Author: maxymax

A letter from Iraq

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From the Wall Street Journal, AKA The Opinion Journal
Letter From Iraq
Here’s an email we received from a U.S. military officer who asks us to withhold his name:

I am currently stationed here in Iraq and have been here for the past 11 months; I am an adviser to the Iraqis and meet them on a daily basis. I have been in many locations in the country and am involved on a daily basis together with the Iraqis fighting the insurgency.

The media manipulation by the insurgents is brilliant and extremely effective. The press has become a puppet for the insurgents; the insurgents know exactly what they are doing with these “massacres” (quoted here because the investigation has not been completed, nor have any charges been filed) and the political nightmare they will cause the current administration. Bodies are produced for film, and there is zero fact-checking by the media–the media eat up this “news” like there is no tomorrow. A couple of hundred bucks paid by the insurgents to a few guys/ladies in the town where this “massacre” occurred to make up some bad news and pine for the BBC’s or CBS’s or whoever’s cameras is a nice month’s salary for many and money well spent by the insurgency.

All the Arabs (Sunni and Shia), Kurds and Chaldeans I have come to know well here will tell you that Arabs are emotional people who tend to exaggerate. A lot. Experience has shown that “50 insurgents hiding out in XX location” is five, at most 10. “Three hundred dead” at the morgue is at most 40. “A huge cache with WMD” is 45-50 weapons. It is a cultural norm and is accepted over here as a norm. It is reported in the West as fact. With no fact-checking.

When we convoy, all in the town/village know when and where there is a bomb/IED/VBIED that is targeting coalition forces. This is not so true in Baghdad, but in the outlying towns all know. What is the culpability for those people in the village/town? Would the Marines be guilty in the U.S. under the same circumstances?

I do not know whether or not the Marines are guilty. A Marine’s job is to “close with and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver,” and I can guarantee its effectiveness. But the insurgents have the ear of the press. Hopefully the politics will be put aside for the investigation and the facts will be told, whatever they may be.

We live in hope but I’m sure the media can be relied upon to take a negative view prior to the release of the report on the investigation.

Politics, War on Terror

Latham escapes criminal conviction

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Mark Latham has escaped having a criminal conviction for malicious damage recorded against him today. Instead he will be placed on a good behaviour bond for two years

The Director of Public Prosecutions dropped charges of assault and theft against him even though there was a previous incident of assault (cab driver…broken arm in 2001) and he did deprive the photographer of the use of his camera by stealing borrowing it, taking it back to his home and smashing it with a mallet in a shed.

I heard a radio report saying defence had asked that no conviction be recorded as he hasn’t been in trouble before. I know that he wasn’t charged for breaking the cabbies arm but it is public knowledge

Lathams main defence was that he was harrassed by the photographer and that was obviously sufficient reason for the judge to go easy on him.

Whatever the sentence, he’s still a thug in my book.

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Hicks

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In todays Australian Neil James, executive director of the Australia Defence Association takes the Law Council to task over their recent letter.
THE Law Council of Australia has unfortunately lapsed into domestic legal terminology in describing David Hicks as having languished powerless in custody for a period of 30 months before he was even charged with any offence. Such a mix of fact, supposition and error is the latest version of the common but simplistic claim that it is merely a matter of trying Hicks or releasing him.
It has been my contention since the day his capture was announced, that he should be detained until the War on Terror is finished. James agrees with me although he limits any such detention to the duration of the the Afghanistan conflict.
….Hicks can be detained as a PoW until the conflict in Afghanistan concludes, or the detaining power (under the Geneva Conventions) releases him on parole to a neutral country once he guarantees to undertake no further actions as a belligerent.
I note in yesterday’s Australian a couple of letters on the subject that were heavy on emotion and light on facts. Ruth Trigg from Normanville SA floors me with this statement
Each day this situation continues is a day of shame for the memory of all Australians who have died fighting for freedom for all of the citizens of this country.
A bit weird, really. All those Australians who have died fighting for freedom did so fighting people like Hicks. I swear some people think of Hicks as the nice guy next door and not the Taliban supporter he really is. Geof Keynes from Beaumont SA (is there something in the water down there?) confidently predicts the Hick case will represent the end of the Howard Government.
I believe that the David Hicks issue is going to become this government’s pivotal issue, and that the government’s future will increasingly be determined by how it is handled.
Followed by this ‘I wish it were so’ statement;
The public perception is that the Government is too gutless to stand up to our partner, and tell them that enough is enough.
It might be ‘public perception’ at your dinner table, Geof, but I doubt if it has currency beyond the ‘hate Howard’ set. For myself, I’m just pleased that the government haven’t caved into pressure from the Left to bring him home to allow the lawyers to make him a hero. The war ain’t over yet.
War on Terror

