EMDII

Courage is facing your fears, and doing something when everyone else loses it.

The soldiers Psalm-

Psalm 91

We live within the shadow of the Almighty, sheltered by the God who is above all gods.

This I declare, that he alone is my refuge, my place of safety; he is my God, and I am trusting him. For he rescues you from every trap and protects you from the fatal plague. He will shield you with his wings! They will shelter you. His faithful promises are your armor. Now you don't need to be afraid of the dark any more, nor fear the dangers of the day; nor dread the plagues of darkness, nor disasters in the morning.

Though a thousand fall at my side, though ten thousand are dying around me, the evil will not touch me. I will see how the wicked are punished, but I will not share it. For Jehovah is my refuge! I choose the God above all gods to shelter me. How then can evil overtake me or any plague come near? For he orders his angels to protect you wherever you go. They will steady you with their hands to keep you from stumbling against the rocks on the trail. You can safely meet a lion or step on poisonous snakes, yes, even trample them beneath your feet!

For the Lord says, "Because he loves me, I will rescue him; I will make him great because he trusts in my name. When he calls on me, I will answer; I will be with him in trouble and rescue him and honor him. I will satisfy him with a full life and give him my salvation."

Where's everybody getting the jewels?

(oh boy)

Beautiful work!

Umm. Is that not what we're fighting AGAINST? Is that not the style of Hussein? And don't we call him evil?

This was a badguy, no doubt, and his death in a military operation is a fortuitous event. But the idea that we should execute without trials anyone we don't like is wrong.

fn

Correct. We and our military are a society of laws (althought he lawyers often get in the way). The only 2+1 he gets is if he persists in resisting or threatening other troops/innocents. Then, make certain.

Yes, finally!

The media won't tell us any good news unless it cannot be ignored.

I have many friends in several echelons of action over there Iraq and A'Stan. They honestly report on brutal issues like we see. They also report the items the mediatainment won't tell:

- schools open

- media outlets

- cell phone use

- Iraqis awarded Fulbright scholarhsips and attending school s in the US

- succesful Iraqi Battalion stand-ups and deployments

An example-

ALCON:

First off please allow me to wish all the mothers who might be reading a Happy Mother’s Day from all of us on Team Timber Wolf.

Just like every holiday that has preceded this one we were out running missions. We had a large Cordon & Search down in the greater metropolitan area of Balad Ruz (I believe that’s Iraqi for dump). Either way the IA took 31 prisoners and confiscated some 110+ AK-47’s, 9mm (which is a no no) and other rifles. All in all our day began around 0300 this morning (that’s 3:00 AM for those that might not be aware that 3 o’clock happens twice a day) and ended sometime after 1600 in the afternoon. A good day but a hot one with temps up around 115 degrees (we’re dreading July).

We have been over here in Iraq for several months and we have determined that the true enemy that we’re fighting is not the insurgency. We feel that the IA can hold their own against the insurgents. The insurgents know that they can not defeat the coalition forces. We do not feel that our enemy is the US press when they fail to print the true news as to what is happening here, although the press continues to make our job all the more difficult with their antics. Last week we had a reporter from CNN here on the post and this reporter did travel with some of the Border Patrol Transition Teams but was not received with open arms, if you know what I mean.

We feel that the true enemy is corruption. Our MiTT teams try to document everything that happens and ensure that our IA counterparts do likewise especially when property changes hands. All too often we have heard reports of corrupt IA military leaders selling equipment and parts to pad their own pocket, Iraqi government leaders buying their way out of trouble, IA military leaders selling thousands of AK-47 rounds for .50 cents each, and judges who are paid by the insurgents to let criminals and insurgents walk free because of technicalities in paperwork.

We have seen it happen and several “leaders” on our post have been relieved and sent away for corruption but it remains our true enemy. I know this type of corruption is alive and well in our own United States and probably happens ever single day, but down in the trenches where the lack of equipment could mean the difference between life and death for the IA and Coalition Soldiers it becomes personal.

We have found the Iraqi Army to be a motivated fighting force worthy of defeating all enemies that they may face. The story may be different throughout the country due to different levels of training for each unit, but the soldiers are willing to serve their country but they too grow frustrated. We feel that once the corruption is stopped or at least contained this Army will take a large step forward to the next level. I’ll get off the soap box now.

