Theodore's World

Navy E-2C squadron (VAW-116) that knows how to have some fun.

A masked gunman stands on a street corner as a building burns nearby in southern Iraqi town of Amarah, 320 kilometers (200 miles) southeast of Baghdad, Friday Oct. 20, 2006. Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia run by anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr seized control of the southern Iraqi city of Amarah on Friday after their fighters stormed three main police stations Friday morning, planting explosives that flattened the buildings. (AP Photo/Haidar Hany)

The clashes between US Armed Force and Mahdi Army indicates a new phase and shift of security plans and battle against terrorists, and the next battle to destroy Mahdi Army with Al Sadr dead, or captured alive.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — The Shiite militia run by anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr seized total control of the southern Iraqi city of Amarah on Friday in one of the boldest acts of defiance yet by one of the country’s powerful, unofficial armies, witnesses and police said.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki dispatched an emergency security delegation that included the Minister of State for Security Affairs and top officials from the Interior and Defense ministries, Yassin Majid, the prime minister’s media adviser, told The Associated Press.
The Mahdi Army fighters stormed three main police stations Friday morning, planting explosives that flattened the buildings, residents said.

Wild Thing’s comment………
Muqtada Al Sadr is going to have his very own category in my sidebar.
Why we ever let Al Sadr live I’ll never understand. As far as I’m concerned, this guy is fair game. He has been quoted as saying….”I will fight until the last drop of my blood has been spilled.”

An Islamic TV Channel Expands Its U.S. Audience
The MEMRI Report
NY Sun
Bridges TV, an American-Islamic TV channel “seeking to improve the image of Muslims in the United States” and to “offer a unique perspective on the Middle East and the war on terrorism,” has extended its availability into six states, creating a potential audience of nearly 2 million.
Some guests, however, are extremists. One religious figure who appeared October 3 said Muslims have a duty to change America and to increase their numbers to 50% of the population from 2%. He recommended that Shariah, or Islamic law, be implemented in American courts.
During a roundtable discussion on the Arab-Israeli conflict on October 5, one participant offered a solution:

“For the Jews to leave and return to Europe.”

One of the stars of Bridges TV is a cofounder and vice chairman of the international health care company CBay Inc., Donald “Skip” Conover….

” In the article, Mr. Conover expressed “his disgust” at what he called inflammatory statements about Arabs and Muslims in the press.

He also discussed the power of the “Jewish lobby” and called on all Muslims to vote for the Democratic Party. “Every American politician is in lockstep with Israel. …

“If the Muslims of America believe that they don’t want Bush to have a free hand for the next two years, then the Muslims of America need to get organized and make sure they get out to vote for Democrats for both the House and the Senate,” Mr. Conover added. “Every Muslim in the Middle East who has a relative in the U.S. should get the message across to their relatives. They need to make sure that all their friends vote against Bush.”

Bridges TV claims that its “major purpose” is “to build bridges between American Muslims and other Americans.” After viewing the channel, I find this highly unlikely.

Wild Thing’s comment…….
Good grief!!! This is the website for this Islamic TV Channel. I had to check it out.
This has always been my opinon of these kinds of channels. The Spanish channels do not speak English. Why? If they really wanted to assimliate into America then these channels would be in English for one thing.
This has always been my opinion of these kinds of channels. The Spanish channels do not speak English. Why? If they really wanted to assimilate into America then these channels would be in English for one thing.
In regards to this Islamic channel it stinks and ticks me off big time! It has NO intention of building anything except for hate. The comments about Jews, telling people to vote for Democrats. What the hell is that!!!!!! It is obviously a channel full of hate, lies and spew, catering to the death cult followers of Islam.
From the article, also…..”Throughout the day, Bridges TV airs segments of Koranic verses, quite a few of which denounce “unbelievers.” One notable verse that aired October 9 praised martyrdom.”

