This is what crow tastes like

Obama: Surge Succeeded Beyond ‘Wildest Dreams’



The troop surge in Iraq has been more successful than anyone could have imagined, Barack Obama conceded Thursday in his first-ever interview on FOX News’ “The O’Reilly Factor.”

As recently as July, the Democratic presidential candidate declined to rate the surge a success, but said it had helped reduce violence in the country. On Thursday, Obama acknowledged the 2007 increase in U.S. troops has benefited the Iraqi people.

“I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated,” Obama said while refusing to retract his initial opposition to the surge. “I’ve already said it’s succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.”

However, he added, the country has not had enough “political reconciliation” and Iraqis still have not taken responsibility for their country.

Click here to view the first segment of the interview with Obama.

Maybe Obama better have a chat with Reid, San Fran Nan, Big Teddy and Murtha.

Please Help Support Michael Yon's Mission

If you haven't had a chance to check out Michael Yon's blog, you should. Go here:

http://www.michaelyon-online.com


If you're tired of being spoon fed the MSM defeatist drivel, Yon's blog is the place for you. He's in the trenches and is reporting it like he sees it.

If you like what you read, maybe you'll help support his mission. Go here for that:

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/support-next-dispatch-from-iraq/

Blackwater Shooting

I've been reading accounts of the Blackwater shooting that happened in Mansour district of Baghdad on Sunday 9/16/07 - Something just doesn't sound right here.

Why would these people start firing on civilians unprovoked? Are we to assume that Blackwater hires monsters that love killing innocent civilians? From what I know, Blackwater hires former military personnel. These people are highly trained with clean records and clean military service. Why would they, all of a sudden turn into murderers? The didn't and they're not. What we are seeing here is a text book insurgency play. We've saw it last summer in the Israel Lebanon conflict. The terrorists hide in plain sight wearing civilian clothes. They fight from within crowds or women and children, they use them as shields. The when the soldiers return fire to defend themselves and a civilian is hit they point their fingers and say the soldiers (Israeli soldiers or Blackwater contractors in this cases) are targeting civilians. This is an old tactic and I'd be willing to bet, some of these "civilians" are actually terrorist/insurgents.

Like this guy, Hasan Jaber Salman (see picture above) he claims the contractors fired on civilian, unprovoked. He was shot in the back while he was fleeing in his car.

But Salman claims the attack was unprovoked.

"No one fired at them, they were not attacked by gunmen, they were not targeted by an explosion," he said.

Now he's suing Blackwater.

Okay here's where it gets weird. The same thing happened to his son in 2005.

The lawyer said he intends to sue Blackwater, which he already did in 2005 after his son was involved in a similar incident outside al-Muthana Air Base near Baghdad's international airport. That lawsuit has not yet been resolved, he said.

Here's the account of what allegedly happened to his son:

Laborer Abul-Raheem Amir said he was on his way to a job when the minibus he was in got caught in a traffic jam caused by an explosion.

"A security company called Blackwater, they got out and kept on firing randomly at people, starting with the people walking or working the street -- even the traffic policeman, even the people who work in the area," Amir said.

"People at first thought we were safe in the minibus, but when they realized they were not, they started getting out and went to other places to save themselves," he recounted. "Unfortunately that did not work. As they got out, people were shot and killed."

He said he tried to make a run for it after the driver and two women next to him on the minibus were shot.

"I ran about 50 meters [about 55 yards] and then was shot, the first bullet. Still I kept running, but the second bullet dropped me to the ground. ... It broke my bones, and the third one made me start crawling."

Some people helped get him off the street and away from the carnage. The shooting lasted for about a half-hour, and there were some 30 bodies in the street, he said.

"I remember people strewn on the streets, children, elderly, young men, elderly women. ... The street turned into the street of the dead, a graveyard," he said.

-link-

This Blackwater group must be a well honed civilian killing machine. They strike at kids, elderly and women with surgical precision. All that shooting and it's the only thing that they killed.

This little tid-bit screams of propaganda. If you listen to people like these guys Iraq is just a country full of innocent elderly women and children doing the right thing being all innocent and saving puppies puppies and crap.

By the way, for those of you that want to read the State Department's incident report on this, here is a link. I'll give you a quick rundown:

A Blackwater Security team was escorting a convoy of US State Department vehicles en route to a meeting in western Baghdad with United States Agency for International Development officials when a Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device exploded close to the meeting point.[46] The security team then evacuated the officials, however as the convoy passed through Nissor Square, between the Sunni controlled al-Mansour and al-Yarmukh neighborhoods, it was attacked. According to Blackwater VP Marty Strong, it was hit with "a large explosive device" and "repeated small arms fire" disabling one of the vehicles.

I guess small arms fire isn't provoking enough for Mr. Salman. I wonder how Mr. Salman would explain the disabled Blackwater vehicle? I bet he'd claim the shot it up themselves.

The State Department report states that eight to ten attackers then opened fire "from multiple nearby locations, with some aggressors dressed in civilian apparel and others in Iraqi police uniforms".

