Bloodthirsty Liberal

The use of female suicide bombers is becoming more popular

Girls can do it too.

At least 41 people were killed and 106 others wounded Monday in a suicide bombing that targeted Shiite pilgrims in northeastern Baghdad, Iraq’s Interior Ministry said.

The bomber detonated her explosive vest in the middle of a procession of pilgrims in Boob al-Sham, in a predominantly Shiite area of the Iraqi capital, according to an Interior Ministry official.

The attack took place amid tight security as thousands of Shiite worshipers are making their way to the holy city of Karbala, south of Baghdad, to mark the Arbaeen — the end of the 40-day mourning period at the close of Ashura.

Ashura commemorates the martyrdom of Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed who was killed in battle in Karbala in 680 A.D. That event helped create the schism between Sunnis and Shiites, the two main Muslim religious movements.

There have been a number of roadside bomb and grenade attacks on pilgrims over the past few days.

Iraqi officials have warned of attacks during the pilgrimage ahead of national elections on March 7.

I wonder if suicide terrorism is embedded in these sub-cultures the way the beer and pizza are part of watching a football game? Because once a habit like that forms, it is difficult to break.

- Aggie

Ralph Peters with some words of encouragement for sub-Saharan Africa:

Whatever planet Earth may find in short supply in 2010, violence and misrule will remain abundant, from the most-recent round of Muslim-vs.-Christian massacres in Nigeria to Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez’s delight in unleashing his thugs on students marching for freedom.

But no region — not even sub-Saharan Africa — competes with the greater Middle East when it comes to wanton savagery, thwarted opportunities and the danger posed to innocent populations around the world. With fanatical terrorists of unprecedented brutality, Islamist extremists pursuing nuclear weapons, rogue regimes, disintegrating states and threats of genocide against Israel, the lands of heat and dust between the Nile and the Indus form a realm of deadly failure that will haunt the civilized world throughout our lifetimes.

A survey of the region’s key countries — and problems — doesn’t offer much good news for the Obama Administration’s naive foreign policy efforts:

Said survey follows.

Oh, okay, you want a few highlights?

LEBANON: This isn’t a country — it’s a temporary stand-off.

…

Hezbollah has been rearming mightily in the wake of its 2006 war with Israel. A new war would devastate much of Lebanon — if internal strife doesn’t do it first.

…

EGYPT: … Egypt faces a potential succession crisis as octogenarian president Hosni Mubarak, who’s ruled the country for almost three decades, grooms his singularly unimpressive son, Gamal, to take over upon his death.

…

SYRIA: The neighborhood’s in such awful shape that this police state’s beginning to look like a success story…. When Damascus looks like a beacon, it’s getting awfully dark in the Middle East.

…

IRAQ: Can’t say we didn’t try. After years of serious progress toward a national compromise… [r]econciliation has come to a screeching halt. The Shia are smug, the Sunnis feel betrayed, and the Kurds are still denied title to the traditionally Kurdish city of Kirkuk. Every faction’s fighting for a greater share of oil revenues. And the Obama administration’s AWOL (this was Bush’s war — we wouldn’t want a positive outcome).

…

SAUDI ARABIA: Its two main exports are oil and fanaticism…. They care only for their repressive version of Islam. The birthplace of Bin Laden, Saudi Arabia’s differences with his terror organization are over strategy and tactics, not over their mutual goal of forcing extremist Islam on all of humanity.

IRAN: Racing to acquire nuclear weapons, delighting in the prospect of a cataclysmic war that would lead to the “return of the hidden imam,” beating the hell out of its own people in the streets, murdering members of the intelligentsia, and explicit in its vows to destroy Israel, the government of Iran continues to be protected by China and Russia.

If you want to know more about that benighted, poxy patch of scrub and swampland… I pity you. You need a date.

President Obama has had to eat so many of his words, I don’t see how he stays so trim (probably because they’re so empty and free of substance to begin with):

“We know that [Abdulmutallab] travelled to Yemen, a country grappling with crushing poverty and deadly insurgencies,” Obama says. “It appears that he joined an affiliate of al-Qaeda, and that this group, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, trained him, equipped him with those explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed for America.”