Dan Rather on Letterman 9/17/01

Wild Thing’s comment……
Five days after 9-11 Dan Rather was on David Letterman, he was speaking of what happened, how he was for our Military going after the terrorists. A few years later Dan Rather intensely went after Bush as much as he could. How soon a person forgets that rage of being attacked, how soon we saw many Americans want a war to end with the speed of DSL on our computers.
Dan Rather speaks that the war would be long (4 to 8 years he said) and dangerous. Did he forget what he said? Did he forget how he felt when our Nation was attacked on our land?
I know that none of us that come to this blog have forgotten. We have also learned about our enemy. We know them well, and one thing for sure…. our enemy will never know us well. They will never know how stubborn we can be, how our freedom means more to us anything. How important that Freedom is to be able to leave it to the children of the future of our country. And how not a day goes by that we are not aware of why we are free and what the cost has been that allows us to live in the land of the free and that it truly is the home of the brave.
I saw this video over at Billy’s blog……Billy O’Blog. He has an excellent post about it. I am going to put his words here and you might also want to check his blog out. He has some other posts there that are also excellent.
Billy’s words……..

” It is well known that Dan Rather has never been a fan of George Bush. In fact, the story about Bush’s alleged ‘marginal’ service was the downfall of Rather when he adamantly defended the story as fact. It is for this reason that I feel this video is important. For when a man as politically biased as Rather, outlines the path FROM 911, the way he did just 5 days after the attack, it serves as a reminder of just how much we’ve forgotten, how much we as a country have lost our will.
With elections upcoming that will determine how we prosecute the war started on 911, it’s important to reflect how clear our thinking was then and how clouded it has become through partisanship. It is as though we’ve forgotten the path TO 911 and are continuing down that road again. God help us all if we forget.
The video is long, but I feel important, because in it you will hear Rather PROMOTE the policies this administration is fighting to persue. You will hear Rather advocate going after Iran and Syria and Iraq. He hadn’t had the time to learn just how ingrained Islam has been in this war, but many of the comments are chilling.
Take a few minutes to watch this, remember, your feelings then, and ask yourself if we , as a Nation, really want to throw in the towel as many in the media today are trying to brainwash us to do.”

CNS News
There’s a new book on Ronald Reagan making the rounds, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism. Its author, Paul Kengor, unearthed a sensational document from the Soviet archives.
That document is a memo regarding an offer made by Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts via former Senator John Tunney, both Democrats, to the General Secretary of the Communist Party, USSR, Yuri Andropov, in 1983.
The offer was to help the Soviet leadership, military and civilian, conduct a PR campaign in the United States as President Ronald Reagan sought re-election.
The goal of the PR campaign would be to cast President Reagan as a warmonger, the Soviets as willing to peacefully co-exist, and thereby turn the electorate away from Reagan. It was a plan to enlist Soviet help, and use the American press, in unseating an American president.

Wild Thing’s comment…….
So this little ole KGB letter written at the height of the Cold War shows that Sen. Edward Kennedy offered to assist Soviet leaders in formulating a public relations strategy to counter President Reagan’s foreign policy and to complicate his re-election efforts. Amazing, not surprising but ever so typical of the left and of Kennedy.
This is NOT the American way of doing things, but it sure as heck is the Democrat way!

* HOT Air

POW’s Lawsuit Could Force Kerry to Come Clean On Vietnam “War Crimes” Charges
When John Kerry slandered an entire generation of men who fought in Vietnam he branded them as “war criminals.” Today, much of the same thing is being said about our young men and women in Iraq.

Now, a lawsuit filed in Philadelphia’s Court of Common Pleas will test the very foundation of Kerry’s anti-war persona for the first time. It isn’t dubious medals or Kerry’s disputed service record in Vietnam that is being called into question. This time Kerry may finally be forced to answer for the events that launched his public career, one that made him an anti-war hero for many American liberals and a turncoat for millions of Vietnam veterans.

The lawsuit (Vietnam Veterans Legacy Foundation, et al. v. Kenneth Campbell, et al.) challenges the basis, the factual accuracy of then Lt. (j.g.) Kerry’s acrimonious testimony before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971. It was there Kerry’s public career was catapulted with his now ubiquitous portrayal of American soldiers as murderers, rapists and torturers “who ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam . . . [and] razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan.”
For the anti-war, anti-American protesters, the American soldiers are the “terrorists,” and the enemies are the victims of a barbaric U.S. military which tortures and murders defenseless civilians.
That false premise, one of the most vicious and enduring smears spawned by Kerry 35 years ago, will also be put to the test once Kerry’s true “Band of Brothers” are put under oath in a Philadelphia courtroom.
The background to this lawsuit is long and complex, but even a condensed version is rich in
irony and poetic justice.
It had it roots in 2004 with the documentary Stolen Honor: Wounds that Never Heal. Many may recall the film, although it is probably best known for not being seen, suppressed after Sinclair Broadcasting Company courageously announced it was going to air the documentary in its entirety.
Thanks to Kerry and his liberal colleagues in the Senate and their enablers in the mainstream media, Sinclair was browbeaten into withdrawing the film, its broadcast license threatened by a Kerry campaign manager in 2004. The film’s producer, Carlton Sherwood, a Pulitzer Prize and Peabody Award-winning investigative reporter, interviewed former POWs for the documentary.