Like I said, straight from the play book. dress in civilian clothes, or if you can get them, Iraqi military uniforms. These people are sub-human. Anyone who fights and uses civilians, women or children as shields doesn't deserve to breathe the same air as normal folks.

A Picture Says a Thousand Words

Browsing thru some yahoo news photos, I ran into the next few images. Alone, they tell a story, the Reuters story. But if you bundle them together, you see another story. Read the AP captions below.
An Iraqi weeps as he walks next to the vehicle carrying the coffin of Namir Noor-Eldeen, an Iraqi photographer working with Reuters, as the car passenger holds out a photograph of the deceased, during a funeral procession outside a Baghdad hospital morgue, 13 July 2007. Global news and information company Reuters on Monday demanded from the US military a full and objective investigation into the killing last week of two of its Iraqi employees.(AFP/File/Ahmad al-Rubaye)



Now the next set of Reuters photos clearly show this "stringer" seems to be imbeded with a Shi'ite militant group. Do they honeslty believe the coalition trrops should have to worry about a "stringer" that choses to run with the enemy during these bouts?



A gunman takes up position as he and his comrades engage British troops in central Basra, Iraq, 550 kilometers (340 miles) southeast of Baghdad, Monday, July 16, 2007. The clash began before sunset when the Provincial Joint Coordination Center was subjected to small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades, said a British military spokesman. (AP Photo/ Nabil al-Jurani)












Gunmen take up position behind a garbage bin as they engage British troops in central Basra, Iraq, 550 kilometers (340 miles) southeast of Baghdad, Monday, July 16, 2007. The clash began before sunset when the Provincial Joint Coordination Center was subjected to small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades, said a British military spokesman. (AP Photo/Nabil al-Jurani)




The bottom line is. Sure fine, run with these jihaders. But don't come compaling to the Coalition when one of your "stingers" gets hit. Like the old saying goes, you lie down with dogs, you're going to wake up with fleas.

Name that Bullet

AFP picture published on Yahoo news. The caption reads:

An Iraqi elderly woman inspects a bullet which she says hit her bed during an alleged overnight raid by US and Iraqi troops in Baghdad's impoverished district of Sadr City. Residents said two people were killed and four wounded during the raid.(AFP/Wissam al-Okaili)

A couple of bloggers Snapped Shot and Confederate Yankee are trying to figure out the type of bullet she's holding. A few guesses have been:

M903/M962 SLAP









This might be a bit too big. Also the SLAP isns't as round as the bullet pictured in the womans hand.









Others siad 7.62mm









This also is close.







How about .408 Chey Tac



















M48?



















Here's some more information on military ammo:

http://www.65grendel.com/65g_arammo.htm

If you ask me, I think its never been fired from a weapon. It looks like some sort of .50 black powder bullet. I doubt black powder weapons are that common over there. But it's just a guess. Maybe the photographer had it in his pocket and handed it to her.















Here's a closeup of the bullet in question:

Hey Time. You forgot about Bush.

Time Magazine's top 100 most influential people in the world includes folks like:

Tiny Fey
Justin Timberlake
Usama bin Laden
Rosie O'Donnell
Brad Pitt
Kate Moss
Hillary Clinton
Fidel Castro's brother
Nancy Pelosi
Barack Obama

But no President Bush?

Okay so we have a guy who wants to be President of the United States, but not the President of the United States? What kind of logic is this? I'll tell you what kind of logic it is, the batty kind. Last year I came to the conclusion that TIME was just another Newsweek. Their coverage of the war in Iraq was completely one-sided. I can see why so many people are against the war, especially when they get their news from sources like this.

I was happy to see Tony Dungie on the list.

Saddam was the Mousetrap in the house

The next time you are discussing the invasion of Iraq and someone uses the left's many talking points on the subject- "Saddam was no threat to the U.S." Send them this little story:

A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife open a package.

What food might this contain?" The mouse wondered -
he was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap.

Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning:

There is a mousetrap in the house!
There is a mousetrap in the house!"

The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, "Mr.Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it."

The mouse turned to the pig and told him, "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!"

The pig sympathized, but said, I am so very sorry, Mr.Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured you are in my prayers."

The mouse turned to the cow and said "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!"

The cow said, "Wow, Mr. Mouse. I'm sorry for you, but it's no skin off my nose."

So, the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer's mousetrap alone.

That very night a sound was heard throughout the house -- like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey.

The farmer's wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see it was a poisonous snake whose tail the trap had caught.

The snake bit the farmer's wife. The farmer rushed her to the hospital, and she returned home with a fever.

Everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup's main ingredient.

But his wife's sickness continued, so friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock.

To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig.

The farmer's wife did not get well; she died.

So many people came for her funeral, the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them. The mouse looked upon it all from his crack in the wall with great sadness.

So, the next time you hear someone is facing a problem and think it doesn't concern you, remember -- when one of us is threatened, we are all at risk.

We are all involved in this journey called life. We must keep an eye out for one another and make an extra effort to encourage one another.

Pam Hess

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