Theodore's World

Iraq PM Barred From Iran Airspace
BAGHDAD – Iran refused to allow the Iraqi prime minister to fly across its airspace as he was traveling to Tokyo, members of the delegation traveling with Nouri al-Maliki told The Associated Press early Sunday.
The delegation members said al-Maliki’s plane was diverted on Saturday night to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where al-Maliki stayed in the airport for more than three hours while his government aircraft was refueled and a new flight plan was filed.
All three said the Iranians told al-Maliki’s pilot that they were not informed in advance of the prime minister’s need to cross Iran by air. None of the three had any information on whether that was true or an Iranian action designed to inconvenience and embarrass al-Maliki.
Al-Maliki was traveling to Japan to finalize a loan for Iraq to repair and upgrade the Iraq’s energy industry. When it was announced in December, the loan was worth $707.53 million.

Wild Thing’s comment…….
The most interesting thing to me in this AP report is Al-Maliki going to Japan for a loan. Hmmmmm interesting.
The stuff about Iran is just a pouty kid ( Iran) once again demanding it’s own way.

‘al-Qaeda-level’ teaching to be exposed in U.S. mosques
onenews
The founder of an organization dedicated to exposing the truth about Islam says it hopes to expose every mosque and Islamic day school in the U.S. that teaches absolute obedience to sharia law.
The Society of Americans for National Existence, or SANE, has launched the “Mapping Sharia in America Project,” which is aimed at sending Arabic-speaking agents into the 2,000 mosques and Islamic day schools in the United States to learn what kind of doctrine is being preached. SANE president David Yerushalmi explains says the objective is to determine if those Islamic establishments are teaching complete obedience to sharia law.

“We’re going to go into the mosques … we’re going to go into the day schools, [and] we’re going to get the literature, we’re going to listen to the courses, and we’re going to rate them,” says Yerushalmi. A rating of zero will indicate no sharia being taught; a rating of 10, says the group, will imply it is being taught at “al-Qaeda level.”

“If it is an orthodox, meaning a traditional, historical Islam [being taught], it preaches sharia and it’s dangerous,” SANE’s president continues; “and the reason is because as a matter of doctrine, you cannot tolerate a Western nation-state run with a constitutional republic [that is] not based on Islamic law. That’s the fundamental principle.”

Yerushalmi says while there may a few mosques and day schools that reject Sharia law, they are few and far between.

“Because every Muslim who would stand up and make a case for form is subject to a death threat, only the smallest, fewest, bravest of the Muslims have publicly rejected Islam,” he contends.

According to SANE’s website, the four-phased approach to the project will culminate with a central database of information that contains details about an organization (e.g., types of members, profiles on leaders, business affiliations, financial information) as well as identification of what it describes as “vulnerable U.S. targets near the location” of that particular organization. SANE hopes to have its project completed in the next eight to ten months.

Wild Thing’s comment…….
I wonder how much luck they will have with their project. My guess is even when they do find out what we have all heard about these Mosques our leaders won’t let them do anything about it. Just my gut feeling.

I’m hijacking the site today, to throw a surprise birthday party!

Happy Birthday my dear friend, and thank for all you do! I honestly don’t know how I would get through my days without having you in my life.
I love you!

Radical leftist Dems seem very at home with Wahhabist Arabian exporters of jihad.

US House speaker Nancy Pelosi meets with Saudi Shura Council Chairman Saleh bin Abdullah bin Hamid in Riyadh, 05 April 2007. Rep John Murtha is costumed as the Easter Bunny to stress assurances the Speaker made to the Council. “Most Americans are not into the ‘Jesus thing’ that’s causing all the trouble. We have some right wing religious fanatics in our government, but we have them under control now.”

Along with Pelosi was Muslim Keith Ellison a favorite of CAIR, and Waxman.

OH Nancy this was a bit much don’t you think. sheesh

Gathering of Eagles Photo Slideshow
A montage of photos from the Gathering of Eagles March 17, 2007

Wild Thing’s comment………
Bursting with pride! What an honor it is for me to know even one Veteran and to be able to say I know so many has my heart bursting with such pride and gratitude. I love you all!!

Duncan Hunter

Swift Boat Vet supports Duncan Hunter
One News Now
A Naval veteran who co-founded the group “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” says he will do whatever he can to help Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-California) become the next president of the United States.
John O’Neill, a co-founder and member of the group, says in 2008 he is campaigning for another Vietnam veteran who is running for the Oval Office — Representative Duncan Hunter.