I was among those whom Sherwood, a decorated Marine combat veteran himself, asked to participate in Stolen Honor. I was a POW for nearly six years, held in North Vietnam prison camps, including the notorious Hanoi Hilton, a place of unimaginable horrors — torture, beatings, starvation and mind-numbing isolation. When Kerry branded us “war criminals,” he handed our captors all the justification they needed to carry out their threats to execute us. Thanks to Kerry, Jane Fonda and their comrades in the anti-war movement, our captivity was prolonged by years. The communists in Hanoi and Moscow couldn’t have had a better press agent to spread their anti-American propaganda.

To guarantee Stolen Honor would never be seen by anyone — not even theatre-goers — the producer was slapped with a libel and defamation lawsuit.
That lawsuit was filed by a long-time anti-war disciple of the Massachusetts Senator. He was one of Kerry’s key war crimes “witnesses,” one of several on whom Kerry claims he based his Senate testimony.
The lawsuit put a unique spin on the definition of defamation, claiming that Stolen Honor had damaged the public reputations of himself, Kerry and others by simply quoting their own words and criticisms of America during the Vietnam war!
The POWs and the wives of POWs who participated in Stolen Honor refused to abandon the facts conveyed in the film. For some of us, it was the first time since our release by the Communists in 1973 that we were able to have our voices publicly heard, to tell our stories about the consequences of Kerry’s treachery.
In 2005, we formed a nonprofit organization, the Vietnam Veterans Legacy Foundation (VVLF), to gather records, documents and other materials to form a fact-based, educational repository for students and scholars of Vietnam history and to tell the true story of the American soldiers in Vietnam. The VVLF’s mission is “to set the record straight, factually, about Vietnam and those who fought there.”
For our efforts, we were promptly sued by two long-time anti-war Kerry followers and VVAW members. It was clear that Kerry not only wanted to punish us for Stolen Honor; he intended to use surrogates to sue us into permanent silence and financial ruin.
Forced to spend huge sums to defend ourselves from these frivolous lawsuits, we have filed a countersuit against these Kerry surrogates and intend to reveal the truth about the lawsuits and their sponsors. We believe that we can prove that the purpose of nearly two years of litigation was to protect John Kerry, to drain us financially and spiritually, and to prevent us from setting the record straight.
At stake is ultimately nothing less than the integrity of the American military in Vietnam, the honor of the men who served their country, the nobility of those who gave their lives, and the truth of America’s history in Vietnam. Until or unless we do correct the existing record, the American military may never be free of the myths and smears of Vietnam, its honor and integrity cleansed as it fights to defend freedom at home and around the world.
Our mission is hardly over. We hope you will join us in fighting this battle . . . for our soldiers, then and now. For more information about Vietnam, the foregoing litigation, or to make a donation, please access the VVLF website now — Go Here Now.
Col. George E. “Bud” Day
Director and President,
Vietnam Veterans Legacy Foundation

Col. George E. “Bud” Day, USAF (Ret.,) was a POW in North Vietnam for five years, seven months and 13 days. He served in three wars (WWII, Korea, and Vietnam) and earned the Medal of Honor. He is the Air Force’s most decorated living veteran. He is the Director and President of the Vietnam Veterans Legacy Foundation, Inc., an organization created to better educate and inform the public about the Vietnam War, its events, its history, and the men and women who sacrificed to serve their country

* Thank you Jack for telling me about this. Please visit Jack’s wonderful blog…….Conservative Insurgent. He has a post there today about McCain that is excellent!!

