Abducted Britons Believed to be Held by "Shiite Zarqawi"

A disturbing look at the death squad leader named as the mastermind behind the May kidnapping of 5 British security contractors (via Times Online UK):

Iraq’s most infamous Shia death squad commander was accused yesterday of masterminding the kidnapping of five British citizens who have not been heard from since their abduction in Baghdad three months ago.

Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq’s Foreign Minister, told The Times that a group led by Abu Dera, a legendary figure with strong Iranian connections who is renowned for his brutality, was behind the abduction of the five Britons from the Iraqi Finance Ministry on May 29.

Mr Zebari said there was a striking similiarity between their abduction and that of Iraq’s Deputy Oil Minister by Abu Dera’s supporters on August 14. In both instances well-organised forces broke into heavily protected compounds.

The minister and five colleagues were seized by gunmen dressed in security force uniforms who forced their way into the offices of Iraq’s crude oil marketing agency. The Britons were seized by armed men dressed as Iraqi policemen who broke into the Finance Ministry. “I believe the same group who did this did the Ministry of Finance [raid],” Mr Zebari said in an interview in which he also cautioned of “catastrophic consequences” if Britain and America prematurely withdraw from Iraq.

Abu Dera is thought to command a breakaway faction of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, which is responsible for numerous attacks on Sunni civilians as well as British and American troops. His militia killed thousands of Sunnis in reprisals for the 2006 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra.

Stories of his barbarity are legion. A profile published by the Jamestown Foundation reports that he once commandeered several ambulances, drove them into a Sunni neighbourhood and announced on loudspeakers that Shias were slaughtering Sunnis. The young Sunnis who rushed to help were killed.

He allegedly offers his victims the choice of being executed through suffocation, shooting or being smashed to death with cinder blocks. There is a video recording of a man believed to be Abu Dera kidnapping Saddam Hussein’s lawyer Khamis al-Obeidi, parading him through the streets of Sadr City, and then shooting him three times in the head.

The British government has kept strict secrecy regarding the latest abduction, and has not released the names of the captives. Their families are briefed by the Foreign Office, but have been ordered not to speak publicly about the missing men.

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Katrina: Worst EVER?

I heard something blasted across the radio several times today from this AP article:

Hurricane Katrina made landfall south of New Orleans at 6:10 a.m. Aug. 29, 2005, as a strong Category 3 hurricane that flooded 80 percent of the city and killed more than 1,600 people in Louisiana and Mississippi. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.

Only thing is, the Galveston Hurricane in 1900 killed between 6 and 12 thousand people:

The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 is to date the deadliest natural disaster ever to strike the United States. By contrast, the second-deadliest storm to strike the United States, the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane, caused approximately 2,500 deaths, and the deadliest storm of recent times, Hurricane Katrina, has caused approximately 1,600 deaths.

So by what measure are we measuring "worst ever?"

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Elvish Girls Gone Wild: Hot Girls of Blizzcon 2007

Okay, make that hot girl (singular) of Blizzcon 2007. Q: Do they hire the hot ones or what? I bet Ace would know..... Requires Divx (Safe for Middle Earth but not for Narnia). more...

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Palestinian Terrorists Murder 3 Pali Children

Cowardice? Yes, but not strong enough. Murder? That's it. I don't know what else to call it but murder when you send three children out to retrieve the rocket launchers you just used to launch a terrorist attack against Israeli civilians. As if they didn't know that Israel would try to get any one hanging around recently fired rocket launchers. But to groups like Hamas and PIJ a Palestinian child is worth more dead than alive. more...

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Break His Fingers or Cut Them Off?

Yemeni President Saleh is just so sensitive, that if you write an article that reflects badly on him, he sends some goons to cut your fingers off. That should solve the problem.

Meanwhile Saleh receives international plaudits because he holds democracy conferences and has a "reform plan" which apparently does not include the freedom of the press to investigate government corruption or in this case conditions in jails.

