An Afghan National Army soldier opened fire and murdered three and wounded seven members of an Australian military training team in southern Afghanistan.yesterday. The ANA soldier attacked his own Mentoring Task Force 3 just as they ended a regular weekly parade at a forward operating base at Shah Wali Kot in Kandahar province.

To my best knowledge, that brings the grim toll of Afghan murders of their Western allies to 42 45 in the last 23 months.

The Sydney Morning Herald pointed out that the loss of three Australians made this incident "the single deadliest attack on Australian forces during the entire Afghanistan campaign."

The Herald report continues:

Another Australian sustained life-threatening injuries and is likely to be airlifted to a military medical centre in Germany.

Another four Australians were seriously wounded while two suffered minor injuries. An Afghan interpreter was also killed.

Australian forces - including some of those who were wounded...

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Khaled bin Talal, brother to Alwaleed bin Talal, Fox News' top non-Murdoch shareholder

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The ethical and legal failings of the Murdoch clan have made headlines for months with James Murdoch kicking up the most dirt in the British phone hacking scandals, much to the discomfort of the News Corp. board and shareeholders.

But what are even unconsionable, unlawful  breaches of privacy next to putting bounties on the heads of Israeli soldiers to encourage their kidnappings? A close family member of another major New Corp. player has done exactly that.

From Haaretz:

"Saudi royal offers $900,000 for capture of Israeli soldiers"

A Saudi royal offered a $900,000 reward to anyone who captures an Israeli soldier, on Saturday. Prince Khaled bin Talal, the brother of business tycoon Walid bin Talal, told the Saudi-based broadcaster...

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Yesterday's post netted some valuable and vivid addenda.

1) From Andrew Bostom came the canonical hadith that suports Shafiq Mubarak's teachings to US Marines not to -- how to put it? -- excrete in the direction of Mecca. This, Andy explains, is more formally known as "facing the Qiblah," which means turning toward the Kabaa structure in Mecca.

From "The Book of Purification", Sunan An-Nasai (one of the 6 canonical hadith collections), vol. 1, chapter 19, p. 35, "The Prohibition of Facing the Qiblah When Relieving Oneself"   It was narrated from Rafi bin Ishaq that when he heard Abu Ayyub Al-Ansari say when he was in Egypt, "By Allah, I do not know what I should do with these toilets. The Messenger of Allah said: "When any one of you goes to defecate or urinate, let him not face toward the Qiblah, nor turn his back towards it."

And thus, Islamic Twister was born...?

...

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Gen. David Petraeus, Col. David Furness, and Shafiq Mubarak (far right). Mubarak served as Furness's "right hand" during a recent deployment. "I can't do anything without him," Furness said.

And who is Shafiq Mubarak? All I can find out is that he is a Pro Sol contractor (?) hired by the Marine Corps Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning to help implement "the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, the winning of hearts and minds." At least that's how Col. Furness puts it. According to the North County Times, Mubarak didn't come to the US until 2008 -- from where the story doesn't say -- but has been working with US troops in A-stan "for much of the past decade."

How is that? Why is that? Dunno. What the story does report is that Mubarak teaches the do's and don't's of sharia -- kind of, Islam for Leathernecks.

Mubarak teaches US Marines:

Don't spit toward...

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From Politico:

The Obama administration on Monday treaded carefully around the announcement that Sharia law will be enforced in post-Muammar Qadhafi Libya, refraining from expressing disapproval of Islamic law as the foundation of the country’s new legal system.

“We’ve seen various Islamic-based democracies wrestle with the issue of establishing rule of law within an appropriate cultural context,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters on Monday when quizzed about Libya’s National Transitional Council leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil’s declaration on Sunday that Sharia law will shape the country’s legal system.

Nuland added that the “number one” priority for the U.S. was that universal human rights, as well as rights for women, minorities, due process and transparency, be fully respected in Libya.

Then, the "number one" priority for the U.S. is a dead duck. Islamic human rights, derived from sharia, and what we know as "universal" human rights are totally and mutually exclusive.  

...

