Theodore's World

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Harry Reid has put a political game plan in place but wants to call them town hall meetings so that it gives the appearance that they are not breaking the law.
Senate Democrats have mapped a political battle plan for the March congressional recess that calls on lawmakers to stage press events with active duty military personnel, veterans and emergency responders to bash President Bush on virtually every one of his national security policies.
The game plan, devised by the office of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, is contained in a six-page memo distributed to Democratic senators on Thursday at a closed-door meeting at the Capitol and provided to The Washington Times by a congressional staffer.

Titled “Real Security,” the political document calls for staged town hall events at military bases, weapons factories, National Guard units, fire stations and veterans posts.
“Ensure that you have the proper U.S. and state flags at the event, and consider finding someone to sing the national anthem and lead the group in the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of the event,” the battle plan states.

And the Democratic memo calls on senators to seek the help of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), which is critical of Mr. Bush.
However, the Defense Department prohibits political events on military bases.
The rule states:

“commanders will not permit the use of installation facilities by any candidate for political campaign or election events, including public assemblies or town hall meetings. …”

For entire article please go HERE
Wild Thing’s comment……
Could Reid cross the line anymore then he has with this? He keeps getting away with his treason, his anti-American activities and his loathing of our military. How about using Harry Reid as a test case to see how various forms of torture effect the human body till….well you know what I mean.
And what the hell is that about….be sure to bring the proper US Flag. Don’t they know what the US Flag looks like? Sheesh!
BIG DOG has written an excellent write up on this! ……HERE

* BOG DOG

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Hamas said Saturday it had completed the formation of its government without succeeding to bring in moderate parties, a step that looked likely to only increase the chances of international isolation.
The narrow government to be presented to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at a meeting Sunday could bring on crippling economic sanctions that the World Bank has warned would devastate the poverty-stricken Palestinian territories.
Abbas will approve the Hamas government — which does not include his pragmatic Fatah Party, presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rdeneh said.
But he will warn the Islamic militant group, which is sworn to Israel’s destruction, that their refusal to moderate their hard-line positions could “get them into trouble,” the spokesman said.
Hamas’ Cabinet lineup has not been made public, but officials in the group said it would hold onto key posts including the foreign, interior and finance ministries.
The Palestinian parliament will not be asked to approve the new Hamas government until after Israel’s March 28 election.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said the international community must be united in demanding Hamas accept the conditions, which have U.N. backing.
“If they continue to reject the international community’s benchmarks they will find the Palestinian Authority will increasingly become a pariah regime in the international community,” Regev said.

The Georgia Senate voted 38 to 1 to defeat a resolution that would have honored Jane Fonda’s charity work in the state.
ATLANTA (March 16) – Jane Fonda’s 1972 trip to North Vietnam is haunting her again. The Georgia Senate on Thursday nearly unanimously defeated a resolution that would have honored the actress’ charity work in the state.
The Democratic sponsor had tried to withdraw the resolution after a rocky reception from colleagues and a phone call from Fonda’s office, but a Republican leader forced a vote, saying members of his caucus wanted to go on record against it.
Fonda, who is out of the country, had asked for the resolution to be withdrawn to avoid the controversy, said the sponsor, Sen. Steen Miles of suburban Atlanta.
The effort was defeated 38-1, with even Miles voting against it.
The resolution cited the Atlanta resident’s work as founder of the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention, donations to universities and charities, and role as goodwill ambassador for the United Nations.
But Fonda’s political activities protesting the Vietnam War, including a trip to North Vietnam in 1972, have long made her a target of veterans.
“I can think of no living American who is less worthy of this honor,” Republican Sen. John Douglas declared. “She is as guilty of treason as Benedict Arnold and Tokyo Rose.”
Miles argued that Fonda’s good works should outweigh the negatives.
Thank you Don for sending this to me.

