Blatant Reality

Slow news day + me being really busy = me posting my favorite IMAO article of the day. Read it. My favorite is the question about global warming.

Whats the difference between a terrorist and a person who likes to detonate things in public areas? A terrorist’s aim is to hurt people. The Basque terrorist group ETA seems to have forgotten how this terrorism stuff works. Instead of calling in 30 minutes after an explosion to claim it, they called 30 minutes before it detonated in order to warn people away.

State radio said ETA had issued a warning stating the location of the bomb and the make, model and colour of the car.

 

Media reported the police station and surrounding area had been cleared and cordoned off before the explosion.

 

State television said the warning had been received about 30 minutes before the explosion and there had been scenes of panic as the area around the police station was crowded with people attending a Holy Week religious procession.

Another murderer, this time “Chemical Ali,” is schedule to be executed within 30 days for his genocidal crimes against the Kurds.

Iraq’s Presidential Council endorsed the death sentence for Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as “Chemical Ali” for his role in the gassing of thousands of Iraqi Kurds during a 1988 campaign of genocide.

 

Al-Majid, a cousin of former President Saddam Hussein, will be executed within 30 days, President Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan said today on the party’s Web site. Talabani, a Kurd, is joined on the council by vice presidents Adel Abdul al-Mahdi, a Shiite Muslim, and Tareq al-Hashemi, a Sunni Muslim.

 

In June, the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Court convicted al-Majid of genocide and crimes against humanity. The death penalty also was handed down for his co-defendants, former Defense Minister Sultan Hashem Ahmed and the former associate army chief, Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti, who were found guilty of the same charges.

In order to try to stop troops from tracking them through their cell phones, the Taliban operating in Afghanistan have started to blow up telecommunication towers. Here is a perfect example of why terrorist aren’t the brightest crayons in the box. Rather than just disposing of their cell phones, they destroy these towers, thus gaining the populace’s animosity towards them. This really is a lose-lose situation for them. They lose ways to coordinate their attacks and lose potential allies in the villages.

Oh well, if this plan is an example of what the “best minds” of the Taliban came up with, I don’t think they will be around much longer. Plus, the Taliban seems to have forgotten this little fact:

Communications experts say the U.S. military has the ability, using satellites and other means, to pick up cell phone signals without the phone company’s help. Cell phones periodically send signals to the network even when they are not making calls.

Darn, I think those satellites might just a be a little out of reach for the Taliban. Well, as long as the Chinese don’t give them any help.

The associates of the people who learned how to fly commercial planes into buildings have been reduced to this. Just another example of how awesome our military is.

Two Pakistani Atomic Energy Commission workers were kidnapped yesterday along the Afghan border. This abduction came right after the Pakistani Ambassador to Afghanistan was reported missing. Pakistan has announced that it is starting to search for these missing men.

Pakistan has launched a massive search for the nation’s missing envoy to Afghanistan and two nuclear experts, who were abducted along with six others from the restive tribal area near Afghan border, foreign office said on Tuesday.

 

“Efforts are being made at all levels to find the missing ambassador”, Foreign Office Spokesman Muhammad Sadiq said…

 

Two officials of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) along with six others were also kidnapped on Monday by unidentified gunmen from a troubled northwestern area near the Afghan border.

 

“The PAEC officials Ziaullah and Bisaat Khan were kidnapped yesterday by unidentified armed men in Sheikh Badin area adjacent to the Lakki Marwat and Dera Ismail Khan districts,” local police chief Akbar Nasir earlier said.

Connected? I don’t know. But it does seem a little too coincidental.

According to the Washington Post, military prosecutors are going to seek the death penalty for six terrorists accused of the September 11 attacks.

In a news conference, Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, a Defense Department legal adviser, said the six, including alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, are charged with conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians and terrorism, among other offenses. He said a charge sheet details 169 overt acts alleged to have been committed by the defendants and uncharged co-conspirators in furtherance of the Sept. 11 plot…

 

Hartmann said Mohammed is accused of being “the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks,” which he allegedly proposed to bin Laden as early as 1996. According to the charges, he obtained the funding for the plot and oversaw the entire operation, including the training of the hijackers in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

 

the trials will be “as open as possible,” Hartmann said, and the accused will have the right to call their own witnesses, cross-examine prosecution witnesses and see the evidence presented against them.

 

“There will be no secret trials,” he said. “Every piece of evidence, every stitch of evidence, every whiff of evidence that goes to . . . the military tribunal will be reviewed by the accused, subject to confrontation, subject to cross- examination, subject to challenge. . . .”

I say if they are found guilty, they do deserve the death penalty. However, I have a feeling that my opinion won’t be the one heard in the coming months.

Today, Pakistan arrested two men in connection with the assassination of Bhutto last December.

Pakistani investigators arrested two men in connection with the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, the Interior Ministry said.

 

The men were arrested today in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, where Bhutto was assassinated in a shooting and suicide bomb attack on Dec. 27, ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said in a telephone interview. An investigating team of police and intelligence officials is interrogating the suspects, he said.

This is why we need to continue the fight in Iraq, so that these ruthless barbarians never gain control of that country.

Remote-controlled explosives strapped to two mentally retarded women detonated in a coordinated attack on Baghdad pet bazaars Friday, police and Iraqi officials said, killing at least 73 people in the deadliest day since the U.S. sent 30,000 extra troops to the capital this spring.

 

The chief Iraqi military spokesman in Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, claimed the female bombers had Down syndrome and that the explosives were detonated by remote control, indicating they may not having been willing attackers in what could be a new method by suspected Sunni insurgents to subvert stepped up security measures.

Ed Morrissey sums up what I feel about this situation (emphasis added):

If nothing else has shown the remarkable bloodthirstiness and heartlessness of the AQI terrorists, this should do it. People who would exploit the mentally handicapped as walking bombs have no sense of humanity, justice, or peace. They are, simply put, evil people who have no capacity for negotiation or co-existence.

 

In a way, this shows how desperate AQ has become. They obviously cannot fill their ranks with willing participants, and even hostages won’t suffice. Instead, they exploit the weakest and most innocent and use them as commodities to kill as many people as possible.

 

The Iraqis have seen this evil up close and have rejected it. They understand now that there is no accommodation with evil. It has to be defeated, and defeated utterly.

Because of the terrorist activities that have been generating from the Gaza Strip, Israel has decided to retaliate with slowly cutting off its electricity and fuel.

Israel’s Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the government’s decision to reduce fuel and electricity deliveries to the Gaza Strip as a form of “economic warfare” against the armed Hamas group in control there.

 

In doing so, the three-judge panel rejected the arguments of Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups that the blackouts and shortages caused by the cuts represent a form of collective punishment against Gaza’s 1.5 million residents.

 

“We emphasize that the Gaza Strip is controlled by a murderous terror group that operates incessantly to strike the state of Israel and its citizens, and violates every precept of international law with its violent actions,” the judges wrote.

 

The ruling clears the way for the Israeli government to begin reducing its delivery of electricity to Gaza on Feb. 7, and to continue cutting back the shipments of fuel used to run Gaza’s power plant, generators and vehicles. Most of Gaza’s electricity is supplied by power lines from Israel.

I like it how not only is Hamas a terrorist group, its a “murderous” terrorist group. Way to go Israeli Judges for not being politically correct!However, Israel is probably going to get a lot of crap from the international community for this and this incident will probably end up being discussed in today’s democratic debate. Be prepared to hear stories about how the US and Israel are the reasons why all these terrorists exist in the first place.