LEATHERNECKM31

Much ado about nada....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My old friend TOL and I used to pride ourselves in seeing the absurdity when it raises its ugly serpent head (image: James Carvell).

Absurdity is even better when it is just as funny as it is absurd (image: Dennis The Dwarf's speech last night).

But this is beyond parody, it's beyond ironic; I'll have to invent a new word for it:

We all remember how Barry O. howled in protest when McCain correctly pointed out he is nothing more than a celebrity on the level of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.

This just in:

The NY Post is reporting that the Messiah's stage for tonight speech... the "Baracopolis"... was designed by Britney's tour set designers. 

"The NY Post devotes today's cover to the elaborate stage being built for Barack Obama's Democratic presidential nomination acceptance today in Denver. The Post proclaims, BARACK OBAMA'S TEMPLE OF DEMOCRATS ON MT. O-LYMPUS, noting that it was "built by the same cheesy set team that put together Britney Spears' last tour."

Nicely written observation about what Obama is wagering by breaking up the "Joementum" created in the Pepsi Center and moving everything to Mile High Stadium, by Peggy Noonan.

And speaking of ad absurdum...
From the great Dave Barry:

Every political party has it's ardent supporters; this democrat backer is fighting against the world's creepy bird watchers who are nothing more than animal sex voyeurs who get their kicks from peeping on the innocent (and private) love making in the avian world.

And she wants it stopped NOW.

I'm not kidding; neither is Barry.

And after Barry stopped stalking Daryl Hannah, an uber-Greenie and former fish-woman, furnished yesterday's money quote when she responded to the question, "Have you attended any of the convention?"

"I will not enter a building that is built on obesity and diabetes."

Biden time.

The next two months are gonna be great thanks to Sir Gaffealot, Little Joey Biden; the Hill reports:

Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden might be the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but for at least a split second Wednesday, he got confused about some very simple military terminology.

Speaking at the Democratic National Convention about Sen. Barack Obama’s foreign policy judgment, Biden stated that Obama has advocated for two additional battalions in Afghanistan.

In fact, Obama called for two extra brigades – a small verbal slip, but a significant numerical one. A brigade is composed of a varying number of battalions. Biden's prepared remarks included the correct term.

For the GOP, the mistake is sure to be fodder for their efforts to label Biden a gaffe machine.

One of the great places for bikers in Colorado is The Buffalo Rose, just a hangover from the Coors Brewery which made Golden Colorado a household word.

For some unknown reason the Rose's owner offered the 150 year-old watering hole as the base of operations for the Qatar-based, raghead propaganda arm of international terrorism. The broadcasters were there to show their Middle Eastern viewers the residents of a small town the the American West watching the Obama coronation. Yeah, just what I thought--boring as hell.

Word spread that three rival biker gangs -- the Sons of Silence, the Banditos and the Hell's Angels -- declared a truce for tonight so they could meet at the Buffalo Rose in a united protest against al-Jazeera. But the network stood its ground and set up its cameras.

Considering the above, I know two things... 1). I wouldn't be within a 50 miles of the Buffalo Rose right now, and 2). these al-Jazeeras are too stupid to pour piss outta a boot. 

Derka derka derka-derka; derka, derka, derka... derka derka.

"The best and brightest" carry guns

First day of the DNC changing the country as well as the entire world.

As I've said before, I get a little uncomfortable around people who want "to change the world." 

But first, here is something we need to reflect upon:

During a 2007 Royal Marine assault on a Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan's Helmand Province, Lance Corporal Mathew Ford was critically wounded; his forward position in defilade in the midst of torrid of enemy fire.

His unit was unable to reach him.

The Marines called on Apache pilot Army Air Corps Warrant Officer Ed Macy with a plan so daring that rear echelon types bickered for an hour before approving it.

But the soldiers and Marines were well aware of the Taliban's latest horror tactic...  "The Taliban have a new plan for what they’ll do if they capture a British soldier. They intend to set up a webcam for a live internet broadcast and then skin him alive’.” this gave them even more reason to save one of their own.

It was no idle threat... they'd committed the same atrocity on Russian POWs in the 1980s.

Now the small group was even more determined to find L/Cpl Ford and bring him back.

For Macy it was as simple as it was preposterous.

Chris Fraser-Perry, 19, a Royal Marine for just 14 months, Royal Engineers' Captain Dave Rigg, 30, would strap themselves to the outside of an Apache piloted by Macy and "Carl".

The second Apache, externally carrying Royal Marines Sergeant-Major Colin Hearn, 45, and Gary Robinson, would provide support for the retrieval of the down Marine. 

In the bitter Afghan winter cold, the rescue mission launched for the heavily-defended target two kilometers distant. 