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Iraq won't give us permanent bases, let alone immunity for our troops in Iraq to train demonstrably untrainable Iraqis. (I mean, come on; eight years and they're still not "trained"?) Score: Iran.

Now, Karzai says he would back Pakistan in a war with the USA:

"God forbid, If ever there is a war between Pakistan and America, Afghanistan will side with Pakistan," he [Karzai] said in the interview to Geo television.

"If Pakistan is attacked and if the people of Pakistan needs Afghanistan's help, Afghanistan will be there with you."

Anything wrong with this picture?

Sahar Aziz  just knows the clever Obama Justice Department's civil rights attorneys can come up with a way to redefine criticism of Islam as racial discrimination. Assistant Attorney General for civil rights Thomas Perez has "some very concrete thoughts" on the matter, whatever that means. 

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More on this story. Will any GOP candidate address this proposed gutting of the Constitution the Obama Justice Department is so enthusiastically "taking notes" on?

From the Daily Caller:

Top Justice Department officials convened a meeting Wednesday where invited Islamist advocates lobbied them for cutbacks in anti-terror funding, changes in agents’ training manuals, additional curbs on investigators and a legal declaration that U.S. citizens’...

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Readers know I often cite the excellent reporting of John Rosenthal, an American journalist based in Europe, on the events of the noxiously branded "Arab Spring," particularly regarding Egypt and Libya. Today, in response to my post on the killing of Qaddafi, John writes:

Thanks, Diana, also for the Lawrence Auster link. To be honest, Qaddafi’s death doesn’t just leave me cold. It leaves me feeling sick to my stomach. And I think I will be feeling sick for many days to come.

As Lawrence Auster correctly says, we killed him. There is no way that the erstwhile “rebels” would have ever defeated him or captured him without our hellfire missiles and the French Mirages. Actually, they probably could...

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Timing is everything. Qaddafi was not killed in retaliation for his attacks on American servicemen in Berlin in 1986, or the downing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in 1989. He was not killed for his central role in the USSR's terror networks going back to the 1960s and 1970s. He was killed after coming over to our side of George Bush's "war on terror" in the final phase of a civil war in Libya in which his regime fought al Qaeda affiliates.

Horrific as it sounds, Qaddafi was killed because we and our NATO allies joined the other side -- the al Qaeda affiliates.

Lawrence Auster elaborates on why the event rankles:

Kaddafi never violated his agreements with us and never became a threat to us or our allies. He spoke in the warmest terms of the United States and of Obama. Yet the instant that people whom we chose to call democrats rose up in rebellion against him, our ideology and what we perceived as our political...

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John Quincy Adams doesn't need to meet Abu Qatada

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The Justice Department's war on the facts about Islam, currently  playing out in a purge of fact-armed trainers such as FBI analyst William Gawthrop,  has taken a publicly aggressive turn as former US Attorney Dwight C. Holton declared AG Holder's "firm committment" to, as TPM reported, "nixing anti-Muslim material from law enforcement training."

“I want to be perfectly clear about this: training materials that portray Islam as a religion of violence or with a tendency towards violence are wrong, they are offensive, and they are contrary to everything that this president, this attorney general and Department of Justice stands for,” Holton said. “They will not be tolerated.”

As obliquely noted yesterday, such a diktat would ban the Koran...

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Dwight C. Holton, meet Abu Qatada

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From TPM:

Attorney General Eric Holder is “firmly committed” to nixing anti-Muslim material from law enforcement training, former U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon, Dwight C. Holton said Wednesday.

Holton, who was U.S. Attorney when the FBI arrested the so-called Christmas tree bomber, said that he spoke specifically with Holder about the “egregiously false” training that took place at the FBI’s training headquarters at Quantico and at a U.S. Attorney’s office in Pennsylvania, which was first reported on by Wired.

“I want to be perfectly clear about...

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Just FYI:

In order to meet a preliminary deadline for The Hollow Center (St Martin's Press, October 2012), I will not be writing my column this week or next week.

This week's syndicated column:

I am looking at a reproduction of an old engraving of Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulcher. It is in Bat Ye'or's book "The Dhimmi," which collects primary documents from history to chronicle the impact of Islamic law on non-Muslims through the centuries.

