Target Centermass

Author: Gunner

  • Mystery Surrounds Mass Shia Deaths in Iraq

    We still don’t know what happened over the weekend in the Iraqi village of Madain, near Baghdad, but it now seems a certainty that something quite vicious has passed.

    The bodies of more than 50 people have been discovered dumped in the Tigris river south of Baghdad, Jalal Talabani, Iraq’s president, said yesterday.

    He said the victims were believed to have been Shia hostages executed by Sunni insurgents in the Madaen district last week.

    The announcement seemed likely to deepen the intrigue surrounding the alleged massacre, which was dismissed as rumour earlier this week after Iraqi troops raided Madaen and found nothing to corroborate reports of a mass killing.

    “We will give you details in the coming days,” Mr Talabani told a news conference. “Terrorists committed crimes there. It is not true that there were no hostages. There were, but they were killed and they threw the bodies into the Tigris. More than 50 bodies have been brought out from the Tigris and we have the full names of those who were killed and those criminals who committed these crimes.”

    Officials had claimed that the insurgents had threatened to kill as many as 150 civilian hostages – who had reportedly been held since last Friday – unless the Shia left the area. But after security forces found no hostages, some people suggested the reports were exaggerated.

    Iyad Allawi, the outgoing prime minister, had blamed the kidnappings on a group linked to al-Qaeda and led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The group reportedly issued an internet statement denying the allegations and accused the government of fabricating the case.

    The hostage-taking claims caused debate in parliament about the make-up of Iraq’s security forces, and the alleged incident was cited as an example of the need to purge former members of Saddam Hussein’s regime from the military and police forces.

    I blogged about the confusion of war-time reporting on this weekend’s back-and-forth media maelstrom on whether there were large numbers of Shiite hostages taken in Madain. Hopefully the truth of what events actually transpired will be discovered soon and made public. In either case, the event could and should be used as evidence of the need to strengthen Iraqi security forces by removing internal elements that are more detriment than value. I would prefer a selective weeding out over a mass purge, but it is reasonable to assume there’s a sizable amount of weeds that need pulling.

  • Keeping with the Theme o’ the Day

    Religion. Religion. Religion.

    Air Force Cadets See Religious Harassment

    Less than two years after it was plunged into a rape scandal, the Air Force Academy is scrambling to address complaints that evangelical Christians wield so much influence at the school that anti-Semitism and other forms of religious harassment have become pervasive.

    There have been 55 complaints of religious discrimination at the academy in the past four years, including cases in which a Jewish cadet was told the Holocaust was revenge for the death of Jesus and another was called a Christ killer by a fellow cadet.

    The 4,300-student school recently started requiring staff members and cadets to take a 50-minute religious-tolerance class.

    “There are things that have happened that have been inappropriate. And they have been addressed and resolved,” said Col. Michael Whittington, the academy’s chief chaplain.

    More than 90 percent of the cadets identify themselves as Christian. A cadet survey in 2003 found that half had heard religious slurs and jokes, and that many non-Christians believed Christians get special treatment.

    […]

    Critics of the academy say the sometimes-public endorsement of Christianity by high-ranking staff has contributed to a climate of fear and violates the constitutional separation of church and state at a taxpayer-supported school whose mission is to produce Air Force leaders.
    […]

    “They are deliberately trivializing the problem so that we don’t have another situation the magnitude of the sex assault scandal. It is inextricably intertwined in every aspect of the academy,” said Mikey Weinstein of Albuquerque, N.M., a 1977 graduate who has sent two sons to the school. He said the younger, Curtis, has been called a “filthy Jew” many times.

    There’s more examples of complaints, both vague and specific, in the story. Even those of a religious bent who boisterously proclaim, “There’s no atheists in a foxhole” have to admit that any foxholes around Colorado Springs are relatively safe. The military has an obligation to respect and protect the individual religious beliefs or non-beliefs of its personnel, as long as they do not interfere with the mission.

    I do recommend that, during the initial weeks of basic training, atheists joining the Army may do well to become religious. That treasured hour or two on Sunday morning may be your only break from the drill sergeants for a while.