“He is a Vietnam veteran who I can really be proud of,” says O’Neill. “I’m really happy to be able to be for someone instead of just being against someone. I’m going to do everything I can to try and help him out.” And so are many of the people in the Swift Boat Veterans group, he adds, clarifying that they are doing so as individuals and not on behalf of the group.

O’Neill says he recognizes that the California lawmaker is a long shot, but so were the Swift Boat vets when they organized to stop Kerry in 2004. “The long-shot causes are always the causes most worth fighting for,” he says. “That’s what I believe in — so I think he has a chance; and that’s who I’m for.”

John O’Neill audio link

Now this on Duncan Hunter…………
Pro-National Defense……….. check
Pro-Border Security…………. check
Pro-Small government………. check
Pro-Low Taxes……………….. check
Pro-1st amendment………….. check
Pro-2nd amendment…………. check
Staunchly Pro-life…………….. check
Opposes “gay marriage” …… check
Is a patriot and veteran……… check
Conservative voting record… check

Wild Thing’s comment………
Awesome. A real hero supporting a real hero. This will make Duncan Hunter a target of the libs who see the SBVT as the spawn of the devil. But they hate anyone that is good anyway.
I would love to see him do well.

Evidence of his guilt solid.

Boos For Hiss
ibd
National Security: Leftist academics are determined to rehabilitate the reputation of Alger Hiss, the high-level U.S. diplomat and Soviet spy. Time may have passed, but this case was settled a long time ago.
Was Soviet communism a malevolent global force committed to conquering the world, with Kremlin spies reaching top levels in the U.S. government? Or was it “just another system” used to whip up Red hysteria and McCarthyism?
Leftists here and in Europe scoffed at Ronald Reagan when he called the Soviets an evil empire, but he was vindicated by communism’s collapse. Similarly, the American left began its vendetta against Richard Nixon when in 1948 he exposed the high-ranking State Department official Hiss as a Russian agent; Nixon too was vindicated when the so-called Venona communications from the Soviet archives were opened in 1995, incriminating Hiss.
Last week, New York University’s Center for the United States and the Cold War held a conference in which a Russian historian, who supposedly has scoured the Kremlin’s records, found nothing implicating Hiss.
But while both Hiss’ son and former Nation editor and Hiss supporter Victor Navasky both spoke, scholars who accept Hiss’ clear guilt were strangely absent.

NYU’s new center has also tried to reopen the Rosenbergs nuclear spying case and has glorified Americans who fought for the left in the Spanish Civil War. This is clearly one “Center” not a bit “for the United States.”

The evidence against Hiss is overwhelming:
• Reformed communist spy Whittaker Chambers, who spied with Hiss, produced the “Pumpkin Papers” of State Department documents from the late 1930s that only Hiss had access to, all typed on Hiss’ typewriter.
• A March 30, 1945, communique from the USSR’s Washington spy chief to Moscow reports that agent “ALES” is attending the post-war Yalta conference, then traveling to Moscow. As adviser to Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, Hiss did exactly that. Former National Security Agency analyst John Schindler calls the evidence of the identity of ALES as Hiss “exceptionally solid.”
• The late Democratic Sen. Pat Moynihan, who chaired a panel on government secrecy in the 1990s, said the U.S. government “had conclusive evidence of his guilt, but they never told.”
Serious academics know Hiss’ guilt from the evidence. Left-wing activists posing as scholars want to reopen the case for one reason: to discredit the U.S. Shame on them.

Wild Thing’s comment………
With the lefties, 1 + 1 will always = 0. Evidence be damned, they just feel that they are right.
For contemptable ,despicable liberal commies,America is an unjust society, and all its wars are also unjust by virtue of that fact alone. Leftists never give up trying to re-write history. They just love hating America and teaching that to their students.

Reid: Bush must learn to compromise on Iraq
RENO, Nev. (The Las Vegas Sun AP) – President Bush would be to blame, not the Democrat-controlled Congress, if he vetoes a supplemental spending bill for U.S. troops because he has rejected repeated invitations to discuss a compromise, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday.

“I’m a legislator, I know how to compromise. He doesn’t. That’s what he’s got to learn,” Reid, D-Nev., told The Associated Press.

“Compromise is not a bad word. I think it’s been real hard for him to understand he can’t do what he did before we had a new Congress in town,” Reid said. “He’s going to have to learn to deal with it.”