Once again Happy Mother’s Day to all the Moms out there! We’re approaching about seventy-five more days remaining before we leave the hot desert to travel back to hot Indiana (only for five days) and then Fort Home. Have a great week.

This is a Captain whom I had the privelege of mentoring as a young LT during one of my commands.

I have another friend/classmate (USMA 1975) who is the CO of the security detail responsible for Sa'd'Am Hussein. He has recounted from personal interviews, evidence reviews, and travel to death camps the brutal horror of this man. he also recounts that the material is prima fascia evidence of Hussein's attempts (albeit bumbling in hindsight) to become the linch-pin in the new axis of evil. This man and his henchmen deserve every punishment man can deliver. He will sit in judgement one day, even if not soon.

Think for yourselves. Use all the outlets you can. Refuse to be an intelligence sheep.

God have mercy on Al Zarqawi's soul. Mercy is NOT getting what you DESERVE.

We cannot take the gloves off. But we can make them (the insurgents) fear us more than they hate us.

Inevitably, occupying forces have to leave (Germany and Japan are good examples). It took over 56y for Germany, and there were insurgent ex-Waffen SS and SS who did exactly what the insurgents in Iraq are doing now. The Iraqis have better explosives, but we have better tehcnology too.

Having a Liberal political entity will not change the fanaticism of the Islamists, only delay it, if even that. Those who would turn their heads are sheep against the wolves. We sheepdogs are out there, doing what it takes to protect the sheep (who are not bad or stupid, they just can't do it for themselves).

Ignoring the Islamist won't make them go away, regardless of your political color. See Europe and Charles Martel for reference. Iraq is not Vietnam, despite what the Liberals would have you think. Read some history: the news media are NOT FN historians.

ROTFLMDAO!

Well done!

Soccer moms, yadayada.

- I am a "Conservative" by some liberals' reckoning

- I support pre-emptive wars

- I support the notion that inaction is a greater sin than mis-action

- I like sushi

- I love steak

- I hate those who would protect me from myself (you know who you aren't)

- I believe marriage is an institution ordained by God

- I believe that all are sinners, including me

- I opine that all politicians (ALL) should be forcibly retired after 6 years

I drive an Audi TT, an M-B C230 SS-K, and a Volvo 855 Turbo. I don't need protecting. You might.

I am a sheepdog in a world of sheep and wolves. Most of the world are sheep: they would rather I wasn't around because I have teeth like a wolf, and bark and smell like a wolf. But when the wolves come for you, you cry for the sheepdog.

"Never Will I Fail My Comrades"

Say a prayer for the families of those who have not, and who have returned. They are changed forever.

You are represented by the School Board, ergo a self-governing body. Not fed.gov. Since the 1st Amendment ONLY guarantees that you canot be 'pwned' by fed.gov, it does NOT apply in this situation.

All that schmuck about federal dollars affecting your school is tripe. So, as the Eagles say: Get over it.

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Congress had no part in your little mellee. Get your school board involved IF you must, but this ain't no 1st Amendment problem. They may not suspend you, but they can require you to behave IAW their rules on school property. The Board has been empowered by the local vote to act as the representative of the parents and government.

These lyrics are nearly apocryphal for us Road Warriors-

Here I come again now, baby

Like a dog in heat

Tell it's me by the clamor now, baby

I like to tear up the street

And I been smokin' for so long

Ya know I'm here to stay

Got you in a stranglehold, baby

You best get outta the way

Road I cruise is a oh yeah! now baby

But no, you can't turn me round

And if a house gets in my way, baby

Ya know I'm tearing it down

You ran the night that you left me

You put me in my place

I got you in a stranglehold, baby

Then I crushed your face.

Sometimes you wanna start higher

And sometimes you gotta start low

Some people think they gonna die someday

I got news, ya never got to go

C'mon, c'mon up...

C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon baby

C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon up

C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon baby

C'mon, c'mon, c'mon

Road I cruise is a oh yeah! now

Ya know ya can't turn me round

And if a house gets in my way

Ya know I'm burnin' it down

Ya ran the night that you left me

You put me in my place

I got you in a stranglehold, baby

Then I crushed your face.

