The horror, the sickness, the sadness is not that bush and cheney need to punish this poor clown. The sadness is that with all their power, with their aircraft carriers and submarines and globally mobile brigades and spy satellites and intel operatives and all the Tom Clancy narrative goodies we have available to us, the horror is this is the best we can do.

We took an uneducated chicago thug and turned him into some kind of super villain. It makes me want to vomit. This shit has just gotta stop!

mikey

These motherfuckers made Padilla go to a dentist with his ears and eyes covered so that he couldn’t communicate what might, in a wild leap of conjecture befitting Tarzan, be a terrorist message – and yet they’re allowing a different terrorist (oh, yes, well, he’s white and he’s Christian, ya see) to relay his manifestoes to his following via a surrogate?????????? What the fuck?

Remember the NY lawyer who was convicted because she relayed some messages of the Blind Sheik to someone else?

What the fuck is wrong with this country?

I’d make snarky jokes but this pisses me off too much.
This is pretty stark evidence the War They Used To Call The War On Terror, the WTUTCTWOT, is solely about demonizing Muslims to distract from the massive fuck-ups of 9/11 and Katrina and pretty much every single policy decision this Admin has ever made.
But then again, everything about the WTUTCTWOT from… let’s say Tora Bora on is also stark fucking evidence.

But Rudolph was protecting the womb babies and isn’t a Mohammedan, so it’s totally different.

I was at the store today and parked next to a car sporting two bumper stickers:

One read: Without Life, There is no Choice

The other, the one that shot my blood pressure into the stratosphere, displayed an ultrasound picture of a fetus; the caption, “Woman, Behold Thy Son”.

Just think, of the woman in the parking lot who sees that and thinks of the child she miscarried, or the abortion she had to have for any number of reasons. WTF is wrong with these people?

In Iowa, it used to be possible to go to the DOT with a license plate number and find out the name of the person to whom the car belonged and their address. A bunch of Right to Life loonies went through the parking lot of a gynecologist who performed abortions (he also delivered my son, an excellent doctor who never hassled me for the money I owed him while I slowly paid off my bill, btw) went to the DOT, got the addresses of all the people in the doctor’s lot, and mailed hideous, ugly flyers to the owners of the cars, saying things like “Baby Killer” and showing pictures of aborted fetuses. You know the drill. And one of the women who received this hateful thing was a woman who had had a very difficult, very much desired pregnancy that had ended in miscarriage, for which she was being treated. Upshot is that the law got changed so that bastards like that could no longer find out where people live.

These motherfuckers are truly terrorists, much worse than that poor loser Jose Padilla will ever be.

I am not normally a violent person, but I felt like standing there until the bumper sticker asshole came out and engaging in a bit of fisticuffs. I went home and chugged a beer instead.

And, thus…Jerry Falwell’s handiwork. Neither Eric Rudolph nor the idea that what he did wasn’t terrorism came from a vaccuum.

I am not normally a violent person, but I felt like standing there until the bumper sticker asshole came out and engaging in a bit of fisticuffs.

What you do is carry a supply of bumper stickers you enjoy and apply at will.

RB, an excellent suggestion.

Good idea Bubba, but I’d take it one step further. Make it stickers sayin stuff like “fuck jesus” and “proud parent of queers”.
Hell, I’d be calculating about it. Figure out how to make n print my own, n get appropriate slogans on multiple colored backgrounds, so I could maybe match the original sticker n make it less likely to be immediately noticed.
In Florida, n a few other states, there are actual license plates in a “choose life” theme. I see them on the mainland when I visit my parents down there. Those make me want to kill.

They haven’t done it for a few years, but the Army of God used to hold an annual White Rose Banquet, where they gave themselves awards and auctioned off stuff made by convicted terrorists as well as relics from their attacks. John Yewell of the Independent Weekly attended and reported on the 2001 meeting. The article’s third image shows Donald Spitz and convicted terrorist Dennis Malvasi auctioning the watch Malvasi used in four attacks.

Off topic, for anyone who doesn’t read Wolcott, Gringrich all but declared for 08 today.
The Lord giveth, and He taketh. Fuck you, jebus.