What is notable about the image, which is based on an 1856 photograph, is that the church, said to be at the site of Jesus Christ's crucifixion and burial, has no cross and no belfry. Stripped of its Christian symbols, the church stood in compliance with the Islamic law and traditions of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire, which ruled Jerusalem at the time.

I went back to the book to find this image for a reason. It had to do with last weekend's massacre of two dozen Coptic Christians in Cairo by Egyptian military and street mobs, which also left hundreds wounded. The unarmed Copts were protesting the destruction of yet another church in Egypt, St. George's, which on Sept. 30 was set upon by thousands...

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Lauchlin Currie of the US Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, the White House -- and the Kremlin

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This past week's syndicated column (posted a little late): 

The most amazing aspects of the accelerating American submission to the state are: 1) how matter-of-fact we are in contemplating massive government interventions, such as President Barack Obama's latest stimulus "jobs" plan, and 2) how virtually no one notices the blatant Marxist overtones. When someone does, a la "Joe the Plumber" at the end of the 2008 campaign season, he or she is mocked off the stage.

President Obama demonstrated how this is done in January 2010 when, during an unusual White House meeting with congressional Republicans about his pending health-care legislation – another massive government

intervention into the private sector – he declared: "If you were to listen to the debate, and,...

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On September 8, 2011, I joined Peter Brookes, Senior Fellow for National Security Affairs at the Heritage Foundation and John David Lewis, Visiting Associate Professor at Duke University at the National Press Club to discuss the tenth anniversary of 9/11 on a panel titled "The Islamist Threat: From Af-Pak to Jyllands-Posten and Times Square." The event was moderated by Elan Journo, Fellow and Director of Policy Research at Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. My segment begins around the 27 minute mark.

Charbaran, 2008 (photo by Paul Avallone)

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Whaddya know but I'm not alone in having Yogi Berra's sense of deja-vu-all-over-again on reading this week's  NYT report on Charbaran, Afghanistan. Me,  I just had a funny feeling about the place, about the repetitive motions US forces are going through, about the tired fruitlessness of it all -- about those "ruins of a government center that the United States built earlier," which was the tip-off to earlier, failed COIN efforts in Charbarn, as stitched together in my initial post.

But writer-photog-veteran Paul Avallone was there in 2008. He writes:

Gee, we coulda saved the Times (already heavily mortgaged) a ton of money just using my stuff from...

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The NYT reports:

Iraq's political leaders announced late Tuesday that they had agreed on the need to keep American military trainers in Iraq next year, but they declared that any remaining troops should not be granted immunity from Iraqi law, a point the United States has said would be a deal breaker.

The statement, issued as the political leaders emerged from a meeting in the presidential compound, sent mixed signals as United States officials and the Iraqi cabinet negotiate whether any troops will remain after the first of the year, when the forces are scheduled to depart. American officials were scrambling on Tuesday night to decipher the announcement.

Less than three months before the last troops are scheduled to leave — close to 40,000 members of the military are in the country — Americans are increasingly frustrated at the slow pace of the discussions. The United States has called for a prompt decision, noting the logistical hurdles of moving ahead on a withdrawal while...

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NYT photo: In what way is our constitutional republic better protected by deploying US forces (in Afghanistan at a baseline cost of $350 million per day) to search for munitions in the hovels of Charbaran along the Af-Pak border?

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The NYT this week carried yet another  report on yet another US  mission to "disrupt" yet another A-stan network with yet another first lieutenant sitting down with yet another tribal elder (only this one was named Mohammad --) while  troops searched yet another village, where Afghan troops had yet again probably tipped off local fighters.

The reporter, too, recognized this re-run of a re-run as he describes the meeting between the US officer and the Afghan "elder":

There was a ritual familiarity to their exchange, a product of a war entering its second decade. 

That ritual is also a product of the...

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This week's syndicated column:

Robert Conquest, pre-eminent historian of the genocides, purges and terrors of the Soviet Union, has long contemplated the blinders the West wears when looking at -- or, rather, not looking at -- the millions of dead bodies for which the gigantically Evil Empire was responsible.