    China Calls for New Pope to Break Taiwan Ties

    Beijing called on new Pope Benedict XVI to break ties with Taiwan and stay out of China’s internal affairs to create the conditions for better Sino-Vatican relations.

    “We are willing to improve the relationship between China and the Vatican on the basis of two principles,” said foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang of ties that were ruptured in 1951 when China expelled the Vatican’s ambassador.

    “One is that Joseph Ratzinger should break off the so-called diplomatic relationship with Taiwan and recognise that the government of the People’s Republic of China is the only legitimate government which represents China and that Taiwan is an inseparable part of China.

    “The second is that Ratzinger should not interfere in internal Chinese affairs, including in the name of religion.

    “We hope that with a new Pope, the Vatican can create conditions to improve China-Vatican relations.”

    Despite not recognizing the authority of the Pope, the official Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association had sent a congratulatory telegram “in the name of the Bishops and believers of the whole country,” the ministry said.

    It added that congregations had been told to pray for Pope Benedict XVI.

    China’s Roman Catholics are divided into two churches — the government-approved “patriotic” church which does not recognize the authority of the Pope, and the underground church where adherents accept the pontiff as leader.

    The government church has about four million worshippers, according to official figures, while the underground church has about 10 million, based on Vatican estimates.

    Breaking through half-a-century of enmity to re-establish relations with China may be the greatest diplomatic challenge facing Pope Benedict XVI as he takes on the mantle as leader of 1.1 billion Roman Catholics worldwide.

    Fixing broken ties with China would spread the new pontiff’s spiritual realm to the most populous nation on earth, home to 1.3 billion people. But it is precisely that global influence that scares Beijing.

    China sent no representative to Pope John Paul II’s funeral in Rome on April 8 to protest the presence of Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian at the event. Any hint of recognition of Taipei infuriates China, which considers the island a rebel province.

    The spat obscured mounting signs of an effort by the Vatican to crack China’s resistance to the Roman Catholic Church.

    Does anybody know how to say, “Um, yeah, right, whatever, talk to the ring” in Latin?

  • Faithful Flock to Chicago Overpass

    To honor the new pope, I’ll stick on the topic of religion for a bit. Is it a stain or a miracle?

    A steady stream of the faithful and the curious, many carrying flowers and candles, have flocked to an expressway underpass for a view of a yellow and white stain on a concrete wall that some believe is an image of the Virgin Mary.

    “We believe it’s a miracle,” said Elbia Tello, 42, of Chicago. “We have faith, and we can see her face.”

    Police have patrolled the emergency turnoff area under the Kennedy Expressway since Monday as hundreds of people have walked down to see the image and the growing memorial of flowers and candles that surround it. Beside the image is an artist’s rendering of the Virgin Mary embracing Pope John Paul II in a pose some see echoed in the stain.

    Tuesday morning, women knelt with rosary beads behind a police barricade while men in work shirts stood solemnly before the image, praying. A police officer kept the crowd of about three dozen from getting too close to the traffic but didn’t stop them gathering around the stain.

    The stain is likely the result of salt run-off, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation. The agency does not plan to scrub it off the wall.

    “We’re treating this just like we treat any type of roadside memorial,” said IDOT spokesman Mike Claffey. “We have no plans to clean this site.”

    The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago had not received any requests to authenticate the image as of Monday, spokesman Jim Dwyer said.

    “These things don’t happen every day,” Dwyer said. “Sometimes people ask us to look into it. Most of the time they don’t. (The meaning) depends on the individual who sees it. To them, it’s real. To them, it reaffirms their faith.”

    But onlooker Victor Robles, 36, said he was skeptical about the stain’s Virgin Mary resemblance.

    “I see just a concrete walk and an image that could happen anywhere,” Robles said. “If that image helps more people feel closer to God than maybe that is a good sign.”

    Well, at least it’s not a $28,000 piece of toast.

  • Today’s Big News and Some Frivolities

    I’m in a rather mellow mood right now, so let’s keep it light.