6 June ’06

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Quiet a significant day. Some people read today’s date as the sign of the devil as in “666”. Tim Blair has an interesting and often funny thread going on the subject. Worth a visit.

On a slightly more reverant note than Tim’s thread, Wikipedia has a good explanation of the origins of the Satan/666 association, starting with the original references in the Book of Revelations and going through to ‘Avoiding the Number’

Larvartus Prodeo has a piece on what it all means and asks Who is the Anti-Christ? Not surprisingly, LP links to a sight called bushisantichrist.com/ The site is fascinating with para headers like The Bush/Judas Connection; The Bush/Herod Connection and The Bush/Nero Connection. But for me the most conclussive and damning evidence that Bush is the Anti-Christ is his habit of raising his hand in a horned salute.

Damning, isn’t it? Of course LP will claim the article is tongue-in-cheek but I’m not so sure.

I swear to God I’ll miss Bush when he retires (undefeated). His very existance has provided me with so much uplifting information and subsequent hillarity as I surf the more extreme anti-Bush sites.

I think it amazing!

What will they do when he’s gone? After the party I guess they’ll all start looking for the ‘666’ tattoo on John Howards head. It’s got to be there. Right?

To old soldiers and military historians today marks the 62nd anniversary of the Normandy Invasion, the start of the end of Hitler’s insane power grab is better known as D-Day. It also marks the start of the end of media support for the military.

Oh, and more importantly, to me at least, this is my 1000th post. Before Blogger and the current Word Press format I was running a web site giving one or two readers the benefit of my advice, such as it is, but those posts have been lost so I’ll make do with the Word Press stats. The oldest post I can find is dated August 2002 so the web site is just a couple of months short of 4 years old.

General Musings

Self induced water shortage

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If there ever was a good reason to hand control of the nations waterways to the federal government it is the this news from the ACT;

A report from the Canberra branch of Engineers Australia said environmental flows last year from two key reservoirs to maintain the Cotter and Queanbeyan rivers had “seriously reduced the total quantity of water held in reservoirs”.

“As a result, it has been necessary to impose severe restrictions on water used by ACT and region consumers,” the report said.
A 2004 ACT Government report found that the ACT was allocating more than half of its total water resources to environmental flows, providing an average of 272 gigalitres to the environment out of the average 494 gigalitres available. I smell a greenie somewhere.
A spokeswoman for Chief Minister Jon Stanhope said yesterday: “A lot has changed since then.” Since the report was written, the ACT has come out of the drought, the Government has reduced its environmental flows, making more water available to the community, and water has been sent from the Cotter River to the Googong River.
I bet we never hear who authorised more than 50% of Canberra’s water reserved being released as ‘environmental flow’ at a time when the community were under water restrictions.
General Musings

Life behind the Irony Curtain

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Every now and then when I seem to be getting too serious about life I look for some ireverant humour and tonight I’ve scored bigtime. Go to the The Peoples Cube if you aren’t already a regular visitor, and have a good laugh at the wackers in this world. Some headlines;
MSM: we kick troops when they’re down Lawyers to Marines: killing civilians is the exclusive right and privilege of Muslim freedom fighters In other news: US media increasingly impatient at lack of civil war in Iraq Scientists: Hispanic and Muslim groups in US face increasing danger of being pandered to death
and my favourite; If you don’t find something to laugh at at The People’s Cube you most probably shouldn’t be reading my blog.
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A picture speaks a thousand lies