"Why people didn't, and still don't, understand the communist regimes has to do with their concentration on reputable, or reputable-sounding, phenomena," Conquest wrote in a 2005 essay. "This is what amounts to an attempt to tame the data or, perhaps more correctly, a mental or psychological bent toward blocking the real essentials, the real meaning."

In only rare instances...

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Most of the headlines about the Afghan who shot and killed American plumber Jay Henigan inside the the super-secure US embassy complex in Kabul on September 25 describe the shooter as an "Afghan worker" or an "Afghan employee of the US embassy."

The September 27 AP story about the shooting -- "Afghan Worker Kills CIA Contractor in Kabul" -- is typical. Later in the story, however, we read this:

A U.S. official in Washington said the Afghan attacker was providing security to the CIA office ...

Embassy spokesman Gavin Sundwall declined to comment on what the targeted annex was used for, citing security reasons. Sundwall said the Afghan employee was not authorized to carry a weapon, and it was not clear how the man was able to get a gun into the secured compound.

...

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Remember when "Operation Infinite Justice" -- the post-9/11 US military build-up -- was quickly  changed  to "Operation Enduring Freedom" because Islam believes only Allah dispenses "infinite justice"?

Well, now that as many 50 Pakistani imams in the Sunni Ittehad Council --  Facebook page here -- have declared jihad on the US, they have also declared that it is haram (forbidden) to call the U.S. a superpower because only Allah deserves the title.

Of course, Pakistan has been fighting a jihad against the American Superdumbpower (is that ok???) for a long time -- even as it has been collecting billions in backsheesh -- US taxpayer dollars. This week, we learned about one skirmish in that jihad -- the deliberate and concerted...

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Five British soldiers shot and killed by a 'rogue' Afghan policeman in Helmand province in November 2009. In all, at least 37 40 Western troops have been killed by Afghan "allies" in the past 22 months.

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London Telegraph: "Commanders ignored warnings that British troops were at risk from attack by Afghan allies: carry a loaded pistol whenever working alongside them, secret Nato report warned"

The report, ordered after a rogue Afghan policeman shot dead five British servicemen, recommended that British troops should be armed with 9mm pistols at all times - even when sleeping - because of the high risk of being attacked.



...

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This week's syndicated column:

Only the U.S. military could build a defensive wall of words -- "dismounted complex blast injury" (DCBI) -- around the bare fact that single, double, triple, even quadruple amputations are up sharply among U.S. forces on foot patrol in Afghanistan. So are associated pelvic, abdominal and genital injuries, according to a newly released report.

But even the antiseptic language of the report is excruciating, as when it calls for "further refinement" of "aggressive pain management at the POI (point of injury)," or highlights the need to train more military urologists in "phallic reconstruction surgery."

It isn't management but prevention that is called for.

These grievous injuries have increased because more U.S. forces are on foot patrol in Afghanistan. More Americans are on foot patrol in Afghanistan...

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My upcoming column this week takes off from a new report on the continuing spike in amputations among US troops in Afghanistan. The AP reports: 

The counterinsurgency tactic that is sending U.S. soldiers out on foot patrols among the Afghan people, rather than riding in armored vehicles, has contributed to a dramatic increase in arm and leg amputations, genital injuries and the loss of multiple limbs following blast injuries.



The number of U.S. troops who had amputations rose sharply from 86 in 2009, to 187 in 2010 and 147 so far this year, military officials said Tuesday, releasing the report on catastrophic wounds.

Of those, the number of troops who lost two or three limbs rose from 23 in 2009 to 72 last year to 77 so far this year. ... The soldier on foot is at greater risk for severe injuries, Tuesday's...

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My title today conjures up all the wrong imagery because "the doors of perception," which comes to us from William Blake, was taken by Aldous Huxley as the title of his book of reflections on mescaline, which was taken by Jim Morrison as the name of his band. My concern with "the doors" is not at all psychodelic, although I suddenly find that this is likely the one opportune moment I will ever have  to drop the fact that in the mid-1950s, Aldous Huxley invited my late father, Elliot West, a Hollywood writer and novelist, to take mescaline with him.

