Theodore's World

Pentagon inviting media to Guantanamo 9/11 hearings
Breitbart
The Pentagon said Tuesday it was sending invitations to news organizations to cover the arraignments of the five alleged September 11 co-conspirators in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said about “four or five dozen” journalists and technical personnel from domestic and international news organizations would be allowed onto the base for the June 5 arraignment.
The reading of the charges is expected to mark the first public appearance of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, since his capture in Pakistan March 1, 2003.
Mohammed and four others face capital charges of murder, terrorism and other war crimes. Charges against a sixth, the alleged “20th hijacker” Mohammed al-Qahtani, were dropped in April by the Pentagon official overseeing the process.
Whitman said invitations were being sent to news organizations on Tuesday.

“Our responsibility at the Defense Department here is to make sure we have sufficient US and international media there to be able to report on the proceedings, to make it as transparent as possible.

“But obviously we can’t open it up to everybody. There are logistical issues in terms of getting down to Guantanamo,” he said.

“We’re trying to be robust in our approach. But at the same time we are trying to do it in a responsible way, inviting news organizations that in the totality will cover the world, basically.”
Only a handful of journalists will be allowed in the courtroom, confined to a glass enclosed booth where they can be shut off from hearing testimony on the judge’s instructions.
The other members of the media will be in a separate media center where they can watch the proceedings on a video screen and take notes.
Audio recordings and pictures of the proceedings are barred. But a sketch artist will be in the courtroom.

Wild Thing’s comment……….
I sure hope we don’t hear a lot of what a bad childhood the terrorists had from the media. Nothing would surprise me when it comes to their propaganda machine.

DENVER, Colorado (CNN)
The United States should scrap a significant portion of its nuclear arsenal, Sen. John McCain said Tuesday in a speech laying out his nuclear security policy.
McCain also spoke about canceling the development of nuclear “bunker-busting” bombs and working with Russia and China to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

“Today, we deploy thousands of nuclear warheads. It is my hope to move as rapidly as possible to a significantly smaller force,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said at the University of Denver.

“The United States cannot and will not stop the spread of nuclear weapons by unilateral action,” he said. “As powerful as we are, America’s ability to defend ourselves and our allies against the threat of nuclear attack depends on our ability to encourage effective international cooperation.”

The GOP candidate voiced support for the U.N. Security Council and International Atomic Energy Agency as well as an updated Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

“We also need to reverse the burden of proof when it comes to discovering whether a nation is cheating on its NPT commitments. The IAEA shouldn’t have to play cat-and-mouse games to prove a country is in compliance,” he said.

The speech elaborated on a nuclear policy McCain outlined in a foreign policy address two months ago.
It was noticeably more conciliatory toward Russia than the one in March, when McCain proposed ejecting the country from the Group of Eight nations. McCain also did not mention the United Nations in his March speech.
McCain gave qualified support to an international treaty banning the testing of nuclear weapons, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which he opposed in the Senate in 1999.
And he proposed an “international repository for spent nuclear fuel” to keep the raw ingredients for nuclear bombs from falling into the wrong hands.
“It is even possible that such an international center could make it unnecessary to open the proposed spent nuclear fuel storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada,” McCain said, referring to a controversial project in the Southwest.
Randy Scheunemann, a senior foreign policy and national security advisor to the McCain campaign, said later that the repository could be in Siberia and that if there were sufficient security guarantees, McCain had a “willingness to entertain possibility … that we could possibly send some of our spent fuel there.”

Reacting to the speech, a spokesman for Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic front-runner, said that the substance of it mirrored Obama’s positions but that McCain has no track record of leading on the issue.

And this from ABC News

McCain’s claim that he was departing from Bush’s policy was supported, albeit with qualifications, by an unlikely source: Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del.

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has been an outspoken critic of McCain. But Biden acknowledged Tuesday that McCain’s nuclear security speech contained “many ideas that suggest a welcome departure from the Bush Administration’s hostility to arms control.”