* River Vet (Don’s website)
* and thank you to Jack H. for the article and link

Iran’s Madman Ahmadinejad
London, Mar. 17 – Not since the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics has the United States national security strategy focused on a country more than it is now doing on Iran. The proof comes in a 49-page report just released by the White House.
“The National Security Strategy of the United States of America” describes Iran as the greatest challenge to the U.S. national security, and makes it clear that the Bush administration is prepared to resort to military action, if that’s what it takes to stop Iran’s theocracy from arming itself with nuclear weapons.
“We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran”, the report, which carried the seal of U.S. President George W. Bush, said.
The document, which maps out the threats to the United States and the way President Bush intends to tackle them, said that the international standoff over Tehran’s suspected nuclear weapons program and its support for terrorism in the Middle East could ultimately be resolved “only if the Iranian regime makes the strategic decision to change these policies, open up its political system, and afford freedom to its people. This is the ultimate goal of U.S. policy”.
“Our strategy is to block the threats posed by the regime while expanding our engagement and outreach to the people the regime is oppressing”, Bush said.
To read the full text of the Natioinal Security Strategy please clkck here….it is a pdf file.

This photo was taken at Camp Shelby, Miss., on March 14, 2006. The approximate 4,000 Soldiers are from the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the Minnesota Army National Guard’s 34th Infantry Division en route to Iraq this spring. The major states that the soldiers are from Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska and New Jersey. They formed their patch, the Red Bull. This was a recreation of a photo taken of the division on Aug. 18, 1918, at Camp Cody.

G. Gordon Liddy chats with MAJ John Hudson of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Gulf Region Central as Erich Langer and Joe McClammy of the Gulf Region Division/Project and Contracting Office Public Affairs Office enjoy the exchange.
BAGHDAD, Iraq — National Talk Show host, G. Gordon Liddy and five other regionally well known, stateside, radio talk show hosts are presently in Iraq visiting with Soldiers and Civilians in Iraq.
One of the sites visited by this group was the Alwaiya Children’s Hospital in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Gulf Region South (USACE-GRC) Karada District. When completed, this 155 bed facility will provide full spectrum medical care for newborn to six year old children from a population of more than a million Iraqis. Additionally, the hospital will provide limited adult emergency support as well as being used by three medical schools for medical internships.
The resident officer-in-charge for this project has been MAJ John Hudson from Colorado Springs, CO, with Jana Tanner, from Jacksonville, FL, serving as the resident engineer. The project engineering and quality assurance has been effectively handled by Iraqi engineers – a superlative example of Capacity Development teamsmanship in the turning over of such work to Iraqis themselves.
In addition, the group visited the recently completed Hay Al Amel Youth Center comprised of various recreational support functions, wrestling/gymnastics mats, basketball court and soccer facilities, where they talked with numerous young Iraqis enjoying the facility – and clearly appreciative of the faiclity.
While in the area, each of the journalists received one-on-one interview time with several of the USACE-Gulf Region Division leadership. Among those visited with were the Commanding General, BG(P) William McCoy, retired Marine colonel and now Director of Logistic Jack Holly, and David Leach, Director of Capacity Development.
In addition to Liddy, the visiting broadcast journalists included: Jon Grayson of KMOX in St. Louis who is listened to by not only those in his home community but in audience markets in 44 other states;
~ Steffan Tubbs – co-host of Colorado’s Morning News” – of KOA in Denver CO
~ Jack Rice from WCCO in Minneapolis/St. Paul MN
~ Bill LuMaye of WPTF in Raleigh, NC
~ Monica Delta who hosts “Speaking Seriously” for the Washington, D.C. Maryland and Virginia markets.
Following the visit with USACE-GRD personnel, the journalists traveled further around the country visiting Multi-National Forces- Iraq activities.
Tom Clarkson is a member of the U.S. Corps of Engineers, Gulf Region Division/Project and Contracting Office public affairs team in Iraq.

Happy St. Patricks Day everyone

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I am so thrilled about this, Oriana Fallaci’s The Force of Reason is now available in English.
This is the long-awaited follow-up to her fearless The Rage and the Pride, and it continues her chronicling of the Islamization of Europe, and of what has been lost and will be lost.
Here is Brendan Bernhard’s excellent review in the LA Weekly