Dad declined, although he did do what he could to help Huxley in his surprising quest to get a television writing job -- surprising as in: The great Aldous Huxley, author of the genius "Brave New World" and crackling novels such as "Point Counter Point," essays, poetry, and even co-credit on the excellent 1940 screenplay of "Pride and Prejudice," can't get a lousy TV job just  by clearing his throat? Apparently not, and my mother still recalls how Huxley broached the subject while examining the cover of an LP (record, kids) of the musical "Kismet" at such close range that it was half an inch from  his eyeballs. Huxley was very nearly blind; hence, his desire for mescaline, a drug said to intensify color and landscape.

...

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From the Guardian, an essay by Naina Patel, a 30-year-old barrister who spent last year bringing law to Afghanistan. Only what kind, pray tell?

During the year, I began to understand how fortunate we are to have only one set of laws in Britain. Afghanistan is really three legal systems within one: the state system, dating back to the reign of King Amanullah, inspired by the codes of Turkey and Egypt; sharia, founded on ancient religious texts and their interpretation; and customary law, such as Pashtunwali, the strict honour code of the Pashtuns. Only the first two of these are explicitly recognised in the country's constitution. Still, the result is a confusing labyrinth of rules and norms, which only heightens the challenge of providing high quality and consistent justice.

The problem...

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This week's syndicated column:

Having passed the 10th anniversary of 9/11, I can now say with certainty that something major was missing from all of the ceremonies, the symbolism and the media coverage. It was something that not only captures the meaning of the attacks themselves, but better defines our response to them than any other single thing. It is the face of the age itself, and it is not Osama bin Laden's.

I refer to the most familiar of the 12 Danish Muhammad cartoons, the one by Kurt Westergaard. I always think of this world-famous drawing as "Bomb-head Muhammad," for the lit bomb that serves as Muhammad's turban. (This is no fantastical image, as we learned last month when Afghan President Hamid Karzai prevailed upon local imams to implore their flocks to stop putting bombs in their turbans after three separate assassinations via turban bombs...

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If a tree falls in a forest  -- no, if a bunch of al Qaeda and Hezbollah "flickers" seize power of the ninth largest oil state with NATO and US support -- will anyone take notice?

Not the New York Times and pals -- until it's too late.

From today's Old, Grey (Blind) Lady, Page One:

"Islamists' Growing Sway Raises Questions for Libya"

TRIPOLI, Libya — In the emerging post-Qaddafi Libya, the most influential politician may well be Ali Sallabi, who has no formal title but commands broad respect as an Islamic scholar and populist orator who was instrumental in leading the mass uprising.

The most powerful military leader is now Abdel Hakim Belhaj, the former leader of a hard-line group once believed to be aligned with Al Qaeda.

"Once believed"? What a deceptively fuzzy term to use given that the US State Department, in its 2008 rundown of terrorist organizations, describes a 2007 "merger" between Belhaj's "hard-line group" (the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group) and al Qaeda!

...

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News from Vlaams Belang -- and, if Western-style liberty is your bag, it isn't good. A sharia court now presides in beautiful Antwerp. Of course, NATO and the US have enthusiastically supported the ascension of sharia in Libya, so will this news be welcome in the capitals of Europe and the US? The answer is two-fold, It will be welcome because it will be willfully, suicidally misunderstood, as the insipid response of Anwterp's "Alderman for Diversity" (below) attests. The dhimmification of the West is nigh complete. Thanks to resolute parties such as Vlaams Belang, however, resistance continues. The flame of liberty still flickers.

But for how long?

In a press release, the VB lion Filip Dewinter writes:

As we announced yesterday, a sharia court has been established in the north of Antwerp. This ‘court’, located within the so-called ‘Center for Islamic Services’, is an initiative of the extremist Muslim group Sharia4Belgium. The opening of a sharia court in Antwerp...

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The Daily Mail today reports:

Libya's interim leader has said Sharia law will be used as the basis for new legislation as the country removes all traces of the Gaddafi regime.

Mustafa Abdel Jalil, making his first public speech in Tripoli in front of 10,000 people, warned against reprisals by rebel forces against elements of the Gaddafi regime.

And he said that 'extremist ideology' would not be tolerated under the new regime.