I’ve emailed your comments to the DHS, FBI and NYS. But I’m sure they have to already have known about this monstrosity. Perhaps they are observing? Trying to be optimistic, here; sometimes the FBI and DHS can be amazingly good, but it’s probably more by accident. Just worried that CAIR has cut their cohones off.
I also forwarded it over to Glenn Beck, and asked him to get his staff looking into it.
This gives me knots in my stomach. We have to DO something to stop this. Last year I remember reading where islam has been granted a three-week training in all public schools fro elementary through high school. Kids wear hijabs, burkas, skull caps, say prayers, fast, etc., for the entire three weeks. It’s total islamic immersion and the courts ruled that this wasn’t a separation issue but one of cultural anthropology training, which makes it legal.

Hehe. The new troll is cute.

Hehe. The new troll is cute.

Aren’t you New Yorkers a wonderfully progressive and multiculturial lot?
We really need a little more so called, ‘islamo-phobia’ in this country. The fact that the federal government is unwilling to find a way to shut this crap down is indicative of our lack of seriousness we are about this war.
You can be if this were a bunch of good old boys back in the Clinton years they would have been declared a ‘militia’ and shut down.
But about bunch of muslim ex-cons? No problem.

mikey said,
May 16, 2007 at 4:48
.This shit has just gotta stop!

In this war of attrition, victory hinges on who tires first, and at what point average beaten-down Iraqis step forward and began opposing anyone who keeps killing innocents and destroying their own sources of power, water, transportation, and civil services.

In terms of our own military, after four years of this, it seems a question of how quickly and how well we can promote veteran Lt. Colonels, Colonels, and one-stars who have extensive experience into positions of real authority-accepting that in war everything about the status quo, from promotion to recognition, must change and depend only on proven performance on the battlefield.

In every war, almost all successful generals were unheard of before the war, while those that were, were not at its end. So let us hope there is a lot of skipping of rank, as Gen. Petraeus gets the best of his Iraqi veteran Lt. Colonels and Colonels fast-tracked and into positions where they can really use their expertise and experience.

We hear only that the army is broken. It surely is stretched and hurting-but also, for good or evil, has an entire cadre of officers who have seen almost everything imaginable in counterinsurgency warfare, both effective and stupid, and are quite literally now the most experienced combat officers in the world-and should rightfully be promoted into generalships in Iraq where they can do the most good.

The Pentagon should understand this sense of necessary urgency. Yes, counterinsurgency takes years, but politically the time left is finite-and will end not when the Democrats (who cannot stop filibusters or override vetoes quite yet) say so, but when moderate Republicans in fear of the 2008 elections, order the war to stop. And that could be sooner that we think.

What ended Vietnam was not just the anti-war movement, and the Peace Democrats, but the combination of southern conservatives and post-Watergate disgusted Republicans that either voted for the cut-offs between 1973-5 or in passive resignation accepted their inevitability.

So, as is true in most long wars (cf. 1864 or 1918), armies seem not to be fully effective until they digest and learn from their horrific mistakes, and so enter a race to apply their wisdom before an exasperated public gives up.

In late summer 1864 the work of Sheridan and Sherman and the 1918 summer offensive uplifted public opinion enough to stick it out; in 1970-3 post-Tet, radical improvement in American tactics, weaponry, and know-how came too little too late to deflate the public sense of defeatism and doom.

To use an overused phrase: Once again, all eyes turn on Petraeus and the autumn.

Tough, you say. So what? Washington still has no dog in these fights. It’s time to hunker down in Fortress America. Which brings me to the fourth lesson: What fortress? The three Duka brothers were (if you’ll forgive the expression) illegal immigrants. They’re not meant to be here. Yet they graduated from a New Jersey high school and they operated two roofing companies and a pizzeria. Think of how often you have to produce your driver’s license or Social Security number. But, five years after 9/11, this is still one of the easiest countries in the world in which to establish a functioning but fraudulent identity.
Consider, for example, the post-9/11 ritual of airline security. You have to produce government-issued picture ID to the TSA official. Does that make you feel safer? On that Tuesday morning in September, four of the killers got on board by using picture ID they’d acquired through the “undocumented worker” network in Falls Church, Va. Half the jurisdictions in the United States issue picture ID to people who shouldn’t even be in the country, and they issue it as a matter of policy. The Fort Dix boys were pulled over for 19 traffic violations, but because they were in “sanctuary cities,” any cop who suspected they were illegals was unable to report them to immigration authorities. Again, as a matter of policy.
On one hand, America creates a vast federal security bureaucracy to prevent another 9/11. On the other hand, American politicians and bureaucrats create a parallel system of education and welfare and health care entitlements, main- taining and expanding a vast network of fraudulent identity that cor- rupts the integrity of almost all state databases. And though it played a part in the killing of 3,000 Americans, leaders of both parties insist nothing can be done to stop it. All we can do is give the Duka brothers “a fast track to citizenship.”
The Iranians already are operating in South America’s Tri-Border area. Is it the nothing-can-be-done crowd’s assumption that the fellows who run armies of the “undocumented” from Mexico into America are just kindhearted human smugglers who’d have nothing to do with jihad even if the price was right? If you don’t have borders, you won’t have a nation — and you may find “the jobs Americans won’t do” covers a multitude of sins.

