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POPSKaradzic's Nation of Murderers It is tempting, in a world supposedly caught in a clash of civilizations, to think that the only way to survive is to have the Kardzics in your corner, fighting to protect people who look like you, talk like you, pray like you. That is certainly what the young Serbian men who burned flags and threw bottles in defense of Karadzic believe. The logic essentially goes like this: “He’s a son-of-a-bitch, but he’s our son-of-a-bitch. And in a world of sons-of-bitches, you better have the toughest son-of-a-bitch in your corner.” That’s misdirected rage talking, not reason. Misdirected rage applauds “our” murderers, believes they are necessary. It not only thinks the clash of civilizations is real, it needs the clash of civilizations to justify support of its murderers.
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POPSThis is my Kind of Guy--Inyerface, in the Army and Green The banner remained hanging for seven hours, which speaks volumes about the sentiment among enlisted personal on the base. The fact this incident wasn’t reported also tells something about the attitude of the press. The accomplishment of which Bartelli feels most proud from his service was when he was assigned to design an infrastructure that would bring low cost power, solar and wind, to remote Afghan villages. “I spent a considerable amount of time writing and talking with vendors from Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, coming up with a plan that was affordable and as locally based as possible. By giving them solar and wind, fully sustainable, we could bring electricity to the villages.” While the chain of command eventually rejected it, there was little doubt Bartelli’s commanding officer chose him for this project because of his outspokenness on the environment.
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POPS"Honor Killings" In America but multiculturalism hits a crossroads when honor killings come to America. The United States has avoided this bloodstained trend until recently. Some consider Kanwal's death the first documented honor killing here. Others point to the murder of sisters Amina and Sarah Said in Irving, Texas, on New Years' 2007. (Their MySpace page remains up. Featuring assimilated teen culture and American music, it is haunting.) Their father remains on the run from police. In upstate Monroe County just a few days ago, a girl was stabbed by her brother for wearing immodest western clothing and wanting to move to New York City. According to court documents, Waheed Allah Mohammad explained the stabbing by saying his sister was a "bad Muslim girl." "Honor killing is a misnomer," author and exile Ayaan Hirsi Ali told me. "The killing occurs because these girls have allegedly brought shame on their family. The paradox is that these are individuals who have emancipated themselves.
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POPSThe Truth About Afghanistan Every American Should Know The pre-9/11 plan to invade Afghanistan and the oil pipeline deal behind it, that neither McCain nor Obama will discuss as relevant. Again 9/11 was the pretext for both Iraq and Afghanistan regime change and arranged prior to that "catalyzing event". pre-911: Unocal lavished money and attention on Taliban, flew a senior delegation to Texas Now: Afghanistan just signed a major deal to launch a long-planned, 1680 km long pipeline project expected to cost $ 8 billion. "Mission accomplished". Note the role that Karzai played prior to his installment. Note also how Pakistan fits into this equation which has nothing to do with terrorism. But there are only two practical ways to get gas and oil out of land-locked Central Asia to the sea: through Iran, or through Afghanistan to Pakistan. For Washington, Iran is tabu. That leaves Pakistan, but to get there, the planned pipeline must cross western Afghanistan
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POPSMcCain Blunders Again on Foreign Policy The "Iraq-Pakistan Border"? No expert on foreign policy clearly, or even geography. McCain made a big deal about going to Iraq many times before Obama, but he apparently did not learn very much about its location. Maybe that's how he got his plane shot down in Viet Nam.
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POPSMcCain gaffes pile up; critics pile on McCain's mistakes raise a serious, if uncomfortable question: Are the gaffes the result of his age? And what could that mean in the Oval Office? Voters, thinking about their own relatives, can be expected to scrutinize McCain’s debate performances for signs of slippage
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POPSObama is wrong While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country's strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world's largest oil reserves. If Mr. Obama's antiwar stance has blinded him to those realities, that could prove far more debilitating to him as president than any particular timetable.
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POPSObama would still oppose the surge
OK. This clinches it. Obama is utterly incapable of rational leadership. The terrorists were wreaking havoc in Iraq and killing hundreds daily. Now there is relative calm. Iraq is turning around. al Qaeda is out of Iraq. al Qaeda describes the situation as lost and say they can no longer recruit in the region. Iran is no longer having their way with propping up the insurgency. Intelligence tells us we are winning the hearts and minds of the Middle East. We have basically won in Iraq. However, Obama says he would still not support the surge after originally saying prior to the surge that he did not support the surge because it would have the "opposite effect" and increase violence. He is saying now that we should have let the situation in Iraq fester, withdrawn troops, hand the terrorists a victory in Iraq, allow the violence in Iraq to continue and instead concentrate on the few Taliban incapacitated in the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan. What a complete fool!
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POPSObama's Foreign Policy Goes Neocon--Unjust Wars Will Continue
The real Obama policy. Must see video interview (at link) where Obama 1) legitimizes the "war on terrorism" (as necessary and true war); 2) escalate war in Afghanistan (regime change, like Iraq continues); 3) willing to attack targets inside Pakistan--i.e. invade any sovereign country to kill and destroy alleged 'terrorists' (think collateral damage on civilians or wrongly accused from missiles and UAV drones). Watch the interview, Obama does not answer one "why?" question of Lara Logan about the "necessity" of the "war on terrorism", he simply dodges and assumes its legitimacy without reason or debate. UNJUST WAR is the problem here. Where is the protest? The "war on terrorism" is not a true or legal constitutional war, and enabling Obama to do the same as Bush without criticism is hypocritical and partisan blindness. It has always been the goal to finish Iraq and legitimize and spread the war on terrorism. Note the media: War = Patriotism
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POPSGeography John McCain Style It's amazing that this man believes he is actually more skilled in foreign policy than Barack Obama. There are teenagers that don't make the errors that John McCain makes routinely.
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POPSObama Lays Out Plans for Continued War I am posting this as a perspective. I truly and very unsure of how I feel about Obama. I have seen too many broken campaign promises in my life I have never found an unbroken one that I can think of.
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POPSMcCain Hits Obama On Iraq, Outlines Afghanistan Plan some of whose members have national restrictions on where their troops can go and what they can do. This is no way to run a war.” The Arizona senator touted the Afghan army as a “great success story” and said it needs to be expanded. He added that the global community should share the cost of doubling the size of the Afghan army. “We must convince Pakistanis that this is their war as much as it is ours. And we must empower the new civilian government of Pakistan to defeat radicalism with greater support for development, health and education,” McCain said. “Sen. Obama has spoken in public about taking unilateral military action in Pakistan. In trying to sound tough, he has made it harder for the people whose support we most need to provide it,” he added. “I will not bluster, and I will not make idle threats. But understand this: When I am commander in chief, there will be nowhere the terrorists can run, and nowhere they can hide.”
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POPSMilitants Kill Nine U.S. Troops in Afghanistan The difference in tactics is telling (4.00 / 1) In Iraq we are fighting a guerilla insurgency made up of numerous different groups, most of which are also fighting each other. It is a hit-and-run type of fighting made up of IED's and random attacks on moving groups. What you are talking about in Afghanistan is an organized assault directly on a military encampment. This type of structure and cohesion on the part of the enemy should have been annhialated several years ago. "The wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy" - General Omar Bradley