Cindy Sheehan is camping out in front of the President’s property in Crawford Texas as part of a publicity stunt to accuse George Bush of killing her son in Iraq.

Cindy Sheehan has a home on the internet that you can visit. Here you will find George Bush called every name that a flaming Leftist can throw at someone.

I surveyed her writings and her view of the Global War on Terrorism. Her views seem to dovetail nicely with Michael Moore. It is no surprise that she is associated with MoveOn.org.

She always calls the President “George” not President or Mr. Bush or anything showing respect for the office or the man himself.

Cindy Sheehan seems to view Iraq as a peaceful and idyllic place prior to the arrival of the American military. In her essay, Where Do I Live?, she describes the Iraqi portion of the War on Terrorism as the “destruction of an innocent country” in an “unjust, immoral, and illegal war” where American soldiers are “killing and maiming tens of thousands of innocent people.”

Cindy Sheehan explains her son’s Stories from the Front as that of a young man that joined the Army in May of 2000. She gives no indication of his schooling or specialty in the armed services. He—like all young men—had hopes and dreams about what his experience would be like during his enlistment. If Mrs. Sheehan’s description is accurate, her son did not quite know what military life is really like. His expectations may not have been realistic.

(All enlistment contracts are eight years. Depending on the contract, the time of active and reserve duty is split. Most contracts are either two or four years of active duty. The active duty portion of the contract is usually based on the specialty that the recruit wishes to pursue. Sheehan is unclear about the details of her son’s contract.)

9-11 changed things; suddenly, her son couldn’t do all the things that his recruiter had promised. Duh!

After Casey enlisted he knew I was upset. He told me, “Mom, you don’t have to worry, Sgt. (I forget his name) told me that since I scored so high on the ASVAB (military competency) test, I will never see combat, even if there is a war. I will only be in a support role.” I can still hear his voice saying those exact words to me. Those words chilled me to the bone then, and have haunted me since 9/11. First of all, because I thought Casey would be sent to fight terrorists (and “terrorists”) wherever they might be, and I could see George and his warmongering band of neocons rushing us into a crazy invasion of Iraq.

In her essay, Still Not Worth It, she recounts her appearance on Larry King to comment on her view of President Bush’s nationally televised speech on June 28th, 2005 about the Iraq War. In this essay, she describes President Bush is “vacuous man giving his hollow speech “ She suggests that the President “could have always replaced the word “terrorists” with the phrase: “my moronic and callous foreign policies.”

“People have characterized the speech-lite in many ways, but if I had to pick a few words to describe it, I would say: “Hypocritical, manipulative, condescending, meaningless drivel.””

During Larry King, Senator John Warner spoke favorable of our presence in Iqaq. Sheehan described Warner’s support this way, “he fell in lockstep behind his Führer.”

Sheehan describes her appearance on Larry King as:

I finally got on to speak for my 82 seconds (all the time Larry King Live could spare for the peace message) about how this war is a catastrophe and how we should bring the troops home and quit forcing the Iraqi people to pay for our government’s hubris and quit forcing innocent children to suffer so we can allegedly fight terrorism somewhere besides America. How absolutely racist and immoral is it to take America’s battles to another land and make an entire country pay for the crimes of others? To me, this is blatant genocide. How dare we export our brand of flag-waving death and devastation to a people who have been through so much already? It wasn’t bad enough that our sanctions killed tens of thousands of Iraqis before we even started an active aggression against them. Now we have to create confusion, chaos, and disorder there. How dare our president and Congress, and we Americans, allow this to continue?

Her view of trying to bring democracy to Iraq is illustrative of her mindset. She laments the evil that will be unleashed on the world if “George’s endless war … is allowed to continue spreading the cancer of imperialism in the Middle-East”

She also unloaded her venom on John McCain.(Remember that she also met with him when she met with President Bush last year.) Commenting on Senate John McCain who was a Vietnam POW for seven years,

He hasn’t had a loved one killed in this enormous tragedy of a war, nor does he have a loved one in harm’s way. It has not affected him personally one bit. What skin is it off McCain’s nose if our troops remain for a highly unlikely rosy outcome at the cost of thousands of more lives?

Cindy is worried about America. In her essay,Where Do I Live?, she wants to know what you will do “When, God forbid, the jack-booted thugs come pounding on their door some midnight?” Sorry Cindy but Waco was when the other party was in power.

Eric Hogue asks about the Sheehan children.

In The Sounds of Hope, there is a poem by her daughter Carley. The poem reads in part
Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother’s grave?
They say he died so the flag will continue to wave,
But I believe he died because they had oil to save.
Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother’s grave?

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Fatwa: PR Band-Aid for Silent Community

A group of North American Islamic clerics and organizations have finally issued a Fatwa that purports to condemn terrorism.

Eric Hogue is among many that have vocalized the questions that many of us have asked for years. Among these questions is: Why now? What does this really mean? Are they for real or just providing some positive public relations? Is this enough to satisfy you of the sincerity of the Islamic community?

Hearing the discussion on his program this morning caused a flurry of thoughts to race through my head. My first reaction was to recall many recent terror attacks in the West.
  • On 9-11 did they condemn the terror? No
  • Did they condemn the shoe bomber and other foiled terror plots? No
  • When our troops in Iraq were attacked by suicide bombers was the
    terror condemned? No
  • When Western civilian contractors in the Middle East were beheaded
    did they condemn terror? No
  • When the Spanish commuter trains were bombed, did the respond? No
  • When the same resorts in Egypt were bombed on two occasions killing
  vacationing European and Israeli tourists, did they condemn terror? No
  • When the trains in London were bombed did they condemn terror? No
  • When a lone US Congressman suggested that if we were nuked that an
  attack on Muslim holy sites should be an option, did they respond? YES

My conclusion is that either these clerics finally figured out that they have been tone deaf for four years and it has resulted in deep seated distrust of their people because they have been perpetuating extremism by their silence or the Congressman has advocated playing by their rules and got their attention.