Alert from the CPJ:

Yemeni editor abducted, severely beaten

New York, August 27, 2007­­­—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the abduction and brutal beating of a Yemeni editor by gunmen in Sana'a today. The local journalists CPJ spoke with suspected the gunmen are part of the government's security forces.

A silver Toyota SUV carrying six gunmen wearing civilian clothing descended upon Abdel Karim al-Khaiwani, former editor of the online newspaper Al-Shoura, while he was waiting for a taxi outside the offices of the weekly newspaper Al-Nedaa in central Sana'a at around 2 p.m. local time, eyewitnesses told CPJ. The perpetrators forcibly bundled him into the vehicle and sped away, the witnesses said. The witnesses said the license plates of the vehicle were covered with black material.

more...

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Caption This - If You Can Stomach It

The Associate Press has discovered a new way to trigger the human gag reflex:

Gulp.

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Sadr: No More Attacks on U.S. Troops

Why do I get the feeling that sometime last night a phone call was made to a certain ugly radical Shiite cleric telling him that the next Sadrist killed will be him?

Check and mate. AP:

Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has ordered a six-month suspension of activities by his Mahdi Army militia in order to reorganize the force, and it will no longer attack U.S. and coalition troops, aides said Wednesday.

The aide, Sheik Hazim al-Araji, said on Iraqi state television that the goal was to "rehabilitate" the organization, which has reportedly broken into factions, some of which the U.S. maintains are trained and supplied by Iran.

"We declare the freezing of the Mahdi Army without exception in order to rehabilitate it in a way that will safeguard its ideological image within a maximum period of six months starting from the day this statement is issued," al-Araji said, reading from a statement by al- Sadr.

In Najaf, al-Sadr's spokesman said the order also means the Mahdi Army will no longer launch attacks against U.S. and other coalition forces.

"It also includes suspending the taking up of arms against occupiers as well as others," Ahmed al-Shaibani told reporters.

I guess we're still not winning in Iraq?

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Is the Media the Enemy or Just Lazy?

Alas, a little of both:

The establishment media also has become more willing to show graphic video of US casualties at the hands of the enemy. CNN aired an insurgent sniper video obtained directly from the enemy. ABC News aired video of a Bradley armored vehicle blown up by an improvised explosive device as six American soldiers died inside, then exploited the grief of family members to attack the current “surge” of troops in Iraq. Similarly, CBS News spiked a story containing video originally posted on an al Qaeda propaganda website, but posted the same video on its own website.....

Take, for example, the coverage of events in Anbar province. In September-November 2006, the Washington Post ran a series of articles suggesting that the US military was unable to defeat the bloody insurgency in western Iraq “or counter al-Qaeda’s rising popularity there.” These stories were echoed in the New York Times/International Herald Tribune, The Christian Science Monitor, NBC News, ABC News, CNN, the AP and others, down to local TV.

Twas not so. Read the whole thing.

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Where's Rusty? Moving to Ulster....

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The New Worst Problem in Iraq

Greyhawk is blogging from Baghdad and he's a little upset about reports that the media and the Left are already spinning the Petraeus report. When this biggest problem is solved the next biggest problem is considered just as bad.

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"Some people might say it's not a very smart idea to throw 6 lighters into a blender..."

"...Those people would be right."

h/t : Glenn

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Huffpo Readers React to 100 Taliban Dead News

A post noting that 100 Taliban were killed yesterday by NATO and Afghan forces brought out the best in Huffpo readers. Kinda makes you wonder which side Huffpo readers are on, doesn't it?:

hope the taliban don't just blow you but first catch you and really crank up the "new and improved interrogation techniques, the same one we don't use and which don't amount to torture"...

what goes around comes around.

You live by the sword, you die by the sword.

How many babies have you slaughtered today you fucking piece of warmongering nazi vermin? ....

FUCK THE TROOPS ! ameriKKKan ones, nato ones...

The ever so willing and cheering intruments of nazi empire.