Under a sharia regime, "extremist ideology" includes freedom of religion, freedom of speech, equal rights for women and non-Muslims -- that kind of thing. The Daily Mail story continues:

The National Transitional Council chairman said: 'We seek a state of law, prosperity and one where sharia is the main source for legislation, and this requires many things and conditions.'...

Back in 2005, it occurred to me that the US "war on terror" was in fact all about "making the world safe for sharia." Our interventions in the Islamic...

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Coming soon to Doha, Qatar: the political offices of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan -- Taliban HQ.

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On September 10, the Islamic jihadists of Afghanistan, commonly known as the Taliban, massively struck at a US military outpost with a truck bomb that left a 20-foot-deep crater, wounding scores of Americans, mainly with concussions.

On September 11, President Barack Hussein Obama read Psalm 46 at Ground Zero: "Come, behold the works of the Lord, how he has wrought desolations in the earth." As Robert Spencer pointed out, "The only people who think that 9/11 was an act of the Supreme Being wreaking desolations on the earth are...Islamic jihadists."

On September 12, the Times of London reported...

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If you want to know what anniversary we celebrate (or should) for the 328th time today (and the meaning of the above illustration by Lars Vilks), go to the aptly named Gates of Vienna for the good news.

During a semi-bi-annual clean-up of my study, I came across an undated scrap of Washington Post on which Brookings' Robert Kagan briefly but thoroughly excoriated George Will for advocating US withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan. It apparently dates back back two years to columns Will wrote in September 2009.

Nothing could be more "disastrous" than such a "double surrender," Kagan wrote. His reason:

The consequences of such a retreat would be to shift the balance of influence in the region decidedly away from pro-US forces and in the direction of the most radical forces in Tehran, as well as toward al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban, to name just the most prominent beneficiaries.

That's bitterly funny. Two years later, the balance of influence in the region is ever more clearly with these same "radical forces" that our very presence, Kagan wrote, was supposed to counter.

Take Iran. Now revealed (but not by the US Government but by private attorneys in court)...

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This week's syndicated column:

It is something to have gone 10 years without an Islamic attack of similarly gigantic proportions to those of Sept. 11, 2001, but it is not enough. That's because the decade we look back on is marked by a specifically Islamic brand of security from jihad. It was a security bought by the Bush and Obama administrations' policies of appeasement based in apology for, and irrational denial of, Islam's war doctrine, its anti-liberty laws and its non-Western customs. As a result of this policy of appeasement -- submission -- we now stand poised on the brink of a golden age.

Tragically for freedom of speech, conscience and equality before the law, however, it is an Islamic golden age. It's not just the post-9/11 rush into Western society of Islamic tenets and traditions on everything from law to finance to diet that has heralded this golden...

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John Rosenthal provides a cheat sheet on Al Qaeda in Libya -- US-supported Al Qaeda in Libya -- at Hudson New York. It is shocking evidence of how far off course we have drifted since September 11, 2001.

Abdul Hakim Belhadj -- today, "commander of Tripoli"; yesterday, founder of the Al Qaeda affiliate called the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) -- wins Quote of the Day (via MEMRI), even if it does date back to the 1990s:

"The LIFG opposes all who advocate democracy or believe that Islam's victory can be achieved by any means other than jihad."

Ah, jihad. That little thing.

Oh, but he renounced such jihadist ways in exchange for his release from Libyan prison last year, did he not?

You bet. But he also renounced violence against Qaddafi -- and that pledge didn't exactly prove to be rock of ages.

Still, Belhadj does seem to have found a new obsession...

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The face of a drug and organ smuggler? Kosovo Prime MInister Hashim Thaci

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An update on this story.

"US prosecutor to probe to probe Kosovo organ trafficking"

PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) — A U.S. prosecutor will investigate claims that Prime Minister Hashim Thaci allegedly led a criminal network that sold organs of civilian captives during the 1998-99 Kosovo war, the EU's mission in Kosovo said Monday.

John Clint Williamson was named lead prosecutor in a task force set up to investigate allegations raised in a report last year by Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty, the mission said...