Reid made the remarks after he met with a mixed reception at a veterans hospital where he took his plea for troop withdrawals by next fall and called the war in Iraq the “worst foreign policy blunder” in U.S. history.

“The training wheels have to come off and Iraq has got to police it’s own civil war. We should not be policing a civil war,” Reid told about 80 veterans, doctors and others at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Reno.

“People say if we leave Iraq it’s going to be chaos,” he said. “It’s chaos right now. So whenever we leave, whether it is six days from now or six months from now – we know we’ll be out of there in 20 months because that is when Bush is out of office – it is going to be chaos.”

Two of the half-dozen or more skeptics in the audience offered pointed criticism of Reid, including one who said the senator’s “irresponsible statements” are undermining U.S. troops.

“You are using this as a political football. It’s not acceptable,” said John Edwards, a veteran and member of a local chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, whose national organization has called for Congress to approve funding for the Iraq war without what it called “an arbitrary withdrawal timeline.”

Reid said he agrees the nation must make sure U.S. troops have “not died in vain in Iraq.”

“Conversely, we have to tell it how it is. We can’t paint a picture that doesn’t exist,” he said.

“Before we invaded, there was not a single terrorist in Iraq. I recognize Saddam Hussein was an evil man and I’m glad he’s gone. But invading Iraq did not help the situation. It made it worse.”

Reid said earlier he will propose legislation to cut off funds for combat operations, and provide money for only three missions: targeted counterterrorism operations, training and equipping the Iraqi security forces, and to provide security for U.S. personnel and infrastructure.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates criticized the strategy Wednesday, saying such limits could pull troops from Baghdad neighborhoods, which have been the focus of the latest military buildup in Iraq.

“One real possibility is, if we abandon some of these areas and withdraw into the countryside or whatever to do these targeted missions, that you could have a fairly significant ethnic cleansing inside Baghdad or in Iraq more broadly,” Gates said.

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., is among those who argue Congress has no business “micromanaging this war.”

“Our troops are in Iraq fighting an enemy that wants to destroy our way of life, and setting a date for withdrawal would undermine our commanders,” he said last week. “Victory is our only option.”

Reid spoke and answered questions for about an hour and toured the VA facility.

“I say let’s get out of there. Let’s understand this war can only be won politically, diplomatically and economically.”

Reid said Democrats continue to try to work with the president to avoid a second veto he has promised if another version of a supplemental spending bill has a timetable for withdrawing troops.

“If he does that, he’s cutting off the funds to troops. We’re not cutting off the funds to troops,” Reid said.

“The president is a partner with us on what we do in Iraq whether he wants to be or not. We need to work with him and he needs to work with us.”

Wild Thing’s comment…….
Sen. Reid is despicable and a liar. The “no terrorists in Iraq before our attacks” canard has been disproved many times over. And President Bush needs no lessons in compromise from him. You don’t compromise on war. You don’t compromise on support for our troops. You don’t compromise with terrorists.
The President should occupy the halls of congress with a Battalion of Marines and throw each and every one of these clueless wonders in prison. It is his sworn duty to protect us “against all enemies, foreign and domestic”. This bunch of traitorous bastards have gone way over too far in time of war. Arrest them, shoot them, do something for all our sakes.
It’s a hard time for anyone who loves and believes in this country and wants to protect it. The Harry and Nancy show feel powerful, and we feel powerless. This is arrogant, disgraceful, disgusting behavior at its core!!!! It’s a hard and scary time.

‘American Taliban’ Lindh asks Bush to reduce 20-year prison term
San Francisco (AP) — The lawyer and parents of John Walker Lindh, the American-born Taliban soldier serving 20 years in prison after his capture in Afghanistan, called on President Bush on Wednesday to commute his sentence and set him free.
The renewed call to shorten the sentence was based on the relatively light term Australian David Hicks received Saturday after pleading guilty to supporting terrorism. Hicks, who had been imprisoned for five years at Guantanamo Bay and acknowledged aiding al-Qaida during the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, was given a nine month sentence.

“In the atmosphere of the time, the best John could get was a plea bargain and a 20-year sentence,” said Lindh’s father Frank Lindh. “We love our son very much, he was wrongly accused when he was found in Afghanistan.”