We mourn nothing...

they are not our "best"...

they are our greatest shame and dishonor...

heroin or speed (US issue) addicted rejects with the murder gene turned on...

slaughtering everything in sight, women, children, civilians...

what is there to be "proud" of?

criminals against humanity?

they all deserve to be hung for war crimes and following illegal orders.

If you disagree, you have serious cognitive dissonance issues...

Join me in PISSING, SHITTING, SPITTING on their graves or any combo thereof...

OR GO PUT SWASTIKAS ON THEIR GRAVES !!!!

...................../´¯/)
....................,/¯../
.................../..../
............./´¯/'...'/´¯¯`·¸
........../'/.../..../......./¨¯
........('(...´...´.... ¯~/'...')
..........................'...../
..........''............. _.·´
..........................(
...........................

Thanks to locomotivebreath1901 who dropped this in the comments on Vinnie's previous post about the 100 dead Taliban. Every blog and website gets vile comments from time to time--ours is no exception--- but since Huffpo has comment registration there really is no excuse for this.

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GOP Senators Hoping to Probe Larry Craig? (UPDATED)

That's what I'm hearing:

WASHINGTON -- Senate GOP leaders called for an ethics investigation of Senator Larry Craig yesterday as he dug in for a legal and political fight to save his congressional career after acknowledging he had pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct charges stemming from an incident with an undercover police officer in an airport men's room.

So, this is another one of those "shocked...shocked, I say" moments for the GOP leadership. I'm not buying it. I used to live in D.C. If you've lived there, you know it's a damn small town. Even as a bottom-rung nobody, I was constantly running into people I knew. And this is a town where the gossip mill runs at full clip. If Larry Craig's been looking for love in all the wrong places for any length of time, the "old boys' network" is well-aware of it. I'll wager there are plenty of Capitol Hill staffers with stories to share, should they be so inclined.

This isn't about whether Craig gets an impromptu prostate exam now and then. I really don't care about that so much. For my money, I think we'd all be better off if we could get past some of this stuff and just let the butt-pirates do their thing (in private). The truth is, though, that a closeted senator is, in this day and age, a prime target for blackmail, even if he's quiet about it. A senator whose hobbies include playing a rusty trombone in the back corners of a public john is a real problem. If your wife thinks that Snowball, Dirty Sanchez and Lucky Pierre are just the nicknames of your poker buddies, you may very well be a disaster waiting to happen. By knowingly allowing men like Mark Foley and Larry Craig to serve in positions of power despite their vulnerability to undue pressure, our nation's political leadership has, once again, let us down.

UPDATE : Below the fold, Sen. Craig from 1999, sharing his opinion on a "nasty, bad, naughty boy." (Warning: kinda creepy.) more...

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Clinton's Got a New Consultant: Zombie Fidel Castro

As we vigilantly man the Castro death watch front, el jefe has advice for Hillary Clinton: team up with Obama. Oh, and guess which U.S. President is the Cuban dicatator's favorite? Spoiler below. more...

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Abu Ghraib Officer Acquitted, Rights Groups Seethe & Whine

Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan has been acquitted of the three most serious charges arising from the Abu Ghraib scandal: failing to obey a lawful order by ordering dogs used for interrogations; cruelty and maltreatment for subjecting detainees to forced nudity and intimidation by dogs; and dereliction of a duty to properly train and supervise soldiers in humane interrogation rules.

Jordan was convicted on a lesser charge of disobeying an order not to discuss the abuse investigation. Jordan admitted to e-mailing others about the matter.

The usual suspects are seething and whining. AP:

"None of the cases brought to date has given the systemic accounting the nation needs of what happened, why and how far up the chain of command responsibility lies," Shamsi said. "It cries out for the kind of oversight and investigations that Congress can do."

How far up the chain of command did it go? It seems to me that by finding Jordan not guilty that the jury found that the scandal did not go up the chain of command at all. At least, the buck stopped somewhere below him.