A plan is in place to censure and impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Orchestrated and organized by the radical Left and Congressman John Conyers, Jr., this plan is ready to go should the Democratic Party take control of the House of Representatives in November.
The plan is the ultimate manifestation of left-wing hatred for George W. Bush rooted in the contentious election of 2000. Since failing to defeat Bush in 2004, the Left has focused its efforts on destroying his presidency by assembling a list of charges aimed at impeaching him.
Around the same time, Senator John Kerry, D-MA, told a gathering of 100 Democrats that, should they capture the House in 2006, there would be a “solid case” for impeachment based on President Bush’s “misleading” the American public over prewar intelligence. Kerry was picking up where another prominent Democrat had, on November 1, 2005, left off. On that day, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid called a rare closed Senate session with other Democrats to look into the “misinformation and disinformation” used by the Bush administration to justify Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Boxer and Kerry weren’t the only prominent Democrats discussing the possibility of impeachment during 2005. Such matters were also being discussed by Diane Feinstein, Carl Levin and Ron Wyden, who, along with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and left-leaning Republicans Chuck Hagel and Olympia Snowe, called for both Senate Intelligence and Judiciary Committee investigations into the NSA wiretaps. And on December 20, 2005, Rep. John Lewis, D-GA, underscored those calls.
To some observers, the Democrats’ endless calls for investigations might appear to be simply a dead-end continuation of the 2000 election – heavy on anti-Bush vitriol and posturing, light on concrete action. And such observers might have been right, if not for the fact that a bill, H.R.635, aimed at investigating articles of impeachment, was submitted to Congress on Dec.18, 2005.
The submission of that bill by John Conyers Jr. was, first and foremost, a legislative victory for the radical Left and its sugar daddy, Shadow Party leader George Soros, who for all practical purposes guides the anti-U.S., terrorist-sympathizing agendas of the Democratic Party by funding groups that push far-Left candidates and threaten the careers of existing Democratic Party members who do not tow the radical Left line.

Justifying the submittal of that bill, Conyers said, “There has been massive support for House Resolution 635 from a very vigorous network of grassroots activists and people committed to holding the Bush Administration accountable for its widespread abuses of power.”

The committed activists Conyers spoke of include:
International ANSWER
its founder, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark (who has advised Conyers on impeachment issues)
Center for Constitutional Rights lawyer Barbara Olshansky, who advises Conyers on impeachment related issues and wrote a book on impeaching Bush that has served as a template for H.R.635
The National Lawyers Guild…this is a pdf file
Veterans for Peace
Workers World Party
most of the 911 ‘truth’ movement…US Labor Against the War

The rest of the article is HERE over at Frontpage

Wild Thing’s comment…..
This is the kind of thing that will come to be if we get a Democrat controlled House. This an many other things. God help America if this ever happens.

* Stop the ACLU
* Mary Katharine Ham at Townhall

“What happens when you take a Vietnam-era anti-war song and apply it to the jihad.” ……Vinnie

Wild Thing’s comment…….Thank you to Vinnie at Vince aut Morire for this video he made.

Hillary, Not as in the Mount Everest Guy
NYT
By DANNY HAKIM
Published: October 17, 2006
For more than a decade, one piece of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s informal biography has been that she was named for Sir Edmund Hillary, the conqueror of Mount Everest. The story was even recounted in Bill Clinton’s autobiography.
But yesterday, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign said she was not named for Sir Edmund after all.

“It was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter, to great results I might add,” said Jennifer Hanley, a spokeswoman for the campaign.

In May 1953, Sir Edmund and his Sherpa guide, Tenzing Norgay, became the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest. In 1995, shortly after meeting Sir Edmund, Mrs. Clinton said that her mother, Dorothy Rodham, had long told her she was named for the famous mountaineer.

“It had two l’s, which is how she thought she was supposed to spell Hillary,” Mrs. Clinton said at the time, after meeting Sir Edmund. “So when I was born, she called me Hillary, and she always told me it’s because of Sir Edmund Hillary.”

Even though Bill Clinton repeated the story in his 2004 autobiography, “My Life,” Hillary Clinton did not mention it in her own autobiography, “Living History,” which was published in 2003.
But one big hole has been poked in the story over the years, both in cyberspace and elsewhere: Sir Edmund became famous only after climbing Everest in 1953. Mrs. Clinton, as it happens, was born in 1947.