Macy would receive the Military Cross, right, and there would be others....

Read Macy's account (with pictures) here and the BBC taking the Taliban's side on this incident here.

War Porn

And now to see one of the Taliban's Tonka Toy truck convoys that didn't quite make it to the skinning knife store, click here.

Yep, courtesy of the A-10 Warthog and the  AN/GAU-8 30mm Avenger seven-barrel gatling gun.

Don't confuse this monster with a "machine gun"; it is  mounted only on the A-10 attack jet, and is used primarily in the air to ground role as a soft target killer and tank buster. This aircraft is used for close-air support in attacking ground threats such as armored tanks and vehicles; it also serves as a forward air control observer for sighting ground threats and directing air strikes against enemy targets.

The gun, mounted in the fuselage nose of the A/OA-10 Thunderbolt, is produced by [ex General Electric] Martin Marietta Armament Systems; and 80% of rounds fired at 4,000ft hit within a 20ft radius... ponder that for a moment, and remember that just six rounds from the Avenger can kill a tank.

According to some sources, the Avenger  (right) fires 1,800 rounds per minute, with the higher 4200 rd/min rate having been deleted in the 1980s. However, the A-10 can only fire in high rate, which is 3,900 rounds per minute. Low rate went out with the use of the batelle gas diverting device, and although the A-10 no longer uses the batelle device, the limit on high rate only has remained, since it made no tactical sense to fire in low rate and have to spend that much more time on final to get the same number of rounds on target.

Almost a lifetime ago, when I could hear the rumble of B52 ArcLight strikes, I felt compassion for my opposite number in the NVA. What manner of unbelievable hell was that?

Thankfully, I couldn't imagine.

But for these Taliban subhuman, pieces of rat bait I cannot only imagine worse, I wish it was US policy.

It is all they understand.  

And all they deserve.

Kill 'em all... and I don't give a damn if G-d sorts them out or not; in fact, if he asked, I'd say, "don't waste Your time."

Condi

Two questions.

1. Where was the CIA on the Russian invasion of Georgia? What didn't they know and when didn't they know it?

Once again the Central Intelligence Agency has left our leadership uninformed, the nation's interests unprotected. In the 90s the Clinton-damaged CIA was a miserable failure destined to watch, along with the rest of us, as the planes immolated the World Trade Center.

Little, perhaps nothing, has changed.

This invasion of Georgia must be recorded as another CIA failure to detect preparations by an aggressive nation to attack a weaker nation. No other conclusion is conceivable.

Regardless of the spin, either from the White House or Langley, the response of this administration was flaccid and ad-libbed.

It was left to VP Dick Cheney Sunday to call Georgian President Mikheil and promise him "Russian aggression must not go unanswered, and that its continuation would have serious consequences for its relations with the United States, as well as the broader international community".

Yesterday, finally, Bush dispatched Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Paris and Tbilisi to show support for French diplomatic efforts and Georgian resistance to the Russian invasion. He also said he we would begin air and sea delivery of humanitarian supplies by the U.S. military.

The meat of his message was unremarkable.

McCain's sober and muscular response called for emergency meetings of NATO's North Atlantic Council and of Group of 7 foreign ministers and for high-level U.S. consultations both with European allies and with countries like Ukraine that he said faced Russian intimidation.

He called for the United States to send economic and humanitarian aid to Georgia immediately.

He told Saakashvili "And I told him that I know I speak for every American when I say to him, 'Today we are all Georgians.'"

Moreover, McCain graphically demonstrated why all Americans should want him, not The One to answer that 3 a.m. call.

Obama said,  “I strongly condemn the outbreak of violence in Georgia, and urge an immediate end to armed conflict. Now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint, and to avoid an escalation to full scale war."

"Outbreak of violence"? What's next... a strongly-worded e-mail?

2. Where was Condoleezza Rice, a PhD. Sovietologist chosen by GW, in 2000 (gawd knows why) long after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Given all her training and expertise in the Soviet threat...where was she on this invasion? Arguably the President's key aid when Putin crushed the emerging, pro-America democracy, Rice almost seemed to have no role or impact.

Bush erred greatly from the start... selecting a female SecState at a time when our biggest threat was from the Muslims and our oil supply from the Middle East was threatened; how could he have failed to notice, ragheads have no respect for women, they shoot them in the head, bury them shoulders deep in the ground and stone them.

Would they listen or even care about what we say or warn when the message is carried by a female?

All they respect is strength and violence... was never projected by Condi (isn't that cute..? like Tami!) Rice.

In the books to come, we'll find out that the entire Middle East including Israel was all the while laughing behind her back and wondering when the adults would return to power.