Of course, nothing short of pinning the Blame on Bush of Rumsfeld is adequate for the Left. The same people who were shocked and horrified about our side building naked pyramids but say next to nothing when our enemies systematically torture and murder civilians.

As I've said many times before the sick cruelty of the prison guards at Abu Ghraib is torture in the same way that my three older brothers constantly tortured me. Abuse, yes....but torture, no.

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8 Hostages Go Free, Korea Loses It's Dignity

Thank God that the Taliban have released 8 of the remaining 19 hostages. However grateful we are, though, we should never forget that the price paid for these hostages' lives are the countless numbers of other hostages that will be taken. The lesson learned by the Taliban terrorists is simple: taking hostages works. Thus, more hostages will be taken.

We pray that God's vengeance on the Taliban will be swift and in the form of bullets from the end of a Marine rifle.

Breitbart:

Afghanistan's Taliban militants on Wednesday released five more South Korean hostages, raising to eight the number set free following an agreement with South Korean officials, according to a mediator.

The four women and one man were handed over by elders of Ghazni to officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross outside Ghazni, capital of the province of the same name, Haji Zahir, who has been mediating between the Taliban and South Korean negotiators, told Kyodo News.

Again, let us not forget that the Taliban murdered two of the hostages for the 'crime' of spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Meanwhile, a bit of clarity from an Afghan minister. Via AllahP this AP report:

"One has to say that this release under these conditions will make our difficulties in Afghanistan even bigger," the country's commerce minister, Amin Farhang, told Germany's Bayerischer Rundfunk radio. "We fear that this decision could become a precedent. The Taliban will continue trying to take hostages to attain their aims in Afghanistan."

Well, duh.

In addition, it also legitimizes the Taliban. When diplomats meet with a terrorist organization, it adds legitimacy to their cause and it helps them recruit more terrorists:

"Maybe they (the Taliban) did not achieve all that they demanded, but they achieved a lot in terms of political credibility," said Mustafa Alani, director of security and terrorism studies at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center. "The fact that the Koreans negotiated with them directly and more or less in their territory ... is in itself an achievement."

People generally only fight if they believe they can win. By negotiating with the Taliban sympathizers are led to the inevitable conclusion that maybe the Taliban are a bigger threat than they thought and perhaps they have a chance of beating NATO forces.

Good job Korea, all the murdered hostages, beheading victims, and dead NATO troops that will result from your capitulation thank you.

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Greenpeace Stunt Backfires

(Bangkok, Thailand) Last April, the Thai government passed a law banning open-field trials of genetically-modified (GM) crops. Greenpeace was elated.

Recently, it was reported that the Agriculture and Cooperatives Ministry was going to seek cabinet approval for a lifting of the ban on open-field trials of transgenic crops. Assuredly, Greenpeace was not amused and reacted by dumping tons of papayas at the entrance to the ministry.

Three truck loads of transgenic papayas sent the message to the ministry that Greenpeace wanted the ban to continue. It was believed that public and political support to keep the ban would follow the papaya protest. But it wasn't to be.

Passers-by and onlookers formed a flood of people grabbing up papayas. more...

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U.S. reportedly detains Iranians in Iraq raid

This just in from AP via MSNBC:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - American troops raided a Baghdad hotel Tuesday night and took away a group of about 10 people that a U.S.-funded radio station said included six members of an Iranian delegation here to negotiate contracts with Iraq’s government.

The Iranian Embassy did not confirm the report. But it said seven Iranians — an embassy employee and six members of a delegation from Iran’s Electricity Ministry — were staying at the Sheraton Ishtar Hotel, which was the one raided by U.S. soldiers.
...
Videotape shot Tuesday night by Associated Press Television News showed U.S. troops leading about 10 blindfolded and handcuffed men out of the hotel in central Baghdad. Other soldiers carried out what appeared to be luggage and at least one briefcase and a laptop computer bag.

A U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, declined to comment, saying the action was part of an operation that had not been completed. In Washington, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said, “I’ve seen that report but I can’t verify it.”