John Walker Lindh, 26, a Marin County native, was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001 by American forces sent to topple the Taliban after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He was charged with conspiring to kill Americans and support terrorists but pleaded guilty in 2002 to lesser offenses, including carrying weapons against U.S. forces.
Attorney James Brosnahan brokered the plea deal and said it was the best he could do amid the political climate immediately after Sept. 11.
Lindh had converted to Islam and went to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban against the Northern Alliance, Brosnahan said.

“It is a question of proportionality, it is a question of fairness and it is a question of the religious experience John Walker Lindh had and it was not in any way directed at the United States,” Brosnahan said at a press conference Wednesday.

The White House referred telephone calls to the Justice Department, which declined to comment because it had not received the petition, said spokesman Dean Boyd.
Neither the president nor the department have acted on two previous commutation requests.

Wild Thing’s comment…….
OK, so instead of John Walker Lindh shall serve 20 years imprisonment for his joining terrorists in battle against American forces, how about…………You’re in for the full 20, you effing traitor! And your hippie parents can burn in hell along with you.

Breathes there the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
‘This is my own, my native land!’
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d
From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.”
Sir Walter Scott.

House Democrats Offer Plan to Ban Use of ‘Global War on Terror’
Fox News
WASHINGTON
House Minority Leader John Boehner blasted a Democrat-backed plan on Wednesday to ban the use of “global War on Terror” and “long war” in the 2008 defense budget bill.
A memo sent to Democratic staffers on the House Armed Services Committee instructed the aides not to use the specific phrases, the Military Times newspaper reported.

Erin Conaton, the committee’s staff director, sent out the 15-page memo titled “Style Guide for Defense Authorization Report.”

“When referencing military operations throughout the world, please be as specific as possible. Please avoid using colloquialisms such as, ‘the war on terrorism, or the ‘Long War’ Please do not use the term ‘global war on terrorism,’ ” according to the memo.

Late Wednesday afternoon, a source told FOX News that the panel had sent out a revised version making it clear that there was “no political intent behind” the wording.
The section was rewritten and there is a new version of the style guide, a copy of which has not yet been released.

Boehner accused Democrats of launching an “absurd effort to deny the fact that America is battling terrorism on a global scale,” according to a statement released Wednesday by his office.

“How do Democrats expect America to fight and win a war they deny is even taking place?” Boehner said.

Democratic leaders in the House Armed Services Committee don’t like the phrases and want defense policy to be more specific, according to the report.
The memo, sent out on March 27, calls for specific references to specific operations instead of phrases used by the Bush administration.

President Bush began using the “global War on Terror” phrase after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The memo offers replacement phrases such as “war in Iraq,” “war in Afghanistan,” “operations in the Horn of Africa” or “ongoing operations throughout the world.”

Democratic staffers revised the memo to ensure that there “was no misunderstanding or confusion … it was never intended to be anything other than (to get) the highest degree of specificity and accuracy” for the legislation.
Boehner said Democrats have a “dismal” national security record with efforts to push through non-binding resolutions against President Bush’s Iraq plan, adding pork-barrel spending in unrelated legislation and leaving the nation’s capital for a recess without passing legislation backed by the president with funding for U.S. troops.

“It’s no wonder Democrats don’t like the phrases ‘global War on Terror,’ they have completely failed to take the threat of global terrorism seriously,” Boehner said.

Republicans weren’t consulted about the changes, said Josh Holly, a spokesman for Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., ranking member of the committee.
HERE is a copy of the Memo….it is a PDF file

Wild Thing’s comment………
Sheeesh….the DEMS are feeling powerful…now they want to micro-manage what Pres. Bush calls things. I wonder if they will say they don’t like the word “victory” or “winning” or “freedom” or “dictator” or “jihadists” or “terrorists” or “enemy”. This is really outrageous. When the president is up against people who are going to now quibble with what we call the war, we’re really in trouble in DC !
Oh, and I hope the president shoves this right back in the democrat’s faces and when they return from their little vacation I hope he goes on television every single day to remind people about the global war on terror and how the Democraps have abandoned our beloved troops.
Do Democrats consider themselves Americans? I don’t think they even recognize America as anything more than a tool to mooch off of and suck dry in their lust for power and control. Marxists have no fidelity.
It was the Carter Administration that ordered the shift from illegal alien to undocumented worker. It’s an old liberal tradition…just call a thing something else and whoosh, problem solved.
OK so I think the Demo socialists should be told, “……OK then call it , The War Against Islam, and if they don’t like it Dems you can put your opinon where the sun does not shine.