In The Force of Reason, the controversial Italian journalist and novelist Oriana Fallaci illuminates one of the central enigmas of our time. How did Europe become home to an estimated 20 million Muslims in a mere three decades?
How did Islam go from being a virtual non-factor to a religion that threatens the preeminence of Christianity on the Continent? How could the most popular name for a baby boy in Brussels possibly be Mohammed? Can it really be true that Muslims plan to build a mosque in London that will hold 40,000 people? That Dutch cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam are close to having Muslim majorities? How was Europe, which was saved by the U.S. in world wars I and II, and whose Muslim Bosnians were rescued by the U.S. as recently as 1999, transformed into a place in which, as Fallaci puts it, “if I hate Americans I go to Heaven and if I hate Muslims I go to Hell?”
In attempting to answer these questions, the author, who is stricken with cancer and has been hounded by death threats and charges of “Islamophobia” (she is due to go on trial in France this June), has combined history with snatches of riveting firsthand reportage into a form that reads like a real-life conspiracy thriller.
If The Force of Reason sells a lot of copies, which it almost certainly will (800,000 were sold in Italy alone, and the book is in the top 100 on Amazon ), it will be not only because of the heat generated by her topic, but also because Fallaci speaks for the ordinary reader. There is no one she despises more than the intellectual “cicadas,” as she calls them — “You see them every day on television; you read them every day in the newspapers” — who deny they are in the midst of a cultural, political and existential war with Islam, of which terrorism is the flashiest, but ultimately least important component. Nonetheless, to give the reader a taste of what Muslim conquest can be like, in her first chapter, Fallaci provides a brief tour of the religion’s bloodiest imperial episodes and later does an amusing job of debunking some of its more exaggerated claims to cultural and scientific greatness.

* Jihad Watch
Wild Thing’s comment…..
This woman is amazing and I look forward to reading her book.
Here are some quotes by her that I have saved:

“Resignation leads to apathy. Apathy leads to inertia. Inertia leads to indifference. Indifference paralyzes the instinct for self-defense, that is, the instinct to fight back.”- Oriana

“Can anybody guess how many cemeteries of Allied soldiers there are in Italy? More than sixty. And the largest, the most crowded, are the American ones. At Nettuno, 10,950 graves. At Falciani, near Florence, 5,811. Each time I pass in front of it and see that lake of crosses, I shiver with grief and gratitude.”-Oriana

And this one my Blog Mom Linda at Something…..and Half of Something has at her blog.

” I do not believe in vile acquittals, phony appeasements, easy forgiveness. Even less, in the exploitation of the blackmail of the word Peace. When peace stands for surrender, fear, loss of dignity and freedom, it is on longer peace. It is suicide.” – Oriana

OPERATION SWARMER — A U.S. Army CH-47 Chinook helicopter transports U.S. Army soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division’s Company C, 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment and Iraqi army soldiers during Operation Swarmer in Brassfield-Mora, Iraq, March 16, 2006. Operation Swarmer is a combined air assault operation to clear the area northeast of Samarra of suspected insurgents. (U.S. Navy Photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Shawn Hussong)

101st Airborne Division stand ready with a staged row of Blackhawk helicopters in preparation for Operation Swarmer, in Remagen, Iraq



BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — U.S. forces joined by Iraqi troops on Thursday launched the largest air assault since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, targeting insurgent strongholds north of the capital, the military said.
The U.S. military said the air- and ground-offensive dubbed Operation Swarmer was aimed at clearing “a suspected insurgent operating area” northeast of Samarra and was expected to continue over several days.
Residents in the targeted area said there was a heavy U.S. and Iraqi troop presence in the area and large explosions could be heard in the distance. It was unclear if the blasts were due to fighting.
The military termed the operation the largest air assault since the invasion nearly three years ago, but it was not clear if any U.S. aircraft opened fire during the operation or if there had been any insurgent resistance.
“More than 1,500 Iraqi and Coalition troops, over 200 tactical vehicles, and more than 50 aircraft participated in the operation,” the military statement said.
The U.S. command in Baghdad said it was the largest number of aircraft used to insert troops and the largest number of troops inserted by air, although larger numbers of troops overall have been involved in previous operations.









Operating Base Remagen, with Operation Swarmer on March 16th, American heroes in helicopters take off with Iraqi and Coalition forces to wipe out terrorists northeast of Samarra in the largest air assault since the U.S.-led liberation of Iraq.
North of Baghdad., under a massive airborne operation involving over 50 aircraft and 1,500 heroic American and Iraqi troops.
North of Baghdad., Iraqi soldiers secure a bridge during curfew as the Iraqi parliament convened for the first time with pressure against it from Iran, al Qaeda and the American MSM. The targets are terrorist rebels, including those of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.



In Basra, Iraq, at the market of military equipment, where terrorists have repeatedly put on military uniforms to carry out terrorist murders.




Wild Thing’s comment……
I am so proud of our troops!

* BIG DOG says Let Allah Sort Them Out
* The Rolling Barrage