    The big story of the day went up in smoke — white smoke, that is, as a new pope has been elected. I’m not Catholic, or even religious for that matter, but I do recognize the importance of the position in international and American affairs. That said, I’ll leave it to someone much spiritually closer to the matter, Phil over at Shades of Gray (Umbrae Canarum), who seems quite excited about the choice of Germany’s Joseph Ratzinger as the man with the cool hats.

    Wow.

    I have to admit, I am very excited and happy by this turn of events. Cardinal Ratzinger is a brilliant man, and an ardent defender of the faith. The Church is in good hands with him in charge. I have about four of his books collecting dust on my shelf right now, so I best get about to looking at them again.

    Phil goes on to look in more depth at what the selection of Cardinal Ratzinger means, both to devout Catholics and to those who were hoping for a great change in Catholic orthodox.

    Now, on to those frivolities.

    Jeff at Protein Wisdom has the first Pope Benedict XVI joke.

    I posted before that Eric’s fine blog has a new site and new name. He now has a new look. Please feel free to drop by his new digs and make fun of the banners he’s added. Yes, I have a personal interest in this.

    Go pick a fight with the monster that is TexasBestGrok.

    Who needs Dances with Wolves when there’s Travels with Chicken?!

    Once again, Khan!!!

    And to bring it back full circle, Hog on Ice‘s Steve is pushing for a grass-roots campaign to have the pope recalled.

  • Consider Yourselves Warned: Sham-Marriage Follow-up

    I recently posted an ominous take on the likelihood of domestic terrorism in the U.S. As a point of evidence, I pointed to In the Bullpen‘s story about ten women being arrested in Memphis for their involvement in sham-marriages with immigrants from the radical Islamist-rich Morocco.

    ItB’s Chad Evans has now followed up on his story and, as expected, you’re damn skippy, Virginia, there’s a terrorist link.

    Well, well, well. It looks as if I was right that the Memphis, Tennesee sham-marriages had a connection to terrorism after all. Following the arrest of the sham-marriage ringleader Rafat Jamal Mawlawi, the FBI served a search warrant on Mawlawi’s home and what they found is a bit more disturbing than simply trying to arrange upwards of ten marriages with Memphis women….

    Go read a tale of weapons, ammo, and video tape.

  • ‘Monday Night Football’ Heading to ESPN

    So ends one of the supposed constants of my entire football-watching life, as Monday Night Football departs from ABC.

    “Monday Night Football,” a television institution that over 35 years has helped transform the NFL into a prime-time ratings draw, is leaving ABC and moving to ESPN beginning with the 2006 season.

    The NFL’s new broadcast deal also brings football back to NBC for the first time in six years. NBC will take over the Sunday night games currently broadcast on ESPN.

    The “Monday Night Football” move to cable is expected to cost ESPN $1.1 billion per year over eight years, two sources familiar with the deals told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

    NBC will get the Sunday night package for $600 million over six years, according to the sources. The network will also get the Super Bowl in 2009 and 2012 as part of the deal, one of the sources said.

    The move will leave ABC as the only major network without NFL football. “Monday Night Football” has been a pillar of ABC since the games began on prime-time in 1970, when Howard Cosell anchored the show. “Monday Night Football” stands as the second-longest running prime time network series, trailing CBS’ 60 Minutes by two years.

    Perhaps it’s also time for 60 Minutes to move to another network, perhaps one with a credible news division.

    The move to ESPN keeps the Monday Night Football brand within the umbrella of The Disney Company. Disney owns both ESPN and ABC.

    “From the Disney perspective, it was a smart move for ABC by moving out of football and having ESPN move into Monday nights,” said George Bodenheimer, president of ESPN and ABC Sports.

    The NFL will continue to show all cable games on free, over-the air television in home markets. That means local stations will carry ESPN’s Monday night games in the cities of the teams involved.

    Last month, NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue said that the Monday night move was a strong possibility. ABC, which has been losing money on the package despite high ratings, had been balking at the NFL’s asking price.

