Christian leaders in Egypt refused to meet with Secretary of State Clinton, and several thousand demonstrators in Cairo criticized what they saw as U.S. accommodation of the new Muslim Brotherhood government and abandonment of moderates and Coptic Christians. The devastation of the ancient Christian community in Iraq is well known. Christians in […]
http://blogs.jpost.com/print/3852
Truth is Stranger than Fiction
Tel Aviv’s annual science fiction / fantasy festival Icon TLV [2] has just finished and again demonstrated how quickly the dreams of yesterday’s science fiction writers have become today’s reality. Israeli innovation is bringing that gap even closer. Now that October has been designated Israel Innovation Month [3], and in light of a number of recent dramatic news items, you may wish to re-evaluate some previously held perceptions about the Jewish State.
The Nobel Prize for Medicine has just been announced. The prize was awarded to two men involved in turning mature cells into stem cells. But the truth is that the process is far from being understood and extremely unreliable. So I was impressed to read that Israeli researchers at the Weizmann Institute have worked out the science involved [4] and are now busy working to make a biomedical breakthrough. Another little known fact is that most patients suffering from acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) can thank Professor Leo Sachs [5] of Israel’s Weizmann Institute for their treatment. Professor Sachs discovered the process of differentiation [6], which causes the cancer cells to return to their normal function and is helping to cure 70% of all APL sufferers.
http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2012/10/10/latest-okeefe-video-shows-obama-campaign-voter-fraud/?print=1 James O’Keefe has done it again — this time capturing video of a paid Obama Organizing for America director in Houston, Texas, assisting a double-voting scheme directed toward Florida. In the video, an undercover Obama “volunteer” tells Organizing for America’s Stephanie Caballero that she wanted to vote twice to help reelect President Obama. The […]
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444799904578048184214238470.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTSecond
It’s not flying. That’s been clear in a week of on-the-stump harangues by the president over Mitt Romney’s announced intention to cut funding to PBS programs including, yes, the beloved Big Bird—a charge the president has been making with evident assurance that he’s delivering a telling blow. One that adds another dark layer to the Obama campaign’s favored image of Mitt Romney—the brutal cost cutter, the tycoon callously indifferent to the needs of good hard-working Americans. All that might enhance their lives—their children’s lives—he wants to take away.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444799904578048503227442228.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop At Wednesday’s House oversight hearings into the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya, Democrats protested loudly about a GOP political witch hunt. If only such alleged partisanship were always so educational. The Congressional investigation has in a few hours brought greater clarity about what happened before, during and after the events of […]
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ Americans have been steadily losing rights in every area except the sexual. Freedom of speech and religion are on the decline, but the rights to have other people pay for your birth control and provide a space for your gay wedding are doing well. Under the Supreme Court’s current take on Eminent Domain, your […]
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/
2012.10.10 (Riyom, Nigeria) – Three children and their mother are among over a dozen Christians are slaughtered during a Muslim raid on their village.
2012.10.10 (Dallyam, Nigeria) – Muslim terrorists shoot four members of a Christian family at close range.
2012.10.09 (Harasta, Syria) – At least forty people are killed in two massive al-Nusra suicide blasts.
2012.10.09 (Kano, Nigeria) – Devout Muslims kill two cops guarding health workers administering polio immunizations to children following a rumor at their mosque.
2012.10.09 (Tarin Kot, Afghanistan) – A cleric is assassinated by Religion of Peace rivals.
2012.10.09 (Pattani, Thailand) – A father and son are among three Buddhists gunned down by Muslim militants.