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Coonass in Texas has caught the London Times out in a blatant case of anti -anything US.
I was shocked that there were photos of victims killed by marines,bound and blindfolded, these guys must be guilty I thought and there must be more photographic evidence. With a heavy heart I searched google images for ‘haditha’, expecting to find the entire massacre photo’d from every angle. Instead I found the same photo in this article in newsweek, with the caption: “Insurgents in Haditha executed 19 Shiite fishermen and National Guardsmen in a sports stadium” I think this goes beyond a slant,this is slander. The times posted a photo that shows “haditha victims” in a story about marines killing people in haditha, when they know they stole the photo from an earlier story about insurgents killing shiites in Haditha. I don’t know what really happened to the marines in Haditha, but I tend to believe their version more than the other side’s version and I’m willing to wait for the court martial for the facts to come out before passing judgement.
Michelle Malkin picks up on the story and suggests readers might like to write to the Times Editor pointing out their feelings on the matter. Michelle herself wrote to him and in an interchange of accusations and excuses said;
If you are left with the impression that the dead bodies on the ground were massacred by our Marines, that is exactly what the Times intends.This is an accurate statement. If the Times did not intend for readers to associate the photograph with the Nov. 19 Haditha incident, why did your newspaper use the photo? I hope the paper provides a full explanation for exactly how it came to characterize and caption an April 2005 AP photo of fishermen murdered by insurgents as “victims of al-Haditha” of the “Massacre Marines blinded by hate” on Nov. 19, 2005.
The Times has withdrawn the photo associated with the article but the article is still slanted very much against the marines as I have mentioned previously all is not as it seems. If the investigation finds against the Marines then they should feel the full force of the law but keep in mind the only information we have at this stage is from the Media and a clever wordsmith can turn any story into a disaster. There are currently thousands of journalists around the world hoping like hell that the Marines are guilty…more gist for the anti-US mill and as always, they will write up the incident day after day for months in the absence of any proof and by the time the investigation report is released it won’t matter what it says. The world will have readily accepted their guilt. Whatever readers may think I’m not an apologist for the US. I don’t feel I have to be as unlike most of my readers, and most probably all of the media, I have worked with the Americans on a soldier-to-soldier basis and know them more than most. Like all large forces they will always have rogues amongst them but no society can absorb this continual media scrutiny with jourmalists sitting on the shoulders of every soldier like vultures waiting for a mistake. The bar has been set as ‘perfect’ only with no allowances made for the horrors of battle or human reactions to being fired on or holding a friend while he dies. No mistakes, not ever. Unless an editor deliberately places a photo in an article to create a false impression of savagery. No emotions, not ever. Unless you hate the Americans so much that you ignore all positives to highlight one negative in a widespread and difficult war.
War on Terror

Friday reading

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For some ‘real life’ stories you should do yourself a favour and go read some of Mine Host’s stories at The Public House A sample.
Davo was big and strong. Standing around 6’3″, he was lean, carried no fat, blonde and well built. His arms were strong and had range, sort of like horizontal telegraph poles. He had for some time worked “door” just up the street at the Slaughterhouse Room in the No-Holds-Barred Tavern. Now he was a kitchenhand at the Divers Arms. He was local, white, could fight, and also what is these days known as “gay”.
Mine Host has a great turn of phrase…..well worth the read. Damon Runyan springs to mind when I read his stories making it ideal reading for a Friday afternoon before knocking off and going down the pub.
General Musings

Racial Villification

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THE Aboriginal teenager facing the first charges under Western Australia’s new race-hate laws claims she spoke back to a white woman only after being racially abused herself.

The 15-year-old girl could face up to six months’ detention for allegedly calling 19-year-old Mellissa Blackney a “white slut” during a confrontation in the mining town of Kalgoorlie.

This point-counter point quotes obscures the basic premise that racial villification laws are not the answer. Politicians hold this fond view that legislation alone can change a society but in real life their are a host of other factors.

The case has sparked outrage among some Aboriginal leaders, who say the charge is not in keeping with the intent of the new racial vilification laws.

I beg to differ; the laws as gazetted are all about one race putting down on another. It is not just about whites putting down on blacks. Remember – one country, one law.

Racial Villification laws, like Land Rights are not the answer but the debate will take a year or to arrive at that conclussion

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