plagarist, are you a bot of some sort, at least partially?
If you’re cutting and pasting all that together from various places, then wow. Still, why?

plagarist, are you a bot of some sort, at least partially?
If you’re cutting and pasting all that together from various places, then wow. Still, why?

You know the real problem? There were certainly issues prior to modern era, but the real problem all over the Islamic world currently is Saudi money funding the advocacy of Wahabi thinking. Prior to that time, Islam around the world was much more regional and somewhat tempered, having its own regional “flavor”. Not that things for religious minorities were great, but this fanatical viewpoint in Islam that we see spreading currently wasn’t as common. For example, there is a traditional dance in Indonesia that has origins in the prior religions of Indonesia (Hindu, etc) that has been discouraged in recent years by the fanatical muslims in Indonesia. They look upon their indigenous cultures as something to be ashamed of.
Why the pseudo-secular leftists, who are so sensitive to imperialism not see it – that Islam, as it’s being advocated by Saudis, is ARABIC IMPERIALISM!
Nice thing about African American Muslims (separate thing from Nation of Islam) is that they are easier to inflitrate. “Real” Muslims might want to use them for cannon fodder some day and it would be nice to have someone inside.

Cool, eh?

Hey plagerist,

did you forget your LGF login name?

Jose Padilla is this government’s warning to all of us.

Right after the October Revolution, Russia was invaded by a contingent of British, French, and American troops. The chaos caused by WWI, two revolutions in under a year, an invasion, and a civil war led to massive grain shortages and starvation (well, all of these factors combined to worsen Russia’s standard, chronic grain shortage at the best of times – sort of hard to avoid when most of your country is taiga and tundra).

Lenin was determined to do whatever it took to get the grain to his factory workers and troops. He sent out dozens of memos to the armed Communist cadre he had in the farmland saying things like “take the grain. If the farmers resist, take ten of them from the village, hang them from trees in the center of town, and let the village know that they were hoarding grain.” He was quite explicit that this was to be done in the most visible fashion possible, in the hopes of terrorizing everyone into complying with his orders.

What the government has done to Jose Padilla could be done to any one of us. They haven’t killed him and hung him in the town square with a sign around his neck reading “enemy of the revolution”, but they have locked him away in a cell with no communication for years now. It’s worse than death in a lot of ways – I know I’d rather be dead than be trapped in solitary confinement indefinitely. The stories about the harm this has done to his mental health are legion, so I won’t cite them here.

The man is an American citizen, who was arrested on American soil. He was denied the most fundamental right any citizen anywhere should expect – habeas corpus, the right to appear before a judge, know precisely what crime you are charged with, and when you can expect to have an opportunity to answer those charges in your own defense.

And if they did it to him, they can do it to you. There’s not a force in the world, court-order or otherwise, that can stop them. You can be disappeared, and it’s completely legal. This is absolutely a warning from the state to us.

Jillian, you’re always perceptive and insightful. Scary, but perceptive and insightful.

Candy, I feel some ‘rasp, rasp, rasp, slurp’ coming on. Time to get out the cello.

plagarist (sic) commentator, I’ll try reason to start with, just in case it works. I’ll be polite.

Iraq is a nation of Iraqis. Many Iraqis are understandably upset at the wreckage that once was a modern nation with high standards of technological education and a mostly secular government. Their rates of pay were once equal for men and women. Alas that, since the attack, invasion, and occupation, all the advantages once possessed by Iraqis have now disappeared, as has much of their infrastructure, already weakened by a decade of harsh sanctions.