While praising McCain’s pledge to work with Russia on nuclear arsenal reduction, Biden maintained that McCain’s policy has some “critical gaps,” particularly on the issues of Iran and North Korea.

Wild Thing’s comment……..
OH Great, now he’s channeling Kissinger.
Hey, I know… Iran is trying so hard to get Nukes, and since we’re gonna get rid of them, why not just hand them over to Iran? That way, we get rid of them, and they can have what they covet so greatly!
sheesh!
He voiced explicit support for the U.N. Security Council and International Atomic Energy Agency as well as an updated Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Yeah, that’s the ticket. Let’s rely on the UN.
Should we just cut to the chase and start Armageddon?! My gosh!
John McCain is NOT Ronald Reagan!! What Reagan did worked with the Soviet union. The Great Man, President Ronald Reagan, took a few threes and turned them into a royal flush, Gorbachev bought it, and thus Star Wars actually became reality…twenty years later, AND Mr. Gorbachev DID tear down that wall. BUT that was a different time and a different war, we were not at war with Islam. And Reagan and McCain are polar opposites in too many ways to even put here.
But Biden acknowledged Tuesday that McCain’s nuclear security speech contained “many ideas that suggest a welcome departure from the Bush Administration’s hostility to arms control.”
Well, if its good enough for Hairplugs Biden, no worries from me.
HERE is McCain’s full text of his speech in Denver.
John McCain’s website

CBS News
LAS CRUCES, N.M.

Despite not having served in the military himself, Barack Obama used his Memorial Day remarks to speak about his family’s service. “My grandfather marched in Patton’s army, but I cannot know what it is to walk into battle like so many of you,” he told a small group of veterans here. “My grandmother worked on a bomber assembly line, but I cannot know what it is for a family to sacrifice like so many of yours have.”

Obama also spoke about his uncle, who was part of the American brigade that helped to liberate Auschwitz. He said the family legend is that, upon returning from war, his uncle spent six months in an attic. “Now obviously, something had really affected him deeply, but at that time there just weren’t the kinds of facilities to help somebody work through that kind of pain,” Obama said. “That’s why this idea of making sure that every single veteran, when they are discharged, are screened for post-traumatic stress disorder and given the mental health services that they need – that’s why it’s so important.”

UPDATE from CBS news:

Obama’s campaign clarified the comments about the candidate’s great-uncle liberating Auschwitz, saying Obama was “mistaken,” and was referring to Buchenwald, not Auschwitz. “Senator Obama’s family is proud of the service of his grandfather and uncles in World War II – especially the fact that his great uncle was a part of liberating one of the concentration camps at Buchenwald,” said spokesman Bill Burton.

.

And this one…………..
Obama mistaken on name of Nazi death camp

Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet forces as they marched across Poland in January 1945. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum says Americans liberated several death camps in Germany, including Buchenwald, Dachau and Mauthausen.

“On April 4, 1945, the 89th overran Ohrdruf, a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Ohrdruf was the first Nazi concentration camp liberated by U.S. troops in Germany,” according to the museum. “A week later, on April 12, Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower, George S. Patton, and Omar Bradley visited Ohrdruf to see, firsthand, evidence of Nazi atrocities against concentration camp prisoners.”

Obama’s mistaken mention of the camp on Monday quickly generated Internet chatter, ranging from puzzlement to outrage. The Republican Party demanded an explanation.

“It was Soviet troops that liberated Auschwitz, so unless his uncle was serving in the Red Army, there’s no way Obama’s statement yesterday can be true,” said Alex Conant, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee.

Wild Thing’s comment……..
Stolen Valor is an ugly thing. He is stealing valor to become POTUS
Sheesh Obomber is a disaster just waiting to happen.

“On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes — and I see many of them in the audience here today — our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.” — Barack Obama

Wild Thing’s comment……..
And this idiot wants to be President and CIC. Prayers for our Military if this @#$%^&*($%^& wins.
He doesn’t have a clue what Memorial Day is about.