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7200 Raisins Ordered Up

MargaReuterVille takes appeasement to a new level. Note the scare quotes around the word insurgent in the headline.

Pretty soon, "insurgent" will be dropped just as "terrorist" was, and we will soon see the headline "Over 100 Taliban Freedom Fighters Killed..."

Still, who am I to quibble? Over 100 Taliban TERRORISTS have been sent to Hell.

KABUL (Reuters) - More than 100 suspected insurgents were killed in a battle with U.S.-led troops in southern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said on Wednesday.

The battle erupted after a convoy of Afghan and U.S.-led forces came under attack in Shah Wali Kot district in Kandahar province, it said in a statement.

U.S.-led close air support pounded insurgent positions in the battle, it added.

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Sen. Craig's Statement on His Guilty Plea

This is just wierd:

I did nothing wrong at the Minneapolis airport. I regret my decision to plead guilty and the sadness that decision has brought to my wife, family, friends, staff, and fellow Idahoans. For that I apologize.

In June, I overreacted and made a poor decision. While I was not involved in any inappropriate conduct at the Minneapolis airport or anywhere else, I chose to plead guilty to a lesser charge in the hope of making it go away. I did not seek any counsel, either from an attorney, staff, friends, or family. That was a mistake, and I deeply regret it. Because of that, I have now retained counsel and I am asking my counsel to review this matter and to advise me on how to proceed.

Video at HotAir.

h/t : Michelle

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Castro Death Watch

No corpse yet....... more...

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Sen. Craig: Not That There's Anything Wrong With That.....

Thanks to David.

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F.A.G.: You Can't Even ACT With Israelis

Actors, is there anything they don't know? Members of the Egyptian branch of the Film Actors Guild are mad that an Arab would appear in the same film as an Israeli. I guess when Egypt 'normalized' relations with Israeli that it didn't include Egyptian actors being allowed in the same film as Israelis.

ANSAmed:

The trade union of Egyptian actors threatened today actor Amr Waked with a ban of shooting films in Egypt if he plays together with his Israeli colleague in a TV film. A rising star of Egyptian cinema, Amr Waked was chosen to play the part of a son-in-law of Saddam Hussein in the TV film, a BBC and HBO co-production "Between the Two Rivers", about the life of former Iraqi dictator, who is played by Israeli actor Yigal Naor.

Waked, for his part, whines that he didn't know he would be working with a J-O-O, that he can't get out of his contract now, and besides, he argues, the film is critical of U.S. foreign policy and isn't that all that matters anyways? No joke.

Waked played in Syriana opposite George Clooney (pictured above from Team America: World Police). No complaint from Egyptian actors on that one.....

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Ace on Larry Craig (not literally)

Ace weighs in on the GOP's latest resident perv:

Over at Hugh Hewitt, there are some comparisons to the David Vitter situation. Here's one difference: Vitter isn't up for re-election and I'm not even sure whoring around is a misdemeanor in Louisiana.

And Larry Craig has repeatedly stuck his thumb in the eye of his conservative base. He was pro-amnesty all the way home.

I have a sneaking suspicion that perhaps he thought tacking to the left would protect him from the liberal media when this all came out. He certainly was behaving as if he were compromised. Well, if he had thoughts along those lines, I hope he realizes he was wrong to fear the liberal media more than his own conservative constituents. Perhaps if he'd been a good soldier we could manage to swallow our misgivings and fight (reluctantly) on his behalf.

Instead, we're left wondering which part of the Craig Agenda we're the most psyched about: The pro-amnesty agenda or trying to suck stranger's dicks in public bathrooms, which will of course benefit his very tolerant Democratic opponent.

I'm not sure I'm especially keen on either of them.

Amen to that.

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All Your Fakes Anniversary

Because I'm an idiot, I totally missed that Friday was the one-year anniversary of the release of "All Your Fakes Are Belong to Us."

In any event, here's an encore presentation, for any of you who missed it the first time:

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