What does “crushing poverty” have to do with it? Abdulchocolatelab, or whatever his name is, wasn’t crushed by no stinkin’ poverty. He came from a family of means, and looked a little chubby to me.

But to repeat the question in the title, why did my president tell me the G-string Jihadist (not my invention, but perhaps better than Bomb Crotchit, which was) was an “isolated extremist” when that was the farthest thing from the truth?

Next thing, he’ll tell me the fellow passengers who subdued the Fruit-of-the-Boomer “acted stupidly”.

No, but he himself does speak stupidly:

The video also contains thinly-veiled criticism of the counter-terror strategy of George W. Bush. Obama says that the current administration has “refocused the fight” against al-Qaeda on Afghanistan and Pakistan, while “bringing to a responsible end to the war in Iraq, which had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.”

I don’t know why he puts down the war in Iraq so often. If he weren’t so ideologically blinded, he could claim credit for this (even though it’s no thanks to him):

A very good and very welcome piece of news to start off the New Year: No American soldiers lost their lives in combat in Iraq last month.

Combat fatalities have been steadily decreasing since June of 2009, when troop drawdowns in Baghdad and other cities began in earnest. Since July, American forces have suffered five or fewer combat-related deaths each month. Casualties among Iraqis have also decreased to their lowest levels since the war began in 2003.

Said General Raymond Odierno, top commander in the Iraqi theater: “[This] is a very significant milestone for us as we continue to move forward. …”

Obama betrays himself as a man afraid to stand up for himself. He always needs the specter of Bush to stand beside him. Who ever said Iraq was behind 9/11? That comment, and the “isolated extremist” comment (and who can forget the “system worked” comment?), betray him as philosophically unprepared (or worse, opposed) to defending this country from enemies foreign and domestic.

Speaking of isolated extremists, do you think this fellow was one?

Danish police on Friday shot and wounded a man trying to enter the home of an artist who drew controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

The man, a 27-year-old Somalian who was armed with an axe, was caught trying to break into the home of Kurt Westergaard at 10pm local time, police said.

Police shot the man, injuring him in his leg…

Extremist, sure. But isolated? My ass.

Mark Steyn’s comment:

[A] significant percentage of Muslims in the west do not understand concepts such as pluralism and freedom of expression. A further percentage understand them very well but reject them as loser fetishes incompatible with the requirements of Islamic supremacism - and have a shrewd sense that when, push comes to shove, a lot of these fine liberal concepts crumble to nothing.

Or, if I may observe: never bring a quill to an axe fight (or an axe to a gun fight, I suppose).

I can’t keep straight all the false accusations of misconduct by American forces—I remember Haditha, Ishaqi, Gitmo (even Abu Ghraib was overblown).

Now, we can add Blackwater (e-e-e-vil laughter):

A federal judge dismissed manslaughter charges Thursday against five Blackwater security guards in the 2007 deaths of Iraqi civilians in a Baghad square, finding that prosecutors wrongly used the men’s own statements against them.

The September 2007 shootout in Baghdad’s Nusoor Square left 17 Iraqis dead and two dozen wounded. The killings led Iraq’s government to slap limits on security contractors hired by Blackwater, now known as Xe, and other firms.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina found that the government’s case was built largely on “statements compelled under a threat of job loss in a subsequent criminal prosecution,” a violation of the Fifth Amendment rights of the five men charged.

“In their zeal to bring charges against the defendant in this case, the prosecutors and investigators aggressively sought out statements the defendants had been compelled to make to government investigators in the immediate aftermath of the shooting and in the subsequent investigation,” Urbina wrote in a 90-page decision.

Federal prosecutors “repeatedly disregarded the warnings of experienced, senior prosecutors assigned to the case” in doing so, he found.

Urbina also sharply criticized prosecutors and federal agents who developed the case, calling their explanations for using the guards’ statements “all too often contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility.”

“In short, the government has utterly failed to prove that it made no impermissible use of the defendants’ statements or that such use was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt,” he wrote.

Obviously, the 17 dead Iraqis indicate something serious, even terrible, happened. But can we stop trying in the press our soldiers and contractors serving the nation?