So many Iraqis want to attack the Americans. There were secret attempts a couple of years ago, or thereabouts, by disguised American soldiers or British soldiers, to attack one sub-group and blame it on the other sub-group. There may have been many more that didn’t get exposed. For this reason, or just because the country has been damaged so brutally, there is now a civil war in Iraq.

I mention all this merely as background, so that when I point out that the US presence in Iraq is unwanted and unhelpful, you’ll understand why I say that. The US should pack up all its bats and balls and go home: there’s no way the country can begin to repair itself until then. But the US government refuses to leave until the Iraqi government passes the Oil Law demanded by the US.

In addition, a group of mainly Saudis, religious fundamentalists, flew some planes into some buildings and killed about 3000 people. Those terrorists, or at least their spokes-being, Osama bin Laden, have freely admitted their motivation. Strangely, there’s little there about imposing religion. What there is, is anger at the US for continually (ie over decades) interfering in the Muslim world.

Now I’m not talking about Hollywood movies and rampant consumerism. I have no doubt they’re contemptuous of us for our foibles, but no-one is going to leave their homes and train for a suicide mission merely to stop us being shallow consumers.

They will, however, leave their homes and train for a suicide mission in revenge for years of what they see as atrocities against their people. Thus the war against Iraq is recruiting hundreds of potential terrorists eager to take their revenge against America for the hundreds of thousands dead and the torture and repression.

This theme is supported by terrorists of most other religions. The most prolific, the Tamil Tigers, may be HIndu, but the terrorism is political: terrorism is really a weapon used by small or powerless groups against the powerful, because it’s the only weapon they have. So terrorism is really asymmetrical war.

Shorter me: it’s not Islam, it’s politics. Look beyond your preconceptions and see what motivates people to want to kill Americans, if you want them to stop.

the new troll is an unhinged coward.

Did you tell your mommy too, cowardly thief? God what a puss.
Crawl back under your piss stained sheets.

Though not totally related, this reminded me of Lynne Stewart, an attorney who is serving 30 years for being in the same room with, and mailing a letter for her terrorist client at the time he wrote a letter to his followers (which was in Arabic, a language she neither speaks nor understands).

Lynne Stewart is the person I was trying to remember in my post, thanks, Zoroastrain.

The new troll is actually tiresome. Not nearly as funny as Gary, nor as snotty as Kevin.

All Padilla has to do is proclaim he’s a Christian and that what he did was to “save the babies” and he would be livin’ the fine life of a nutjob martyr.

The new troll is as wrong as any of the old ones evre were, though, but is hampered by the rote regurgitation of LGF lying points with no sourcing. (for instance, the story about teaching Islam in public schools by forcing kids to wear hijabs is surely apocryphal).

He or she does, however, meet or exceed the requisite amount of unreasoning, pants-pissing fear of the Brownish Other that is currently de riguer among the whackaloons and racists.

I rate the new troll as: 5.3 rupperts.

“Maybe they should have just added a middleman and corresponded via the Army of God Web site”

Perhaps the Cuban American National Foundation could lend a hand.

In modern america, hatred and bigotry are not only allowed, but encouraged. You can freely hate muslims, you can freely hate gays. Of course, their biggoted hatred of other people sneaks out if they aren’t really careful (see Imus, Limbaugh et al). They are trying to turn the word “multicultural” into a perjorative. The extent America will survive in a recognizable form will be measured by their success or lack thereof. I am saddened, and not optimistic…

mikey

Troll or not – Plagarist got one thing right:

the real problem all over the Islamic world currently is Saudi money funding the advocacy of Wahabi thinking

I hate to agree, but there is justice to this staement.

the real problem all over the Islamic world currently is Vatican money funding the advocacy of christianist thinking

Fixed!

mikey

Might as well take it to its logical conclusion:

the real problem all over the Islamic world currently is Vatican money funding the advocacy of christianist religious thinking
more fixed.
The Saudis are particularly bad – they made a bargin with the devil to keep power and now they can’t get out of it.

How high does the Ruppert scale go? I always thought that was one of the S,N! guys screwing around. Its actually a real person? What a rube.

PS Malkin = Bat Boy!!! BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH