September 11th and the Past

I had a nice post all written up about the failures of the Democrats in general and Clinton in particular with regards to terrorism, bin Laden, and security. I've deleted it. One, it's old news, and it's been hashed, rehashed, and gone over way too often. Two, all the finger pointing from years ago doesn't mean squat when it comes to the terrorist appeasing tactics of the Democrats today.

Think about it: What good does pointing out past failures do us when the present day Democrats are fighting against every terror-fighting tactic we can come up with? Think of the NSA wiretapping programs. That program has been credited with stopping terror attacks at home and abroad, and the Democrats torpedoed it as fast as they could. And they did it by leaking the information to the New York Slimes. Yay Democrats. Thanks for disabling a working program. Tell me again how you would fight terrorists? Oh, that's right, you WOULDN'T. But from what we see today, they really don't have a problem with snooping and illegal activity per se. It's only the targets that they have a problem with. You see, snooping on terrorists is bad. Hacking into a computer to embarass a Republican is perfectly OK in their book.

The campaign of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Democratic rival acknowledged Tuesday that it downloaded - and leaked to the media - a recording of a private meeting in which the governor described a Hispanic legislator as having a "very hot" personality.

Of course, the Dimocrats are saying they didn't do anything wrong. Of course, they're lying. As usual.

Schwarzenegger spokesman Adam Mendelsohn said someone would have had to snoop to find the audio file.

"The file that was leaked to the Los Angeles Times was in a private area of the governor's server not accessible to the public without manipulation of information," he said.

Schwarzenegger's legal affairs secretary, Andrea Lynn Hoch, said the sound file was stored in a password-protected area. She said she forwarded the Internet Protocol address used to download the file to the California Highway Patrol, which is investigating.

So remember, according to the Dimocrats, snooping on terrorists is bad, but snooping on Republicans is good. And this is the polical party who says they're strong on national security? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

For the ACLU, 9/11 is just another day to attack the Bush Administration

Assholes

Memri Does 911 Memorial Video

Where was the good will in the muslim world on September 11, 2001? The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon should be remembered not only for those who we lost, but so that we may know and face our enemies.

Five years later

I haven't posted much today, because I've been up since 0500 ensuring that my unit's annual training goes smoothly. Another reason is because, quite honestly, I'm a little sickened by what I see in America today.

There are actually sick, twisted kooks who believe that September 11th was done by the US government, despite all the evidence to the contrary. The piles of evidence. The mountains. That's like standing outside a concentration camp and saying that the Holocaust didn't happen. And the Democrats are running one of these loons, these embarassments to humanity, for Senate.

There are people in America today who believe that George W. Bush is a bigger threat than terrorism. Indeed, they think that Bush is a terrorist, not Osama bin Laden.

Excuse me?

There are people in this country who actually believe that running away and hiding from terrorists, giving them whatever they want, will end terrorism. Like that worked for so well for three decades leading up to September 11th.

I cannot begin to accurately describe the kind of rank ignorance and stupidity it would take to believe any of the above. I really can't.

If it weren't for September 11th, I wouldn't be in uniform again. When I ETSed in 2000, I swore up and down that I would never again be part of the Armed Forces. Been there, did that, got the damn BDU shirt, and I'm done.

Yeah, right. Here I am once again with "U.S. Army" embroidered over my heart. And dammit, it's because I refuse to just sit around and wait to get hit. It's because I'm going to do more than deny, ignore and hide. I'm going to be a part of Operation Kill Terrorist Bastards, and I'm going to do my part to ensure that anyone who wants to kill my countrymen has to go through ME first. And I am very hard to kill. I[m doing it so that hopefully, sometime in the future, my step-son can go to work without worrying if he'll die in a bomb attack. I'm doing it so that people like Tim, and TVE, and Helen, and all the people who posted here can continue to do so without fear of being shut down by some Islamic Caliphate. I'm doing it so my family can live the way they want to.

I'm doing it so that people can sit at home and watch Fahrenheit 9-11 and drink beer and think "Damn, that George W. Bush is an idiot" while they scratch their shriveled nutsack and contemplate giving their hard three inches to the non-shaven wife.

But I'll tell you what. I'll lay down my life for my step-son, or my family. I'll lay down my life for all that which I hold dear. But more and more, it's becoming harder and harder to reconcile myself to the fact that I may have to lay down my life for someone who thinks that America is evil. In fact, I wouldn't lay my life down for Cindy Sheehan for all the money in America. Terrorists raping you and hacking off your head? Sorry 'bout that, Cindy. Hey, why don't you call Je$$e Jack$son and see if he can help you? I hear Al Sharpton is a real impressive negotiator, give him a call!

Luckily, when I go to war I won't be going to war for Cindy Sheehan. I'll be going to war for my family, and my step-son, and my Father who did his time before me in the jungles of Viet Nam, and my Grandfather, who fought the Japanese in the Pacific, and my Great-Grandfather who helped conquer the West in a U.S. Army cavalry uniform.

I'll be doing it for all of them.

In the meantime, I'm going to do my best to ensure that the idiots and brain-dead morons who want to tear down America continue to fail. I'm going to do my best to ensure that the Defeatocrats do not regain power. And I'm going to do my best to ensure that this country has the will to win a fight for our way of life and our very existence.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to clean my combat boots and drink a beer.

229 years ago today...

...The Battle of Brandywine, 11 September 1777.

As dawn broke on the morning of September 11th, Sir William Howe was in the process of dividing his army. At six o'clock, Knyphausen marched with 6,800 men along the Nottingham Road directly toward Chad's Ford. His mission was to engage Washington's attention while Howe marched at five o'clock with 8,200 men northeast from Kennett Square up the Great Valley Road, turned east across the Brandywine at Trimble's and Jeffries' fords, and then proceeded south around the American right flank. A dense fog cover initially shielded Howe's march, and locals kept him well informed of his route.

"locals kept him well informed of his route"

Some people didn't want to be freed from the tyranny that shackled them.

The more things change...

Nancy Diaz

All across the blogosphere today one will find profiles of Americans who died on 11 September 2001. Many of these profiles are part of the 2996 Project. This is one of them.

Nancy Diaz was 28 years old. She lived in New York City, and died at the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001. Nancy was a kitchen assistant at the Windows on the World restaurant:

Windows of the World was destroyed during the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. At the time of the attack on the World Trade Center, the restaurant was hosting regular breakfast patrons and the Waters Financial Technology Congress. Of those present in the restaurant at the time that American Airlines Flight 11 impacted the North Tower, all eventually perished as a result of the attack. This included 73 restaurant staff, 16 Waters employees, and 71 conference guests.

It is believed that the image of the The Falling Man was an employee at Windows On The World named Jonathan Briley.Windows on the World @ Wikipedia

From the New York Times:

Preparing for Caribbean Trip

Nancy Diaz loved to shop, but in her last days she was shopping with a purpose: Her daughter's birthday was coming up, and she was planning a trip to the Dominican Republic, where the girl lived with a greatgrandmother.

Planning to fly to the Caribbean on Sept. 14, she started her workday three and a half hours early, at 7 a.m., the previous Tuesday so she could use the free afternoon to prepare for her trip, said her brother, Leonel Diaz. A kitchen assistant, she was tending to the breakfast buffet on the 107th floor of the north tower when the first plane hit, he said.

Ms. Diaz, 28, who lived with her sister in the Bronx and had moved to the United States from the Dominican Republic less than three years ago, liked her American life, particularly her job, her brother said. She had a boyfriend at work (he was off on Sept. 11), and she had just heard from her boss that she had promotion potential. "They said 'You can be a manager. You're such a hard worker,' " Mr. Diaz said. Now Ms. Diaz's daughter is preparing to come to New York visit her family.

Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on October 1, 2001.

Remember: September 11, 2001 - Legacy.com

This has been a sobering project for me, for aside from that NYT tribute, there is no other information about Nancy Diaz out there.

If you've a mind, post at one (or more, or all) of the following sites.

Remember her.

9-11 Victim Memorial: Nancy Diaz

9-11 Memorial - Nancy Diaz

Guest Book - Nancy Diaz

Wow

Check out this YouTube post comments section. 451 comments so far. (I'm n336ap.) Lots of liberal moonbats but lots of informed conservatives, too. Join the fun. The video posted is a trailer for "Path to 9/11" which includes a bit of those deleted scenes. (See also here. One full hour of the 5-hour miniseries has been cut since Clinton's lawyers started threatening Disney's CEO.) And as usual, instead of responding to critisizm (unless you think calling someone a "liar" counts as a response), the DNC threatens and sues. Now the libtards are declaring all-out war on ABC. "Free speech for me, but none for thee," should be the DNC motto, but it is entertaining watching them twist and squirm, accusing the other side of fascism even as they are in the act of silencing their critics through intimidation and (il)legal force.

The delete scenes beg the question, "What was in Sandy Berger's pants?" Sandy Berger admitted to stealing five "code-word" classified (more secret than top-secret) security documents from the National Archives. He admitted to destroying three of the five documents. He admitted that he lied to federal investigators by telling them initially that he merely removed the documents “by accident.” Was he punished? Hell no! But that's not the point. Could it be that the Clinton gang is bullying ABC because its miniseries comes too close to the truth? Could it be that the deleted scene where special ops has bin Laden in their gun-sights but abort when Berger and Clinton refuse to authorize execution, despite approving the mission, is true in substance?

Presented without comment

From who else but Cox and Forkum. You need to go to the C & F website to see the thing in large format. For some reason it won't work on 4RWW's.

The DANE has a takedown

Of Sen (D) Jay Rockefeller that everyone needs to read.

It's amazing this guy is still on Capital Hill instead of a jail cell.

Oh, wait, maybe it's not so amazing, considering the quality of the people on Capital Hill.

Piling On

See, here's the problem the Left has - they've deluded themselves with their own lies for so long that when they throw a hissy-fit over a documentary and scream things like "CLINTON DID NO WRONG! IT'S ALL CHIMPY MCHITLERBURTON'S FAULT!" we on the right can whip out, y'know, actual facts and beat the Left with them. Like the fact that the US had Osama on video via an unmanned drone in 2000.

Scroll down that link, and you'll get to an interview that's rather revealing:

O‘DONNELL: But many people have made the impression that something in the Bush administration was done wrong. But there‘s evidence that the Clinton administration knew full well that bin Laden had the wherewithal and was planning to attack the United States. Who is to blame and did the president, Clinton, get this information?

SCHEUER: Certainly the president got the information. And most certainly his closest adviser, Sandy Berger and Mr. Clarke—Richard Clarke, had the information from 1996 forward that bin Laden intended to attack the United States. There‘s no question of that. And in terms of which administration had more chances, Mr. Clinton‘s administration had far more chances to kill Osama bin Laden than Mr. Bush has until this day.

O‘DONNELL: That‘s very interesting. I don‘t think that many Americans know that or think that everything that they‘ve heard—you‘ve spent your life tracking Osama bin Laden. From what we know now and what you know, how many missed opportunities were there to prevent the 9/11 attacks?

SCHEUER: Well, we had—the question of whether or not we could have prevented the attacks is one you could debate forever. But we had at least eight to 10 chances to capture or kill Osama bin Laden in 1998 and 1999. And the government on all occasions decided that the information was not good enough to act.

Ouch. But remember, according to the Dimocrats, Clinton wanted to get Osama, he just never had the chance.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

As the saying goes..

Scratch a Democrat, find a dictator. As in, "If you air something we don't like, we'll yank your broadcasting license." Scroll down for the details. It's rather disgusting, and this is not the first time the Democrats have used the threat of a yanked broadcast license to silence something they didn't like.

So much for that whole "Free Speech" think the Left claims to be fond of, eh? As with morals, pricipals are things that the Left only pays lip-service to, and will discard at a moment's notice. Power is the only goal, and everything else can and will be sacrificed for that goal.

I think everyone needs to read this

Tell me again about how Clinton wanted to get Bin Laden? I don't think so.

As Patterson reveals in his New York Times bestseller Dereliction of Duty- the first missed opportunity occurred when Clinton was engaged in watching a golf tournament and became irritated when Patterson approached him. After Patterson'?s third attempt to get Clinton to return Sandy BergerÂ?s urgent phone calls, Clinton gave Patterson a cool response he would phone Berger on his way back to the White House. The defeated Berger knew that the opportunity was gone.

In another shocking account in the situation room of the White House, Berger was told by a military watch officer Â?Sir, weÂ?ve located bin Laden. We have a two-hour window to strike.? After Clinton did not return phone calls from Berger for over an hour, Clinton then wanted more time to study the situation. Dereliction of Duty reveals "?We ?'studied?' the issues until it was too late-the window of opportunity closed."?

So, as the Clintonistas rage and whine about the ABC documentary, just remember that Clinton was more interested in a golf tournament on TV than killing OBL.

Just so ya know.

Suddenly, everything became clear.

I mean, it makes too much sense, ya know?

Some species of male fish in the Potomac River and its tributaries are developing female sexual traits at a frequency higher than scientists have seen before, raising concerns about pollutants in a waterway that provides drinking water for millions of people.

The so-called "intersex fish," which produce immature eggs in their testes, were discovered in the Potomac rivershed in 2003 and have also been found in other parts of the country.

But the frequency that the U.S. Geological Surveys found last year is much higher than what has been found elsewhere, said fish pathologist Vicki Blazer.

In some Potomac tributaries, nearly all of the male smallmouth bass caught in last year's survey were the abnormal fish. In the Potomac itself, seven of 13 largemouth bass exhibited female characteristics, including three that were producing eggs.

If this doesn't perfectly explain Washington DC, I don't know what does.

They never learn, do they?

I mean, let's go down the list.

Endorse socialist policies despite an entire century of failure of those policies? Check.

Press for Socialized Healthcare despite the overwhelming evidence that it provides substandard care? Check.

Run a retired military officer on an anti-war, defeatist, cut-and-run policy?

Check.

Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And I've never seen anyone so adverse to learning from history as the Democrats.

So, didja catch Bush's Speech?

I think it was a speech that should have been given quite some time ago. But what I saw most was this: Bush, recognizing that there's no action he could do that would make people happy right now, tossed this ball into Congress' court. And it's not a nice round bouncy ball either. It's a hard, sharp, covered-in-poison-tipped-spikes kind of ball, and now the people who have been wailing and crying the loudest can put up or shut up.

"Fine, you say you want to fight terrorism? YOU tell me what the CIA can't do to terrorists. You want to give terrorists Geneva Convention rights? Fine. Put your name on a 'Yes' vote and we'll make sure the voters know about it come November."

It's not the total and complete bitchslapping that I would love to see, but it was definately a tossing of the gauntlet. Let's see how congress responds.

Hmmmmm....

Tim, what do you think about this?

Just so we don’t forget: tomorrow starts the pre-election period wherein, thanks to the McCain-Feingold Act, political organizations are not allowed to run ads or commercials critical of any politicians seeking election or reelection in November.

My pledge:

If a conservative organization wants to run a political ad criticizing any Congressman up for re-election during that 60-day window, I’ll let them run one on this website, for free, right up until Election Day

.

Veeeeery IIIIIIINteresting.

Well, this sucks.

So I went to the doctor yesterday. He told me "Upper Respitory Infection" and gave me antibiotics. Sent me home for the day.

I woke up this morning, having barely slept because I was caughing too damn hard, and went to work. When I got to work, my training NCO looked at me and said "Dave, get your ass back to sick-call." So back to the doctor I went. This time I saw a different doctor, who poked and prodded and listened with his stethescope, and told me to get a chest X-ray done. Hmmm, OK. So I get the X-ray done, and about half an hour later he tells me that I have early stage pneumonia.

Boy, what a difference a day makes, huh?

So now I have even more antibiotics, and I'm going to be sitting on my couch for the next three days until my next doctor's appointment.

And yet they wonder

Why we can never trust the Left with our National Security.

This video, hosted on Google Video is called: “One of a kind 9/11 tribute (tears guaranteed)”. It begins with somber Enya music but a third of the way into it moves to Benny Hill music where it makes fun of all the people running away from the attack

What kind of sick prick do you have to be to turn people who are running for their damn LIVES into some kind of musical joke?

Found via Ace of Spades

If I weren't already sick

Then this would make me so. Anyone hear anything about Darfur anymore? Nah. It's not something that the media can blame on Bush, so they're not going to bother mentioning it.

I am literally aghast that people treat the UN or any of it's departments as a legitimate entity. I am stunned that there are people who think that any "peacekeepers" from any African country will actually keep the peace. And I am amazed that there are adults who think that we can somehow stop this genocide without direct military intervention. And yes, that means going into an African country and shooting Africans. Let's be blunt, shall we? The only way you're going to stop the murder and rape that is happening right now in Darfur is to go in there and physically stop the people doing the killing and raping. And that means killing those people, because they're not going to simply stop with a "Pretty please". These are not civilized humans. They're animals. They're barbarians. You cannot tell me that anyone who takes part in the systematic rape and destruction of hundreds of thousands of people is civilized in any sense of the word. The head monster of Sudan has already stated:

"[a]ny state that sponsors this draft resolution [authorizing UN peacekeeping troops in Darfur] will be regarded as assuming a hostile attitude against the Sudan."

Fine. Chalk me up as assuming a hostile attitude against the Sudan. In fact, chalk me up as assuming a hostile attitude towards most of Africa right now.

I have only heard two courses of action that make sense in Africa. One is to simply pull out and leave. Let them sink or swim on their own. That's the theory espoused by Kim du Toit, who grew up in South Africa and knows firsthand just how screwed up the continent can be. The other option is to simply re-colonize the entire place and force these people to live in the 21st century. You know, the century where you do not hack off a woman's breasts to ensure that she can't breastfeed any children.

But I'll tell you one thing - I am through pretending that these people are even remotely civilized. We need to drop that idea right now. Just because we can travel the world and visit places previously unheard of a century ago doesn't mean that the people in the places we visit are in any way, shape or form civilized. And so we have a choice - rip those people from their cesspool of barbarity, or leave them alone and close them off until they either civilize themselves or die.

Question about Steve Irwin

From the news:

Fatally injured "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin pulled a stingray's serrated barb from his chest before he lost consciousness and died, his manager said on Tuesday as fans worldwide mourned the exuberant naturalist.

I believe it is standard procedure to NOT remove a foreign object from one's body if one has been impaled by said object, yes? The reasoning being that an object that has invaded your body and remained inside your body is likely plugging any holes that it has made in blood vessels; you leave it there to act as a kind of stopper until you can get to hospital or some similar medical facility.

How to Treat a Wound Created by an Impaled Object - eHow.com

I am certainly not second guessing the guy, who was doubtlessly in shock and in considerable pain, but I wonder if he was fatally wounded upon being impaled or if he sealed his fate by removing the barb.

Or both.

Steve Irwin Full Coverage on Yahoo! News