Doesn’t their service alone warrant better, not worse, certainly not shameful, treatment?

As the leftists in our administration never tire of reminding us, our values are what make us strong. I’d say the right against self-incrimination is up there among values worth protecting. Let’s give those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan at least the same consideration we’re giving Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Deal?

President Bush’s foresight proves more remarkable every day. We should call him President Quasimodo:

The balance of power in the Middle East could undergo sharp fluctuations if Iraq succeeds in tripling its oil production and forming a strong Shi’ite front with Iran inside OPEC.

This could raise concern in Saudi Arabia, which suspects that the rise of the Shi’a majority to power in Iraq could cause dissention inside OPEC that would inhibit harmony inside the organization.

More likely, however, the development of oil in Iraq will feed tensions with Iran, since it would draw investments away from the Islamic Republic and heighten its social tensions, as it will deprive Tehran of funds it badly needs, particularly if the development of oil fields in Iraq brings down the price of crude.

The revenues from the additional 4.5 million barrels a day that Iraq would produce will allow it to challenge Iran’s influence in the Shi’ite world.

One observer pointed out that Iran would be the loser as a result of the auctions that Iraq has adopted in the selection bidders for the development of its oil fields.

Whether this benefits or harms the mullahcracy, they lose. The less insulated they are, the more they have to rely on alliances with neighbors, the more oil that floods the market, the better all around. None of which would have happened under Saddam.

Send your thank-you notes to President Bush, Crawford, TX. If Cindy Sheehan can find his ranch, the Post Office can (probably).

Reaching out to the clenched fists of the terrorists

In what appeared to be a coordinated assault, a series of car bombings across Baghdad on Tuesday killed at least 101 people and wounded scores more, according to preliminary accounts by police and hospital officials.

Five bombs, including at least one suicide attack, struck near a university, a court, a mosque and a market in a neighborhood near the Interior Ministry. The blasts began shortly after 10 A.M. and reverberated through the city for the next 50 minutes, sending enormous plumes of black smoke into the air.

My guess is that we will leave Iraq, declaring victory, and then there will be a bloodbath. But if a bloodbath happens in the desert and no one is around to report on it, did it really happen?

- Aggie

Hey Israel, he’s talking to you!

Following are excerpts from a Baghdad Friday sermon by Sheik Abd Al-Khalil Al-Fadhawi, which aired on Baghdad TV on November 20, 2009.

That false Israel, that dagger planted in the heart of the [Islamic] nation, that cancerous growth in our countries… The West vomited all over the East, and that vomit is the state of Israel. People, speaking hundreds of languages, were brought from 59 countries, but have you heard, over the past sixty years, of a Jewish civil war?

Why do we fight one another? Why do we have differences? Why do we hurt one another? Why do we bring one another down? We must unite and bring death upon the plots of the enemies, before they spread them among us.

…

We should know that the [West] would like to break up the Muslim family – children, daughters, men, and women. It enrages them to see that Muslims take pride in their families, in their mothers, their fathers, and their children. They themselves live in shattered families. Their women are in the streets, their elderly in old-age homes, their babies in day-care centers, and the children in orphanages. Their families are in shreds. There is a constant rise in the number of waifs and illegitimate children.

Even worse, they have now discovered a new type of family – two men married to one another, or two women married to one another. In the Los Angeles area, there were 40,000 marriages of man to man, and 45,000 marriages of woman to woman.

They want to create families that are alien to the Muslim countries. They want to tear families apart, and to destroy the countries of the Muslims. We should encourage our youth to marry at a young age.

What, eight isn’t young enough for you? Six? I’ve known some awfully cute four-year-olds.

As I usually say somewhere about this point, it’s not about the settlements.

The first time we’ve ever quoted Maureen Dowd!

If we could see a Reduced Shakespeare summary of Obama’s presidency so far, it would read:

Dither, dither, speech. Foreign trip, bow, reassure. Seminar, summit. Shoot a jump shot with the guys, throw out the first pitch in mom jeans. Compromise, concede, close the deal. Dither, dither, water down, news conference.

Isn’t that lovely?