Wild Thing’s comment…..
LMAO this is so funny! And Bill Clinton repeated it in his book. No one bothered to even check it out first. hahahahha

WASHINGTON — House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra has suspended a Democratic staff member because of concerns he may have leaked a high-level intelligence assessment to The New York Times last month.
The Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee has suspended a Democratic staff member pending an investigation into whether he leaked a high-level intelligence assessment to the news media.
The committee’s top Democrat said the suspension was “without basis.”
The staff member, who was not identified, was suspended this week by Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., his spokesman said Thursday evening. The aide is being denied access to classified information pending the outcome of a review, said the spokesman, Jamal Ware.
The leak to The New York Times of a National Intelligence Estimate on global terror trends caused a political uproar last month. In the assessment, completed in April, analysts from the government’s 16 spy agencies concluded that the Iraq war has become a “cause celebre” for Islamic extremists, breeding deep resentment of the U.S. that probably will get worse before it gets better.
President Bush suggested the document was leaked for “political purposes” weeks before the midterm elections. He later made public four pages of the estimate’s key findings.
In a letter to Hoekstra dated Sept. 29, Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Ill., a committee member, said the Democratic staffer requested the document from National Intelligence Director John Negroponte three days before a Sept. 23 story by the Times on its conclusions.

“I have no credible information to say any classified information was leaked from the committee’s minority staff, but the implications of such would be dramatic,” LaHood said in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. “This may, in fact, be only coincidence, and simply ‘look bad.’ But coincidence, in this town, is rare.”

Ware, Hoekstra’s spokesman, said: “Chairman Hoekstra considers security highly important, and the coincidence certainly merits a review.”

The Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, Jane Harman of California, wrote to Hoekstra that she was “appalled” by his action, which was “without basis.”

“I demand that you immediately reinstate the staffer’s access to classified information,” she said.

A conference call to the committee’s nine Democrats on Wednesday to inform them of the aide’s suspension prompted outrage, said two congressional officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about internal committee business.
The officials said that the National Intelligence Estimate was marked “secret,” rather than “top secret” or another more restrictive classification. As a result, thousands of people would have had access to it, including the intelligence, armed services and international relations committees of the House.
The officials said the staff member acted appropriately in requesting the document on behalf of a committee member.
Relations between Democrats and Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee have soured in recent weeks.
On Tuesday, Harman unilaterally released the executive summary of an independent investigator’s review into the actions of a jailed former congressman, Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, R-Calif. The report found that he abused his position on the committee to help ensure lucrative contracts went to associates, in exchange for bribes.
Hoekstra called Harman’s decision to release the document “disturbing and beyond the pale.”
Bush allies have been on a campaign to stop leaks to the news media, particularly targeting the New York Times.

In June, the House approved a Republican-drafted resolution condemning news organizations for revealing a covert government program to track terrorist financing, saying the disclosure had “placed the lives of Americans in danger.”

The resolution, which passed on a largely party-line vote, did not specifically name the news organizations, but it was aimed at the Times and other news media that reported earlier that month on a secret CIA-Treasury program to track millions of financial records in search of terrorists.
The New York Times did not respond to a telephone message seeking comment Thursday night.

Wild Thing’s comment……
“Suspended”? How about arrested and cuffed??

Name ……………. Party ………………….State
Peter Hoekstra………… Republican…………… Michigan
Ray LaHood …………….Republican ……………Illinois
Terry Everett ……………Republican …………..Alabama
Elton Gallegly …………….Republican …………California
Heather Wilson …………Republican ………….New Mexico
Jo Ann Davis …………….Republican ………….Virginia
Mac Thornberry………… Republican…………. Texas
John McHugh…………… Republican…………… New York
Todd Tiahrt ………………..Republican……………. Kansas
Mike Rogers…………….. Republican…………… Michigan
Rick Renzi …………………Republican ………….. Arizona
Darrell Issa ………………….Republican …………. California
Jane Harman ………………….Democrat …………….California
Alcee L. Hastings………….. Democrat ……………… Florida
Silvestre Reyes ……………..Democrat ……………… Texas
Leonard L. Boswell ………..Democrat ……………… Iowa
Robert E. (Bud) Cramer, Jr ……….Democrat ………..Alabama
Anna G. Eshoo………………… Democrat …………….. California
Rush D. Holt …………………..Democrat ……………… New Jersey
C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger………… Democrat ……….Maryland
John Tierney……………………… Democrat ………………..Massachusetts