So you guys are comfortable with detaining U.S. citizens indefinitely without due process.

Do you understand due process?

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Is he not a POW and Enemy Combatant?

Should my citizenship deter the court fom holding me if I constitute a Clear and Present Danger.

Yes, this is a tricky Q. Expound on.

You're next.

:ph34r:

- The state and local governments hosed this from the git-go. Ignored warnings, and then acted too late.

- FEMA is a resource management and coordination agency. Where's it going to go BEFORE the hurricane comes to town?

- where you going to send rescue eams when there are no airfields inside the disaster area, no fuel tosupport them, no electricity, and no water for life support?

- You can't turn anything bigger than a dime in the space of a dime. Even the CDN government can't. Suppyling hundreds of thousands of evacuees is not done w/ the snap of a finger.

The mediatainment create news and controversy. That's how the sell advertisisng. Ergo: criticims of 'big government' is an easy no-brainer for them. Essentially, NO got hit by energies far in excess of ANY nuclear weapon in inventories of the US or the Russians. THAT cannot be overcome instantaneously. PERIOD>

- Rule #1: when the governemnt says evacuate, and sends busses, get your @$$ in gear and move out.

- Rule #2: Government cannot protect you 100% of the time

- Rule #3: Park your city below sea level, and natural selection will clear the gene pool.

- Rule #4: mother nature is a oh yeah!.

I was'nt saying use the money towards rebuilding the city, I'd rather see the money used to get the victims in all the areas involved back to a normal life whether it be in the same area or not.  I totally agree it's not a good idea to rebuild there unless they find a reasonable way to insure that such flooding would not happen again.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers before the war in Iraq were in the middle of researching a better way to protect N.O. from a devastating hurricane.  But guess what?  They scrapped those plans since the resources had to go to use towards rebuilding Iraq.

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The ACOE that administers the navigable waterways of America never went to Iraq/A'Stan. Different organization from the Combat Engineers who deploy to theatre. If congress-critters diverted funds, the ACOE still had responsibility for oversight of the river. The Construction Engineer BNs use DA/DoD funds, while ACOE is DoI (Dept of the Interior) funding If I recall Correctly.

Che Guevara got the shaft.  People think he was a communist.  He actually was not.  He also lead forces in several theaters.  But america makes him out to be a bad guy.

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You're right: he was a Marxist-

<_<

Those Lieutenants I have grown and sent to the Stan all report wonderful relationships w/ the "normal" Afghan. Only the Tangoes dislike American soldiers.

:lol:

two words buddy....

Buck Fush.

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Another intelligent indication of the intellect of our college-bound youth.

:lol:

thank god this thread died, it was getting way to deep.

** George Bush SUCKS **    

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How intelligent!

:blink:

Dont worry EMDII.  This is why cananda never gets anything useful done 

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:lol:

et al-

There is 'some' tongue-in-cheek within. :P

what's that got to do with liberal education

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I associate, for good or poor, that all too often liberal institutions practice revisionist history 'education'. Ergo, some revisionists go so far as to assert that the Holocaust never occurred (that is an extreme example of revisionism), or that Japan didn't deserve an atomic bomb. And too often, Conservative revisionists assert that it is all government's fault.

I try to be 'fair and balanced' in my assessments. :lol:

Cheap labour and good suitcases and shoes does not imply genocide, in fact, i don't know many piles of ashes that can realign railway tracks or pack shells. People knew jews were being herded and persecuted, but few knew the extent of the genocide.

BULL SH*T.

You are the product of a liberal education, I surmise.

So tell me A- would you have turned a blind eye to saddam and his sons as they raped an pillaged their people? Would you hav continued to ignore them as they commited internal genocide, and by the way, continued to acquire WMD technologies so that sometime in the near future they would've destabilized the entire region, and thereby the entire world?

You sound like Neville Chamberlain in 1938:

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain gave a speech to the House of Commons on September 1, 1939, just hours after Hitler's troops had invaded Poland.  Chamberlain and others had spent years negotiating with Hitler in order to prevent another war in Europe, two decades after the Great War in which an entire generation of young men had been wiped out.  Negotiations with Hitler had included surrendering the sovereign rights of Czechoslovakia and standing by as Hitler's troops took Austria. 

