Free The Haditha 8

Another Marine charged with killing innocent civilians in Iraq has had the charges against him dropped. Let the show trials that were set up after Abu Ghraib end and the apologies to eight Marines begin.

Friday's development in the Haditha case — the dismissal of charges related to the deaths of innocent civilians in that Iraqi town in 2005 against Marine Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum — makes it five of the eight Marines charged in those deaths who have had all charges dropped.

With the evidence against the Haditha Marines so flimsy and exculpatory evidence so abundant, the question is why charges were ever brought.

"The hysteria and firestorm over Abu Ghraib and the Pat Tillman investigations led to fear of a similar media reaction to the Haditha incident, causing the military's civilian bosses to set up this shadow oversight body,"

The anti-war left wingers thought they had their Iraqi My Lai, and the Defense Department wanted to give it to them...

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Negative U.S. media linked to increased insurgent attacks

Researchers at Harvard say that publicly voiced doubts about the U.S. occupation of Iraq have a measurable "emboldenment effect" on insurgents there. Periods of intense news media coverage in the United States of criticism about the war, or of polling about public opinion on the conflict, are followed by a quantifiable increases in the number of attacks on civilians and U.S. forces in Iraq, according to a study...

[we needed a study to know this?]

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US Intell and the information age

At last, it appears our intelligence agencies have figured out how to better access and share critical information. From the UK Times:

Google has been recruited by US intelligence agencies to help them better process and share information they gather about suspects.

Agencies such as the National Security Agency have bought servers on which Google-supplied search technology is used to process information gathered by networks of spies around the world.

Google is also providing the search features for a Wikipedia-style site, called Intellipedia, on which agents post information about their targets that can be accessed and appended by colleagues, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

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Winning The Iran-In-Iraq War

[Heading: both sides of their mouths...]

The surge strategy produced an astonishing turnaround in Iraq. Now the challenge is defeating Iranian-backed Shiite militias trying to undo that progress. Naturally, Democrats recommend surrender.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been blasted by congressional Democrats for years now for supposedly being nothing more than a divisive, ineffective sectarian, unwilling to use his government's muscle against militants if they were his fellow Shiites.

But now that Maliki is — without the guidance and direction of U.S. forces — waging a campaign against Shia militias in southern Iraq, what thanks do he and the Baghdad government get from those same Democrats?

They use it to repeat their familiar refrain that Iraq is in a hopeless civil war, therefore the U.S. should cut and run...

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Threefer:

Hamas TV airs show of child killing Bush
A children's puppet show aired on Hamas TV Monday featured a child stabbing President Bush to death and turning the White House into a mosque. The script of the controversial sketch was translated into English by The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), an independent non-profit organization which analyzes and translates Middle Eastern media.
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Poll Show 85% of PA Arabs Support Terror
The poll, carried out by Ramallah-based pollster Khalil Shikaki, interviewed 1,270 PA Arabs. 64 percent support the rocket attacks on Israeli cities. A majority support Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas for president. In February of last year, a Near East Consulting (NEC) poll found that 75 percent do not think that Israel has a right to exist.
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The Price of Bush's Commitment to Palestinian Statehood
On his recent visit to the Middle East, Vice President Dick Cheney voiced the Bush administration's belief that a Palestinian state is "long overdue" and vowed to help make that goal a reality. Many conservatives and liberals agree with the administration that America should help fulfill the long-deferred Palestinian aspirations to statehood. The idea is that, in doing so, we would go a long way toward dousing the flames of Islamist terrorism.

But does US backing for Palestinian statehood advance our security? -- Only if you think we're better off fostering a new terrorist state...
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Jewish Group Slams Swiss-Iran Gas Deal; U.S. Questions Switzerland's Neutrality

BERN, Switzerland — The World Jewish Congress criticized Switzerland on Monday for participating in a gas deal with Iran that it condemned as a propaganda triumph for Tehran's hard-liners. (Snip)

"It became clear immediately that the visit by the Swiss foreign minister was a propagandistic triumph for the mullahs,"

WJC President Ronald Lauder, the billionaire cosmetics magnate, wrote in a statement.

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Admit Georgia and The Ukraine to NATO

While may not be quite ready for the EU just yet, There is no good argument to deny Georgia and Ukraine membership in NATO.

Both countries have shown they are a willing ally in the War on Terror, with Georgia still maintaining a significant troop force in Iraq, and with The Ukraine having deployed troops in Iraq from 2003-2005. In March of 2007, Georgia actually upped it's number of troops in Iraq from 850 to 2,500. Both countries have seen their soldiers die so that Iraq can maybe one day become a stable nation.

The real question is, why do major NATO powers such as Germany oppose NATO expansion into Tbilisi and Kyiv? The answer is simple and extremely short sighted. Several West European powers have sold their souls to Russia to make sure that they can get a steady supply of oil.

As long as Putin controls Russia -- be it from the Kremlin or from behind the scenes -- the Russian nation will always be troublesome. And such bad behavior can not be and should not be rewarded by punishing nations that wishes to escape Russian domination. The Georgian and Ukrainian people want to be our allies. Both nations have done everything possible to rid themselves of Communism. Both nations have shed blood so that other nations can know freedom.

It is time for Europe to give the Georgian and Ukrainian people the respect they deserve.