    […]

    The NFL is still considering an eight game late-season package of Thursday and Saturday night games on cable and satellite. Tagliabue has said the NFL’s own new network could show some or all of those games.

    It’s bad enough that Disney has opted to kill off the ABC-MNF tradition. The NFL is pushing the limits of stupidity with its consideration of expanding to even more Thursday and Saturday night games, risking over-exposure and increased competition with the superior product that is college football.

  • Grad Student Sentenced for SUV Arson

    Caltech — home of the fightin’ Radical Environuts.

    A graduate student was sentenced Monday to more than eight years in prison and ordered to pay millions of dollars in restitution for firebombing scores of sport utility vehicles.

    William Jensen Cottrell, 24, was convicted in November of conspiracy to commit arson and seven counts of arson for an August 2003 vandalism spree that damaged and destroyed about 125 SUVs.

    Prosecutors estimated the total damage was about $2.3 million.

    U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner sentenced Cottrell to 100 months and ordered him to pay $3.5 million in restitution. Cottrell hung his head upon hearing the sentence.

    Vandals who targeted dealerships and homes in the San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles set the vehicles on fire and used spray-paint to deface them with slogans such as “Fat, Lazy Americans,” “polluter,” “smog machine” and “ELF,” an acronym for the Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental group.

    Cottrell, a doctoral candidate in the physics department at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, was acquitted of using a destructive device – Molotov cocktails – in a crime of violence. That was the most serious charge he faced and it carried a sentence of at least 30 years in prison.

    Defense lawyers argued that Cottrell had agreed with two friends to spray-paint vehicles, but was surprised when they began to hurl Molotov cocktails.

    Federal prosecutors have identified former Caltech students Tyler Johnson and Michie Oe as “fugitive co-conspirators” in the case. It is believed that both have fled the country.

    Prosecutors also alleged that Cottrell tried to minimize his role and place the blame on Johnson and Oe.

    Cottrell was arrested in March 2004 after authorities tracked e-mails that Cottrell, using an alias, sent to the Los Angeles Times. He told the newspaper in the e-mails that he was involved in the SUV attacks and affiliated with the Earth Liberation Front.

    Methinks Cottrell will quickly develop a new respect for private property rights when his ass goes up on the prison commodity market.

    For some reason, this story brings to mind the opening lines of my favorite poem, W.B. Yeats’ The Second Coming.

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    I expect more such occurences, as the radical, overly-passionate leftist groups like ELF spiral ever more towards extremism, letting slip any last tenuous hold on the realities of society.

  • An Anniversary Sadly Marked

    Today is the sixtieth anniversary of the discovery by British troops of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, the site where Anne Frank spent her final days.

    Thanks to Alan at Petrified Truth for the reminder and this set of relevant links.

  • A Particular Soldier’s Letters Home

    The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette‘s David M. Shribman has the tale of letters from a certain World War II soldier, letters that are just now surfacing.

    The sad thing about our time is that war letters have become a genre. We’ve all read them. They’re in books, they’re online. They’re also in our own homes. In this country, in this age, is there a family that does not have a file of letters from a soldier, sailor or aviator tucked away in the closet or the attic? In some of our homes, those files get thicker every day.

    Right now there’s a new set of war letters circulating. Not exactly new, it turns out; they’ve been around for 60 years. But almost nobody knew about them, including the fellow who wrote them. They have been hidden away, until now.

    They are the war letters of an Army grunt named Robert Joseph Dole, and the people who first looked through the trove inevitably described them as “extraordinary.” But they aren’t extraordinary at all. They’re ordinary, which in the end makes them even more extraordinary.

    Yes, that Robert Dole. Former senator, vice-presidential and presidential candidate.

    Go read more about the words from the pen of a great man, and how those words are just now reaching the public as the man confronts adversity again.

  • General Predicts Taliban’s Demise

    The U.S. commander in Afghanistan has predicted that the Taliban would cease to even resemble a cohesive military threat shortly. Surprisingly, the Taliban agrees.

    The top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan predicted Saturday that the Taliban militia would collapse as a viable fighting force over the next several months as rank-and-file members accept a reconciliation offer from the Afghan government.