Other than that, she’s full of her usual nonsense, but at least she’s getting nervous about her guy. Coupled with the young writer I linked yesterday, the one who, in an argument with Ann Althouse, compared Dreams of My Father to War and Peace, the signs of stress are showing in the Left. They doth protest too loudly.

- Aggie

132 people have died in terror attacks in Baghdad

At least 132 people were killed and 520 wounded in twin suicide car bombings in central Baghdad Sunday, officials said — the deadliest attack on civilians in Iraq this year.

Two car bombs detonated in quick succession near Iraqi government buildings about 10:30 a.m., an Interior Ministry official said.

One of the bombs exploded outside Baghdad’s governorate building and the second one outside the Justice Ministry, about 500 meters (1,600 feet) away.

I suppose I should comment on this, but what is there left to say? Terrorism isn’t going away. It is a powerful tool and the rest of us haven’t figured out a way to fight back. We are successful when we are very focused and use the military, but we tire of that. The talking approach obviously hasn’t worked either. I feel so sorry for the civilians in Baghdad because I think that there will be a bloodbath after we leave. I can hear our readers on the Left: What do you call what is happening now? My answer is that I think it will be much, much, much worse. I hope our media has the decency to report it when it happens.

- Aggie

The cruelest thing you can to do the great faith of Islam is to quote its adherents verbatim.

Which I am only too happy to do:

Following are excerpts from an interview with Iraqi cleric Sheik Ahmad Al-Kubeisi, which aired on Decision Makers TV on June 10, 2009.

No one with a grain of sense believes in the story of 9/11 anymore. Therefore, the entire world appeals to the Americans: These four planes, with 500 people on board… Let them give the names and identity of the people on these planes. They have nothing! Maybe two, three, or four…

I thought we did that.

The U.S. is, in fact, run by a clandestine power, with strategies and plans of its own, as well as huge strategic depth. If they want to know anything about you, within two seconds, they know everything about you, your father, grandfather, and grandmother – 50 generations back. I’ll tell you something, if you promise not to laugh. I am a regular guy. I never knew that my great great grandfather had married my great grandmother, for only seven days, and then she had my father [sic].

Huh?

His great great grandfather married his own daughter for a week and impregnated her with his own great grandson? I had questions about the Immaculate Conception and Virgin Birth—but they are nothing compared to these miracles!

Are the Americans really ruled by Bush?! [No. ed.] This is inconceivable, brother. [Exactly. ed.] Bush is only a façade, and so is Obama. Why do I like Obama?

There’s a shocker.

[Obama is steered by] that terrible, black, dark lobby, which can erase the entire world at the push of a button. You cannot see it, you cannot recognize it. Clinton, who ruled planet Earth in its entirety, could not find a four-meter-square room in which to consummate his rights with what’s-her-name? What was his girlfriend’s name? Say it, don’t be afraid… Monica. This man, who ruled the world, and who could destroy it 50 times over at the push of a button, was unable to find two square meters in which to hide from this lobby. They took pictures of it all, and said to him: by all means. Albright said: I pitied him. I went in and found him crying. The U.S. president was reduced to tears by this lobby. As far as the lobby is concerned, the U.S. president is as worthless as a bug, which can be either squashed or turned into an elephant.

A bug or an elephant? What is he talking about?

All the resources of the world are to be found in Iraq – water, rivers, raw materials, oil, phosphates, mercury, and gold. Did you know that the Iraqi gold and petrol are sufficient for the entire world? Did you know that the Iraqi uranium is the only kind in the world that is naturally enriched?
[…]
By Allah, Iraq will rage in the mouths of the Americans and the English until their teeth are broken.

I’m tempted to say that “raging in the mouth” is what Clinton did to Monica, but I won’t.

Since when did Iraq have any uranium, much less magic uranium? The CIA Factbook doesn’t mention any. I thought they were trying to buy the stuff in Niger.

But then, I’m probably under the influence of that “terrible black, dark lobby” that you cannot see or recognize—but which can still manage to photograph the president getting a BJ in the White House, and blackmail him over it.

Hey, these are his beliefs, not mine. You got a problem, take it up with him.