A crew member of a U.S. military Black Hawk helicopter wears a helmet painted with a skull at LZ Washington helipad in the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad May 26, 2008

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Gathering of Eagles
We came, we saw, we triumphed!
Some very irate moonbats stormed away from Jones Beach on Saturday after Eagles warned the unwary visitors to the Memorial Day weekend Airshow that treasonous misfits were disrespecting our fallen heroes. Eagles preceded the moonbats down the boardwalk, educating the many people there as to the disrespect the anti-war crowd were showing to our fallen heroes, their families and to America.
Whenever they stopped to read the names, they were surrounded by a cacaphony of shouts “Shame on You!”.
Another IVAW fraud was outed by Chaplain Dez after he claimed to be a sergeant in the U.S. Army, yet could not tell her his MOS. Fraud and deceit are the stock in trade of the entire anti-war movement and goes hand in glove with their policy of using the names of our fallen heroes for their own craven political theater even when asked by gold star families (who have lost a loved one) to stop using those names.

At one point an amazing increase in volume of prerecorded music from a recruiter vehicle helped drown out the moonbat litany and saved our voices for their next stop. At another stop they read the name of the son of a gold star father, Mo Fletcher, who was with us. When I turned to him he made a single comment “They aren’t fit to lick his boots”.
By the end of their parade they had gained exactly zero converts and had been booed, birded and looked upon with scorn by the vast majority of those who saw them.
When the hapless moonbats abandoned the field of action the Eagles finally got to watch the great airshow already in progress!

Wild Thing’s comment……..
GREAT photos and what an awesome day. I am so glad too the code pinko’s left and the Air Show continued with no problems.

….Thank you Rhod for these awesome photos.

Obama says fuel prices will change car habits
Reuters complete article
Barack Obama said on Saturday Americans would start changing the kinds of cars they drive if gasoline prices continue to climb and said he owned a hybrid vehicle, though he doesn’t drive it much.
Obama, an Illinois senator and the front-runner for his party’s presidential nomination, has made fighting climate change a key issue of his campaign, and as fuel prices soar, he has repeatedly called on car makers to increase fuel efficiency standards.
Without specifically telling Americans to stop buying gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles, the Illinois senator said higher fuel prices would lead to a shift.
“We’ve seen that this quarter. People are changing their behavior and we’ve seen a slump in the sales of SUVs and big trucks and a drastic spike in cars both medium size and small,” he told reporters on his campaign plane.
Obama put responsibility on car makers to make vehicles more fuel efficient.
“They’ve done a better job of investment than they have in the past. There’s still more work to do, and the federal government should help them do it,” he said.
Obama, who spends most of his time traveling around the country on a plane and in cars driven by his Secret Service agents, does have a car of his own that is environmentally friendly.
“These days I don’t drive much,” he said. “I bought a hybrid, but we keep it in the garage mostly.”

Wild Thing’s comment……..
“These days I don’t drive much,” he said. “I bought a hybrid, but we keep it in the garage mostly.”
In the near future — used car ads that proclaim the car was: “Previously owned by a politician attempting to get the green vote — mostly kept in the garage”.
Obama put responsibility on car makers to make vehicles more fuel efficient
Typical liberal thinking. If people want fuel-efficient cars, the free market- not the government- will dictate what the car makers manufacture.
The Obamas’ Footprint II

“Barack Obama’s airplane use, here’s more info on his oil addiction: When the Green Senator disembarks from his Secret Service-provided Chevy Suburban, he boards a Boeing 757 (sucking 1,100 gallons of fuel an hour) booked by his campaign through Air Charter (pictured below). And because his wife, Michelle, generally campaigns separately from her husband, you can add to that fuel consumption number (although, given Barack Obama’s large press contingent, she may require a smaller plane like an MD-80. The Obama campaign has a set policy against using corporate jets).”

….Thank you Mark for the article.

“I walk in the front door, I look at the counter, and I’m not in the desert anymore.”