    Lt. Gen. David W. Barno warned, however, that remaining Taliban extremists financed and trained by al Qaeda allies may attempt to compensate by staging a high-profile attack in Afghanistan within the next six to nine months.

    “As these terrorists’ capabilities grow more and more limited, the hard-core fanatics will grow more and more desperate to try and do something to change the course of events in Afghanistan,” Barno said at a news conference in Kabul, the capital. “I expect they will be looking … to garner media publicity and to try and score some type of propaganda victory.”

    Yes, matters are progressing, but they are not safe. Things are not secure by a long shot when the enemy knows that there are headlines yet to be grabbed. But now, on to the interesting part of the story.

    Earlier Saturday, a senior Taliban official said in an audio tape released to the Reuters news agency that militia leaders were planning to shift from guerrilla warfare to terrorist-style attacks.

    Maulvi Abdul Kabir, who is considered second in the Taliban hierarchy, said the group was training suicide bombers to target government officials, foreign forces and aid workers in major cities and to infiltrate various security forces.

    “The change of tactics is an easy way for us to have a longer-term war of attrition and would also not cost many lives for us,” Kabir reportedly said on the tape.

    Please allow me to translate for you:

    Dear Reuters,

    That great spring offensive we’ve been threatening? Forget about it.

    We took a headcount recently and decided it was time to think outside the box. Outside the killzone, actually. First, we repeatedly got our asses handed to us on the battlefield by forces that were generally only assisted and supported by the Americans. After that series of failures swept us from our cruel, despotic rule, we bravely switched to guerrilla tactics. Okay, so our record was dismal in that, as well, and we were unable to dent the growing legitimacy of the new government or severely harm the Americans. Oh yeah, we were also getting shredded. That tends to harm morale, we admit.

    Now, we have bravely decided to become the thugs and terrorists the world already knew us to be. In this, we may be able to kill more innocents while bravely saving some of our own asses.

    Sincerely,
    the Taliban

    And just how good is the Taliban at terrorism? Well, of course they’re a threat, but they’ve still got some things to work on before their reign of terror can really take hold.

    Several incidents have also been reported in Kabul in the past several days, including the discovery of a small amount of TNT on a trash truck attempting to enter the U.S. military headquarters compound Thursday.

    Lt. Cindy Moore, a military spokeswoman, said the explosive material, which was stuffed in the well of a headlight and detected by a bomb-sniffing dog, was very degraded and not attached to a detonating device. Moore said she did not know the driver’s nationality or whether that person had been detained.

    Foreign workers in the capital have been on edge since last Sunday, when armed assailants seized a U.S. citizen and forced him into the trunk of a car. According to U.S. Embassy officials in Kabul, the man used a lug wrench to unlock the trunk from the inside and jumped out of the vehicle while it was speeding away. Afghan investigators have arrested three suspects in the incident.

    Oops! It’s good to see that in terrorism, as in so many other matters, the devil is in the details.

    Now, back to that amnesty program.

    Neither Barno nor Afghan officials would disclose how many Taliban members have accepted President Hamid Karzai’s reconciliation offer, which seeks to bring in members hiding in Afghanistan or in other countries. Under the arrangement, Taliban members must recognize the legitimacy of the elected government in exchange for assurances that they will not face arrest by foreign or Afghan forces.

    Human rights groups and some Afghans say they fear the offer will enable many former Taliban members to escape justice for past wrongdoing.

    Members of Karzai’s administration have stressed that the offer does not constitute a permanent amnesty program and does not extend to roughly 100 top Taliban leaders implicated in serious crimes. A commission charged with determining the exact details of the program has progressed slowly, but some Taliban members have already begun negotiating with U.S. military commanders and Afghan officials.

    And here’s the money shot.

    Barno said he believed that large numbers of the Taliban force, which once numbered in the thousands, would eventually accept the offer.

    “More and more Taliban realize they don’t want to be in this fight that goes against the tide of history here in Afghanistan any longer,” he said.

    It’s good to have news of progress for the good guys confirmed by both sides.