(As an aside, Bush's other SecState--Colin Powell-- was about as Republican/ conservative as Lincoln Chaffe and is no doubt backing Obama.

As Cindy says, "His picker must broke."

A necessary window of opportunity

You may not have seen this from our national media two days ago... it comes as no surprise but it is an interesting upping of the ante by our enemies.

Abdalla Salem El-Badri, left, OPEC secretary general, is shown in a meeting last April with  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Badri warned Thursday that oil prices would see an "unlimited" increase in the case of a military conflict involving Iran, because the group's members would be unable to make up the lost production.

"We really cannot replace Iran's production - it's not feasible to replace it," Badri, said. "The prices would go unlimited; I can't give you a number."

So busy with 24-7 Obamanews, the drive by media covers next to nothing on the war front now that we're fully in command. My jarheads cut down more than 400 rags in just the last few weeks in Afghanistan; I said before that's where we need to be... our Marines have been complaining for months that there just aren't enough subhumans in Iraq any longer to kill.

And John Bolton, the only vestigial remains of any martial gravitas--past or present--in the Bush administration, believes that it is likely the Israelis with strike Iran after our Nov. 4 election but before the next president is inaugurated Jan. 20.     

"It's clear that the administration has essentially given up that possibility," he said. "I don't think it's serious any more. If you had asked me a year ago I would have said I thought it was a real possibility. I just don't think it's in the cards."

Bill Kristol agrees but recently said an Obama victory could prompt Bush to launch attacks against Iran. "If the president thought John McCain was going to be the next president, he would think it more appropriate to let the next president make that decision than do it on his way out," he said.

But what about the hellfire and damnation response promised by a "united Arab region" or Ahmadinejad? (But can they do anymore at the moment than fake missile lunch photos?)

Paper tiger, according to Bolton. The Arabs would be "pleased" by Israeli strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities; the reaction "will be positive privately. I think there'll be public denunciations but no action," he said.

Once the Israelis take out Iran's nuke facilities--destroying it's ultimate military and psychological weapon feared by all its neighbors, not just Israel--the mullahs' clock will be reset to The Middle Ages where it properly belongs.

In mid-June the Israeli Air Force conducted long-range recon flights over the Mediterranean -- obvious practice air strikes. Tehran's foreign ministry dismissed the operation as an futile act of "psychological warfare".

A ministry spokesman claimed that Israeli doesn't have "the capacity to threaten the Islamic Republic of Iran. They [Israel] have a number of domestic crises and they want to extrapolate it to cover others. Sometimes they come up with these empty slogans."

Two final points on the above...

1. Middle East subhumans have been making the same fatal miscalculation about the Israelis since 1948. It's cost them greatly every time. The ADF has more than the necessary means, motive and opportunity to carry out such a strike; they've done it before.

And they have something the Bush Administration does not appear to have... the will.

2. Tehran's claim that Israel cannot attack because "they have a number of domestic crises" is telling. It's a clear the terrorists consider the fifth-columnists and "useful idiots" at work in Israel, the US and throughout the West to be their most effective weapons.

 Our lack of national will and cohesion is what our enemies count on most; they have no conventional armed capability to speak of, and once the Israelis surgically end Iran's nuclear capabilities, and we bleed them into submission, they'll have to return to their camels.  

The price we'll pay will be limited to the continued terrorist attacks against soft targets that we've had to contend with since Thomas Jefferson sent the Marines and the Navy to kill Islamo-subhumans the first time in The Barbary War 1801-1805 (see my post, "To the Shores of Tripoli" )

Tony Snow

Tony Snow showed great dignity in his fight against terminal cancer which finally overpowered him yesterday.

A solid journalist of pleasant demeanor, good humor and flinty toughness, he was one of the most effective presidential press secretaries in recent memory.

Via Michelle Malkin, Doug Powers observes:

The AP just can’t help but take a swing at a conservative who just died:

"With a quick-from-the-lip repartee, broadcaster’s good looks and a relentlessly bright outlook — if not always a command of the facts — he became a popular figure around the country to the delight of his White House bosses."

And there we find the essential difference between conservatives and liberals, don't we?

Tony, a man of great religious faith, wrote candidly about his struggle a year ago:

"... remember that we were born not into death, but into life—and that the journey continues after we have finished our days on this earth. We accept this on faith, but that faith is nourished by a conviction that stirs even within many nonbelieving hearts—an intuition that the gift of life, once given, cannot be taken away. Those who have been stricken enjoy the special privilege of being able to fight with their might, main, and faith to live—fully, richly, exuberantly—no matter how their days may be numbered.

Thanks, Tony; you were one of the few really good ones.