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Deputy District Gov. Mohammad Akbar Khan (left) sits with Navy Lt. Asif Balbale (center) and Lt. Cmdr. David Todd in the district governor’s compound in Sangin, Afghanistan, Sept. 3.

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Asif Balbale is a Muslim Navy chaplain and imam. He spent the past month visiting Afghanistan " to celebrate the Islamic holy month of Ramadan through religious outreach engagements across Helmand province," the Pentagon reports (gushes) at DVIDS. Sangin -- bloody, Taliban-riddled Sangin -- was his last stop.

Was he there to minister to US Muslims in uniform? Hardly. As Balbale himself notes in this interview, he ministers to US Muslims in uniform  only "sporadically." Instead, this was a dog and pony show for Afghan...

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The English Defense League has released a long, passionate and patriotic statement regarding the arrest of EDL leader Tommy Robinson. It is a testament to the state of crisis ordinary British people endure on the streets of British cities and towns where they are forced by anti-democratic, sheltered elites to live State Islamization. The statement is also an explanation: Tommy Robinson protests; Tommy Robinson inspires protest. Therefore, Tommy Robinson must be jailed.

Here is an excerpt from the post at Gates of Vienna.

In Tower Hamlets Tommy made a very clear statement: “When you let me out of court with any bail conditions that restrict my democratic right to oppose militant Islam, I will break them the minute I walk out of that court room.” The question then becomes: is Tommy Robinson being held captive because he has dared to challenge the authority of the court...

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Why is this man being arrested?

After giving this speech  about democratic rights and political freedom in Tower Hamlets, East London, English Defense League leader Tommy Robinson was deprived of both his rights and his freedom by the British state.

He is now on a hunger strike in prison in Bedford -- the "Bedford Lubyanka," as Gates of Vienna is calling it.

Keep an eye on this breaking story at Gates of Vienna, Vlad Tepes, and Here's the Right Side of It.

The Washington Times' Bill Gertz reports (links in the original):

Jihadists among the Libyan rebels revealed plans last week on the Internet to subvert the post-Moammar Gadhafi government and create an Islamist state, according to U.S. intelligence agencies.

U.S. officials said spy agencies are stepping up surveillance of Islamist-oriented elements among Libyan rebels.

Looks as if the  "flickers" have...

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Hard to tell.

So why not teach a class in how to fire rocket propelled grenaades?

This week's syndicated  column:

Beyond the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks looms another signal date in the annals of global jihad. That date is Sept. 20, when the Palestinian Authority's Mahmoud Abbas is expected to petition the United Nations for statehood.

What would a U.N.-ordained Palestinian state have to do with global jihad? Practically everything, because such statehood would mark a major victory in the long war on Israel's existence. And, whether unadmitted or unimagined, it is Israel on which the axis of Islamic jihad turns.

I've never been more convinced of this than after reading four, clarifying pages of Bat Ye'or's new book, "Europe, Globalization, and the Coming Universal Caliphate" (Lexington Books). In a first-chapter primer on the relationship between the European Union and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, much of which revolves around mutual animus toward Israel, Ye'or revisits the hateful perversion that passes for political normal: the relentless...

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No chemistry here as Mahmoud Jibril of Libya's Transitional National Council posess with Italy's Silvio Berlusconi after receiving Italy's pledge to unfreeze about $500 million -- read: tribute -- held in Italian banks on August. This apparently loveless match took place one day after talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy (below). Still, Italy's ENI oil subsequently signed a memo with the NTC to resume oil activity -- activity that was ever so briefly in doubt given Italy's relationship with Qaddafi.

Here's the real thing -- at least on Sarkozy's part. Notice that glow of gleaming Euros about him. Could it be that sweet deal with the rebels...

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France: "I'm shocked, shocked, that blood is being exchanged for oii in Libya."

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Via ANSAmed (with thanks to Baron Bodissey):

PARIS, SEPTEMBER 1 - France reportedly finalised an agreement with the National Transitional Council (NTC) at the beginning of the conflict in Libya on the basis of which the rebels would sign over 35% of Libyan oil to Paris, according to this morning's issue of the French daily Liberation, which noted that Foreign Minister Alain Juppe' ''was not aware'' of the agreement.