Either way, a press release is too little, too late. These folks need to police their own if they want to stem the growing distrust that non-Muslims have for Islam. They need to backup this Fatwa with action. Turn in terrorists before they attack. Condemn every act of terror from here on out, yes, even those acts committed against Israel. If they are not with us, they are against us.

I have heard several parsing of the actual text of the Fatwa. I find little comfort in the wording because clearly it allows for killing in some unnamed circumstances. “Whoever kills a person [unjustly]…”
What is just v unjust killing? Are non-believers of Islam covered by this or only other Moslems? How is “all people” defined? Is there a universal understanding or is everyone left to decide that for themselves?

I’ve been around enough theologians to know that each word was approved and no more specific than it had to be to get signers to the declaration. Unfortunately, there is enough room in this Fatwa to drive a Humvee through it without getting a scratch.

Many of the signatories of this proclamation have had ties to terror groups in the past. Are they finally seeing the light or feeling the heat? Or worse yet, are they covering their clerical butts because they know another attack is in the works in the US and they need plausible deniability?

I’m sorry fellas but you will have to backup your nice Fatwa with lots of action. As long as terrorists have aid and comfort from your community, you have not done your part. When the extremists are afraid and outcasts among your people then I will believe your polite words.

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

CAIR Unmasked: Live

Hugh Hewitt spent almost three hours this week with Hussam Ayloush—a spokesman from the Southern California Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Wow, what an eye-opening interview.

The CAIR representative kept trying to pass himself off as an average American guy who just happens to defend the rights of people who read the Koran and pray to Allah. He did a good job defending his point of view in a partisan sort of way. That is until he was asked to denounce actions that Muslim folks had taken against non-Muslims and then he was unmasked. (You could tell that he was holding back from revealing what he really believed.)

Hewitt nailed Mr. Ayloush with a question about the unprovoked attacks on Israel in 1948 and 1973. The CAIR representative saw nothing wrong with surprise military attacks on Israel with no provocation. He also had excuses about why the people in the Palestinian refugee camps were taught in school with maps that purposely-left Israel off the Middle-East maps.

At the mention of Israel, Mr. Ayloush went into attack mode and accused Hewitt of being a Jew lover and a hater of Islam. He then went on to accuse Hewitt of being a racist and a bigot. When pressed for answers, Ayloush went into a lame retort that he is a simple engineer and not a politician. In other words he was not qualified to speak on these matters. Excuse me, Hussam Ayloush, you were there as a spokesman for CAIR! This dumb bumpkin from the carpet bazaar act may work with some folks but he picked the wrong host on which to pull that stunt.

CAIR was revealed to be what I have often heard them accused of being, they masquerade as loves of peace and democracy but their true aims are the same as the terrorisms that plague the world today. They are obstructionists to a solution. Instead they run interference and provide cover for those sworn to kills us.

I often wonder if their brother Muslims were such caring and loving people as Mr.Ayloush claims, then why have they forced the Palestinians to live in refugee camps for over half a century? There is more than enough land and money in the Arab countries that if they wanted to absorb the Palestinians into neighboring countries they could. Apparently, it is better politics for Arab rulers to keep the peasants stirred-up about a non-existent external threat (Israel)that oppresses their brothers than to confront the oppression in their own nations.

CAIR will provide political cover and legal representation for terrorists but is not interested in rooting out the terrorists in their own community. It�s too bad. If they won�t deal with their own people, they will create a situation where those outside the community that they claim to represent will have to do it for them. They are setting-up the circumstances that they claim to be trying to prevent. (This is a common tactic of many special interest groups.) When a crackdown begins on their people they will have no one to blame but themselves.

Thanks Hugh for giving Mr. Ayloush enough rope to hang himself with his own words. Transcript on July 25 & 26 at RadioBlogger

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

American Hiroshima

Joe Farah, the man behind WorldNetDaily.com, posted a very disturbing article titled “Al-Qaida nukes already in U.S.” The article makes many profound assertions about the next attack on American soil.

According to captured al-Qaida leaders and documents, the plan is called the “American Hiroshima” and involves the multiple detonation of nuclear weapons already smuggled into the U.S. over the Mexican border …

I read the article twice yesterday, once at lunch and the second time last night to my wife. Her reaction and mine was how can this be? Farah’s article is part fact, part Tom Clancy and part Mission Impossible. But we must ask ourselves are his assertions true?

Unfortunately, there are no sources sighted to backup many of his assumed facts.

Farah claims that “Al-Qaida has obtained at least 40 nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union – including suitcase nukes, nuclear mines, artillery shells and even some missile warheads.” He goes on to assert that several nuclear weapons have already been smuggled into the United States.

This article then begins to morph into a long form advertisement for a forthcoming book about this very subject. This begs the question of whether this is a factual article or an advertisement dressed-up as a news item. Finally, the article then shifts to advocating better border security and the Minuteman Project.

I have spent enough time on his website to wonder aloud if Mr. Farah will be the publisher of the book that he plugged in this article. He uses his book sales to subsidize the support staff of his website. At the very least, I’m sure that this book will be among those offered to readers of his website.

The fact that the book plugged in this article will probably end-up for sale on this website forces me to question if this is journalism or profiteering.

As for the claims made in the article, I"m sure we can agree that Al-Qaida wishes they had nukes. However, I"m in the camp that believes that if they had them they would use them.