( CBS 5 )
A Bay Area man is working to make sure troops overseas get their caffeine fix. He has taken several risks to set up cafes in war zones.
A Saudi Arabian princess asked Jason Araghi set up the country’s first coffee shop, and that’s how Green Beans Coffee was born. Now he has 70 cafes in 9 countries including Iraq and Afghanistan.
Many of his cafes are serving troops on overseas military bases. Araghi came up with the idea of taking a shipping container and converting it into a café which is litarally dropped onto a base.

Wild Thing’s comment……..
He’ll be ridiculed and perhaps run out of town since he is based in San Francisco.
I am always glad for anything that makes our troops happy and a little bit of home is wonderful for all of them.

Socialism
I have noticed some people who are developing a somewhat permissive attitude toward socialism and I personally think it’s dangerous.
Socialism is like a snake; it can creep silently in and stay around until the opportunity to bite comes along. Socialism is one of those things that sounds good on paper but never has and never will work out in practicality.
Socialism sounds like a noble Robin Hood, share and share alike proposition where all the money goes into one pot and is distributed by a central government which makes the decisions about what you get and what you don’t get.
Actually there is no such thing as mass socialism because you can’t administer such an undertaking without a mega massive bureaucracy which is actually a totalitarian police state were everybody watches everybody else and if you don’t toe the line you get the midnight knock on the door. If you don’t believe that, research the communist histories of Russia, Cuba, the Eastern block countries and look what Hugo Chavez is doing to Venezuela.
Years ago when the Berlin wall came down and McDonalds first broke into the Eastern block countries, the people there wanted jobs because they wanted to earn the kind of wages they paid.
Yes they wanted the wages, but they didn’t want the work. The decades of communism had so dulled their work ethic that they thought they should be able to work a few hours and spend the rest of the day reading the newspaper or something. McDonalds had something like a three hundred percent turnover.
All they had ever had were state sponsored jobs where it made no difference how hard you worked, you weren’t going to be rewarded for it any more than the lazy slob next to you.
Michael Moore did a film some time back called Sicko. I didn’t see it but I understand he was praising the quality of healthcare in Cuba. But I’ll promise you that if Mr. Moore contracts a horrible disease you couldn’t drag him to Cuba for treatment. If he gets really sick, you’ll see his anti-Americanism fade with his health.
Sure there’s great medical in Cuba… for Fidel and his cronies. There is always the best of everything for the people who have the guns. The leaders live like kings but the rest of the people suffer and suffer badly.
Speaking of sickos, how about Kim Jong-il in North Korea and his supposed socialistic government? He spends the meager GNP of North Korea on developing atomic weapons while millions of people suffering under his rule are forced to eat just about anything they can chew and have had to cut down most of the trees in the country just to keep from freezing to death. Where are you Sierra Club?
And all the while this little monster sits back and sips his expensive cognac and thumbs his nose at the rest of the world.
Have you noticed what has happened to China in the last few years since they’ve adopted a degree of capitalism? Unfortunately they still have the totalitarian government, but at least they enjoy a measure of freedom they haven’t known in half a century.
If you want to know about socialized medicine talk to a Canadian or talk to someone who has been unfortunate enough to be sick while they are visiting England.
You see, Socialism is not about kindness, caring or seeing that everybody has a hospital bed when they need one. Socialism is about control.
It’s about a handful of elitists telling you what kind of car you can drive, what doctor to go to and taking away your personal freedom increment by increment until this will no longer be the sweet land of liberty.
Stop and think about it, the government only does one thing and that is spend your money. They don’t manufacture anything, they just spend money and they will never have enough of it.
They’re like the pathetic people who are addicted to gambling. They will take every cent they can get their hands on, throw it away and turn around and ask for more.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, in my opinion, we have the worst Congress and Senate we have ever had. Democrat, Republican or Independent, they’re a body of mealy-mouthed pabulum-eaters who are not going to do anything useful and make sure that nobody else is going to do anything useful.
They refuse to tackle the tough problems like high fuel costs and the catastrophic illegal immigration fiasco and they play around with legislation to fund the troops and try to take the teeth out of the Homeland Security Bill.
Now do you think these people should be put in charge of a healthcare program? And let me ask you another question, if Hillary, Obama or McCain get their way with their healthcare programs, do you honestly think they’ll have the same healthcare as you?
Down with Socialism, the horse it rode in on and the political candidates who support it.
What do you think?
Pray for our troops
God Bless America
Charlie Daniels
May 19 , 2008