Right.

The newspaper has obtained a letter dated April 3 of the NTC and addressed to the Qatari emir, in which the rebels' organisation claims to have signed ''an agreement...

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France's Sarkozy may find it perfectly swell that an "al Qaeda asset," Adbelhakim Belhadj, is commander of rebel forces in Tripoli, a story gradually seeping into MSM consciousness. According to the Asia Times' Pepe Escobar, however, Belhadj, founder and "emir" of the previously (presently?) al-Qaeda-allied Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), is not alone. He is one of many such jihad commanders. Escobar writes:

Hardly by accident, all the top military rebel commanders are LIFG, from Belhaj in Tripoli to one Ismael as-Salabi in Benghazi and one Abdelhakim al-Assadi in Derna, not to mention a key asset, Ali Salabi, sitting at the core of the TNC. It was Salabi who negotiated with Saif al-Islam Gaddafi the "end" of LIFG's jihad, thus assuring the bright future of these born-again "freedom...

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Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the man who twice upheld death sentences in the Bulgarian nurses show trial and is poised to lead post-Qaddafi Libya. But don't worry: The State Department says he's a refomer.

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While making a correction in my column regarding Libyan "rebel" front man Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the former Qaddafi justice minister who now heads Libya's government-in-waiting, the National Transitional Council (NTC), I realized that US and NATO support for this man and the NTC and the "rebels" is actually worse than I previously thought, which was already pretty bad.

I don't refer only to the role Abdul Jalil played in the Bulgarian nurses show trial, which I mistakenly underestimated: I originally wrote that Abdul Jalil sentenced the five nurses and Palestinian medic to death when, in fact, as president of the Tripoli appeals court, he twice upheld their death sentences. Indeed, for these blatant perversions of justice (charges that the nurses had infected hundreds of...

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This week's syndicated column:

Here are three things Americans need to know about the Libyan "rebels" the U.S. government isn't telling us.

One: The inspiration of the Libyan war is as much anti-Western as it is anti-Gadhafi.

The "Day of Rage" that kick-started the Libyan war on Feb. 17 marked the fifth anniversary of violent protests in Benghazi, which included an assault on the Italian consulate during which at least 11 were killed. The 2006 mayhem, as John Rosenthal has reported, during which consulate staff was evacuated after 1,000 to several thousand men tried to storm and burn the building, may be linked to the Italian TV appearance two days earlier of Italian minister Roberto Calderoli. It was then that Calderoli, in defiance of worldwide Islamic rioting against cartoons of Muhammad in a tiny Danish newspaper, revealed he was wearing an undershirt decorated with such a cartoon. In remarks widely reported in Arab media, Calderoli explained that "the gesture was a matter...

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This is a map of known U.S. oil reserves. Oil production in any of these regions require no drone attacks, no NATO bombing raids, and no special forces on the ground. This would save US taxpayers at least $1 billion, the US price tag to date for installing a jihad-heavy government in Libya, the ninth largest oil state in the world.



A crazy policy, an evil policy, or both.

Now the fun begins: The division of (sp)oil among NATO.

Will Italy be the odd-ally out? Reuters featured analysis this week that considered the question.

It's important to remember the insurrection in Libya started in February with a "Day of Rage" commemorating a violent, 2006 protest against freedom of speech in Italy. Specifically, this was a post-Friday-prayers attack on the Italian consulate in Benghazi to protest an Italian minister's defiance...

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In the Iraq War on Defendants, killers go free. Captain John McKenna, left, was shot and killed by an Iraqi sniper while helping mortally wounded Lance Cpl. Michael Glover. The sniper responsible for both of their deaths was recently released by an Iraqi court. Today, the McKenna and Glover families marked their fifth anniversary of their deaths with a memorial in Rockaway.

From the New York Daily News:

The families had been assured that "as long as there is a Marine in Iraq, the sniper will remain in jail." Their already overwhelming loss has been compounded by the failure of the Defense Department to inform them that Muhammad (Big Ears) Awwad Ahmad had been released.

"Not to have called me or notified me," said McKenna's...

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