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See No Evil in Moscow

Look out for Mother Russia. The nation that emerged from the ruins of communism is not as dangerous to the world or as nasty to its own people as the old Soviet Union. But a new book by Edward Lucas, former Moscow bureau chief of The Economist, warns that Vladimir Putin and the ex-KGB thugs running oil-rich Russia have stifled the freedom of their citizens and turned their country into a menacing bully...

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The Push for the U.N. to GEAR Up

The current “insufficient” structure includes WomenWatch, an Initiative of the Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality (IANWGE) which “is the central gateway to information and resources on the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women throughout the United Nations system, including the United Nations Secretariat, regional commissions, funds, programmes, specialized agencies and academic and research institutions.”

The site goes on to list 44 U.N. entities in their Directory of U.N. Resources on Gender and Women’s Issues. The statement submitted on behalf of the global campaign for GEAR in January 2008 states, “The U.N., however, still lacks an effective mechanism to deliver on many of the essential commitments made.”

The new global campaign is called Gender Equality Architecture Reform (GEAR). In order to achieve women’s empowerment and equality through this new entity for women, the feminists state, “It must be funded initially at a minimum level of $500 million to $1 billion USD with increases over time.” That certainly is an ambitious goal.

[any bets this new entity spends more time on American shortcomings than those of, say, the Arab league? {yeah, me either}]

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U.N. food program seeks $500M

UNITED NATIONS - A United Nations food program has issued an emergency appeal for donations as the amount of food aid sent abroad from the United States is plunging. The World Food Program, which feeds about 73 million people worldwide, is seeking funding to close a $500 million gap caused by global spikes in food and fuel prices, the United Nations said in a release issued in New York.

[food and fuel prices - who could have guessed]

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Antarctic ice 7 times the size of Manhattan suddenly collapsed

A chunk of Antarctic ice about seven times the size of Manhattan suddenly collapsed, putting an even greater portion of glacial ice at risk and an ice shelf about the size of Connecticut is "hanging by a thread," scientists told March 25, 2008. In my humble opinion, this is a grand marketing exercise and an extreme example of ' Voodoo Science of global warming.'

Sensationalism works wonders and scientists have learned this art well. The piece of news that a chunk as big as 7 times Manhattan or, in 2005 as big as California, has broken off Antarctica creates far more interest than a mere mention of 150 square miles out of 5.7 million sq miles of Antarctica.

Let's analyze Antarctica beyond the hype of media scientists...

[yup, 2005, another 'shelf' broke off - then refroze itself back in place - it happens, the sea-floating shelves (shelfs?) are larger now than at any time is recorded history because of the current net-accumulation of snow in Antarctica. I.e., scare mongers are doing it again {with the media, well, doing it again}]

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On Those Oil Profits

Part of the reason for giant oil profits is that the industry itself is huge. But viewed in relative terms, oil and gas earnings are less impressive. The industry’s net profit per dollar of revenue was just under 9 cents, compared to 13 cents for the S&P 500, meaning the “markup” for the oil and gas industry is below average

Raising taxes on the production of oil will reduce its supply, causing oil and gasoline prices to rise even further. They sometimes call it a “windfall” tax, but in truth crude oil doesn’t grow on trees. It can take over a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars of investment to find and prepare an oil field for large-scale production.

If politicians are concerned about gas prices, they shouldn’t erect extra hurdles for those companies in the business of finding new supplies of oil. If the government really wants to do something, it can roll back restrictions on offshore and Alaskan drilling. Beyond that, it should just let market prices and the profit motive do their jobs.

[OR, government could easily/immediately reduce the 66 cents {in CA, all levels of government} of taxes paid per gallon currently - that's over 5x as much as the oil companies.. Oh, forgot - that's 'their' money...]

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RECORD PROFITS MEAN RECORD TAXES

Every time oil companies report strong earnings they seem to tap into a gusher of resentment on the left. One of these days the critics might look at what these businesses are contributing - besides vital energy. For instance:

• From 1977 to 2004, according to Tax Foundation data, U.S. oil companies cleared $630 billion after taxes while paying $518 billion in federal and state corporate taxes at an average rate of 45 percent.
• Over the same period, an additional $1.34 trillion in excise fuel taxes was collected from consumers and turned over to various levels of government.

As for Exxon's profit, in 2006 the company paid federal income taxes of $27.9 billion, leaving it with $39.5 billion in after-tax income. [not a typo] That profit, so loathed by the left, actually plays an important role: it's re invested into research, development, exploration and drilling to keep the oil flowing, and distributed to stockholders who have risked their capital to build an enterprise that provides an essential good -- the lifeblood of our economy.

[personally, I think it's Congress that should be on trial]

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Support Domestic Energy Production. Sign the Petition Today!

Why do we import so much oil when 112 billion barrels of it lie untapped right here in America? Domestic oil and gas production is safer, more stable, and it’s possible. And it reduces our reliance on foreign oil in a highly competitive global market. Shouldn’t we be using our own energy resources?

The Partnership for America’s Energy Security believes in stronger, more forward-thinking energy policies. We believe domestic oil and gas production will make America’s future stronger. Join our fight by signing our petition for domestic energy production!



I made sure my legislators know exactly how I feel about these potentially damaging proposals. I took action here, and I urge you to do the same. It just takes a minute, but it can change the future of energy for America. Please visit and take action today.



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