“Tell them, tell them when you get home that I gave all of my tomorrows so they could have today!”
Those are the words on a tombstone, far across the Pacific, of someone who gave up his life for our future.
Were those words uttered so that those of us who are left could just enjoy our lives without “getting involved”, or were they written to remind us that the work of freedom and liberty is never done?
Were those words written to suggest to us that it is not our job nor our responsibility to keep alive what they fought and died for, or were they written to remind us that we were given the opportunity of life so that we would continue to defend, and keep alive the memory of what they gave their last full measure for?
Let us here today, tonight, tomorrow, next month and next year – remember these gallant defenders of our freedom.
Most were not heroes as defined by the most hallowed Medal of Honor nor even as defined by the silver or bronze star.
They were ALL Heroes
Yes they were heroes, because without hesitation they fought for our country when they were asked to defend her.
They left their families, friends and good times behind and went to fight for our freedom without hesitation.
Some — never even fired their weapons because they were killed before they ever reached the beach.
But they were heroes because they were there, ready to fight for America – for family, flag and country.
Most were scared to death as they prepared to meet the enemy. Their stomachs were turned upside down and they prayed to God and wished they were with their moms, dads and sweethearts rather than being where they were.
But they were where they were, fighting an enemy that was threatening their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They were fighting an enemy because they believed in America, they loved Her flag and they wanted to protect Americans’ right to worship as they chose.
They were there, without hesitation, fighting for what they believed in and dying for what they believed in so you and I could live the way we choose in a free country. But they did not die so that we would stop fighting for what they believed and died for.
They fought and died knowing that we, the living, would go on fighting for that same freedom, that same country, that same flag and for that same right to worship as we choose. Abraham Lincoln, at Gettysburg, said:

“It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion–that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain–that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom–and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”

It is for us the living to go on defending what they died for. It is for us the living not to allow history to forget what they gave up all their tomorrows for.
If when we attacked Guadalcanal and landed at Salerno, we found that “they” were going to fight back, we didn’t give up because they fought back. We continued to fight because we knew our cause was right!
When Americans rode in the landing craft before storming the beaches at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Sicily, Anzio, Normandy, Peleliu, Saipan, Iowa Jima, Okinawa, Inchon and many other places we had never heard of before and when they fought in North Africa, the Philippines, Italy, France, Bastonne, Germany, Korea and Vietnam — most were scared to death; their stomachs were turned upside down and they wanted to be back home with their loved ones.
But that did not stop them from attacking America’s enemies bravely and without hesitation. They fought, and many died, but they did not give up because someone shot back at them.
It is for us the living to continue to defend and keep known what they fought and died for — what they gave up all of their tomorrows for.
They did not die so that we could become complacent; nor did they die so that when we, the living, reached a single obstacle — we should quit
They died knowing that we would go on defending their actions, defending history and defending what they gave up all their tomorrow’s for.
If WE don’t remember —if WE don’t defend what they fought and died for and what we fought for — who will remember? Who will care?
How many of them and you who fought for our flag and our country and remember the feeling as Old Glory” was being raised over a piece of land we fought for —- and many died for?
How many remember seeing or hearing about our valiant warriors, who were fighting on Iowa Jima, as they stood and cheered when they saw the flag being raised over Mt. Suribachi.
We take this time on Memorial Day to salute our Fallen Heroes who through the history of our country have fought and died for all of us.

— Thank you , Wild Thing

Please also see UPDATE to Rolling Thunder post