By 1939, Hitler desired war and any further attempts to negotiate peace were doomed to failure.  The Nazis then staged a fake attack on a German radio outpost along the German-Polish border and used that as an excuse for invasion.  On September 3, amid the continuing Nazi lightning attack (Blitzkrieg) against Poland, Chamberlain announced that a state of war now existed. 

Chamberlain remained Prime Minister until May, 1940.  Following Hitler's invasion of Norway and Denmark, Chamberlain was driven from the House of Commons amid the hoots of derision from even his own supporters.  He was replaced on May 10, 1940, by Winston Churchill.

The union of Germany and Austria (Anschluss) had been specifically forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. Some members of the House of Commons, including Anthony Eden and Winston Churchill, now called on Chamberlain to take action against Adolf Hitler and his Nazi government.

Hugh Christie an MI6 agent working based in Berlin, met with Hermann Goering on 3rd February 1937. He immediately reported his conversation with Goering and included information that Germany intended to take control of Austria and Czechoslovakia. He also told Christie that Germany mainly wanted "a free hand in Eastern Europe."

In March 1938 Hugh Christie told the British government that Adolf Hitler would be ousted by the military if Britain joined forces with Czechoslovakia against Germany. Christie warned that the "crucial question is 'How soon will the next step against Czechoslovakia be tried?' ... The probability is that the delay will not exceed two or three months at most, unless France and England provide the deterrent, for which cooler heads in Germany are praying."

International tension increased when Adolf Hitler began demanding that the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia should be under the control of the German government. In an attempt to to solve the crisis, the heads of the governments of Germany, Britain, France and Italy met in Munich in September, 1938.

On 29th September, 1938, Chamberlain, Adolf Hitler, Edouard Daladier and Benito Mussolini signed the Munich Agreement which transferred to Germany the Sudetenland, a fortified frontier region that contained a large German-speaking population.

When Eduard Benes, Czechoslovakia's head of state, who had not been invited to Munich, protested at this decision, Neville Chamberlain told him that Britain would be unwilling to go to war over the issue of the Sudetenland.

The Munich Agreement was popular with most people in Britain because it appeared to have prevented a war with Nazi Germany. However, some politicians, including Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden, attacked the agreement. These critics pointed out that no only had the British government behaved dishonorably, but it had lost the support of Czech Army, one of the best in Europe.

Substitute Iraq for Germany, Kuwait for Austria, oil for lebensraum, and you get my picture.

So, you're an appeaser in my book, one who sniffs about the dogma of peace, while wolves bay in the darkness. You haven't an FN-clue, have you? Just becasue you wish there weren't bad people in the world who need killing, doesn't make it so.

Why don't we have an icon for "CLUELESS"?

More in Afghanistan and fewer in Iraq? Who cares? Pointless to even mention it, as the forces on the ground are determined by Canada's government, not the military. Whereever the CDF serves, it serves well.

Canada's contribution to the War on Terror is significant. But your notion that America is somehow dishonorable by fighting for the stability of oil supplies in the ME is a fine hubris on your part. Should that region go Tango Uniform, you'll see real fighting over oil, not this nasty street war we engage in every day. Neither is pleasant. But it'll make the 70s look like Woodstock.

America and its allies are fighting the war of industrialized nations against those who wish to return to the mysoginist middle ages. It is a war that is inevitable, one of culture and ideas as opposed to wars of territory or access to some seaport or over some asssassinated Archduke. But in a way, it is reminiscent of Japan's causus belli for WWII: it had no natural resources. Including oil. Germany wanted land, lebensraum, and slaves to service the Greater Reich. The terrorists and their major supporters want to be pashas and princes, and control fiefdoms like Black John of medieval England. That is not a pleasant future to contemplate.

America desires unfettered access to oil, in a competitive marlketplace. I am not ashamed to fight for that. Neither are my peers. It is the Iraqi people who should benefit from the sale of their oil, not Saddam Hussein, or his terrorist post-apocalyptic thugs. But we see the world differently, with less nuance, and some 'liberals' claim we are unsophisticated . Bugger them: there are sheep, wolves, and sheep dogs. I happen to be a very lethal sheepdog, as is America.

Complain about it when they blow up Toronto? It'll be too late.