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Sen. Scott Brown Announces He'll Be Serving In Afghanistan

Wow.

Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown announced Monday that he will go to Afghanistan as part of his annual National Guard duties.

The Republican senator, who is a lieutenant colonel in the Massachusetts Army National Guard, will leave for Afghanistan before the end of the calendar year, according to his office.

"I have service obligations that I fulfill each year. Following in the tradition of other lawmakers who have completed their military service requirements overseas, this year I have requested to conduct my annual training in Afghanistan," Brown said in a statement.

Brown, who serves on the Senate Armed Services, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs committees, said his training in Afghanistan "will help me to better understand our ongoing mission in that country, and provide me first-hand experience for my duties."

Unlike the rest of the draft-deferring GOP who feel qualified to opine on matters military, I have hopes that Brown will have enough independence to lead the push for us to leave Afghanistan having personally experienced the futility of our operations there.



Change the channel?

BY THEIR WORKS, YE SHALL KNOW THEM

Change the channel. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt's advice to Iraqis who see TV images of innocent civilians killed by coalition troops

I wish I could be my usual smartass self, but when I read things like this and this, I just want to cry - or scream. Juan Cole:

Az-Zaman reports that telephone calls with residents of Mosul reveal that the guerrillas who took control of the city's streets the day before yesterday have burned all the police stations in the city and have released from jails all the criminals that had been incarcerated in them. In the center of Mosul, eyewitnesses said, the offices of government service agencies and economic targets had been set ablaze. A number of shops were attacked and/or looted.

Armed men roamed the streets and manned checkpoints between city quarters. Mosque preachers called on Mosul residents to flood into the streets to protect their quarters and government offices and shops. The main streets seemed deserted. American troops had withdrawn from the center of the city, but maintained control of bridges.

All signs of Iraqi national guardsmen and police had disappeared. The police chief of Ninevah province resigned (other reports say he was fired by the Allawi government).

US military spokesmen denied that guerrillas were in control of the city, and maintained that US troops and Iraqi national guardsmen continued to advance into it. US warplanes repeatedly bombed suspected safe houses of the guerrillas. Guerrillas had killed one American serviceman in Mosul on Thursday.

MF



John Amato On Maliki's Demand For US Exit

I get to talk to John Amato multiple times a day, but it's easy for me to forget no matter how familiar and frequent that voice is in my ear, most other C&Lers don't know what John looks or sounds like. But luckily for all you curious C&Lers out there, Jason Linkins, HuffPo's roving reporter at the DNC, caught up with John in Denver and asked him his take on Maliki's insistence that the newly negotiated withdrawal of US troops from Iraq is a "real" withdrawal:

Iraq and the United States have agreed that all U.S. troops will leave by the end of 2011, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Monday, but Washington said no final deal had been reached.

"There is an agreement actually reached, reached between the two parties on a fixed date, which is the end of 2011, to end any foreign presence on Iraqi soil," Maliki said in a speech to tribal leaders in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.

"An open time limit is not acceptable in any security deal that governs the presence of the international forces," he said.

Maliki's remarks were the most explicit statement yet that the increasingly assertive Iraqi government expects the U.S. presence to end in three years as part of a deal between Washington and Baghdad to allow them to stay beyond this year.



Mike's Blog Roundup

Lawyers, Guns and Money: It's breathtakingly simple, I suppose, to support a potentially endless mission in Iraq when you can't imagine that your decision to leave might have anything to do with the wishes of your hosts.

The American Conservative: The Surge is the new loyalty test. GOP party surrogates are demanding The Surge be recognized as a success!

Politics in the Zeros: More on bank failures

Scrutiny Hooligans: Get Your War On - Animated Version

The Rude Pundit: Guest bloggers from New Orleans take over for the week. Here's the lineup...

The Galloping Beaver: What US troops will be training the Iraqis to do as the "time horizon" approaches



(h/t Chris)

Well, given that Malkin and LGF are getting their collective knickers in a bunch over Rachael Ray wearing a fringed scarf in a recent ad for Dunkin' Donuts, shall we hear calls from them to boycott the McCain campaign, as it is quite clear from these photos that McCain's daughter and blog-mistress is showing her sympathy for them "terrists" and Ay-rabs like that them Yasser Arafat?

And as C&Ler Sean points out, the "Keffiyeh is also called a Shemagh and is used by almost every military force in the Middle East right now. You can buy it at most Army-Navy stores and is very popular amongst British, Australian, and US troops. It is not only used by the troops to help cover their mouths and faces during sand storms, but worn as a scarf to prevent suburn along the back of their necks during the day."

So what say you, Charles Johnson and Jesse, er...Michelle Malkin? Will you accuse the troops of sympathizing with the enemy and "mainstreaming terrorism"?



War plans: Not a last resort

I posted this before:

Nov 7, 2003

"In the few weeks before its fall, Iraq's Ba'athist regime made a series of increasingly desperate peace offers to Washington, promising to hold elections and even to allow US troops to search for banned weapons. But the advances were all rejected by the Bush administration, according to intermediaries involved in the talks... Mr Perle was travelling in Europe yesterday and unavailable for comment. However, he told the New York Times he had been told by the CIA not to pursue contacts with the Iraqis....read on

Think Progress: Bush Made Up His Mind On Iraq Two Months Before Invasion.

"A memo of a two-hour meeting between the two leaders at the White House on January 31 2003 - nearly two months before the invasion - reveals that Mr Bush made it clear the US intended to invade whether or not there was a second resolution and even if UN inspectors found no evidence of a banned Iraqi weapons programme...read on



Bill O'Reilly defames our WWII Troops

A picture named The-OReilly-Factor-Wesley-Clark-torturepics-10-03.jpg
Bill O'Reilly defames our WWII troops

In his debate last night with Wesley Clark, Bill said this to prove his point:

Clark: And let me explain something. You go all the way up the chain of command --

O'Reilly: General! You need to look at the Malmedy massacre in World War Two, and the 82nd Airborne who did it!

That is a flat out lie. (thanks to (Mccarthy.vg ) It was the Nazi soldiers that committed the massacre on US troops and not the 82nd Airborn on the Germans. Bill you just used false information to defame our own troops. How could you sink to a low like that just to try and prove a point in a debate. It took two minutes to discover your falsehood. I think you owe an apology to our military and every veteran who fought in WWII. How you could mix up an atrocity like that is beyond me and worst yet paint our own soldiers as being the perpetrators of one of the worst war crimes in WWII. Did you just pull it out of your---?



Bill O will be attacking Bloggers tonight/FOX Transcripts

O'Reilly will take his persecution complex to another level tonight. This is only a prediction, but the theme probably will be the evil lefties/Nice righties. It should be a hoot. Michelle Malkin will not be on who I initially thought would talk about the blogs. Try to guess who he'll have on to prove his point. By the way, reader Jackson found that the FOX on-line transcript of O'Reilly's debate with Clark goes like this:

Fox News Trancript
O'REILLY: General, you need to look at the Malmady (ph) massacre in World War II and the 82nd Airborne.

Crooks and Liar's Transcript
Clark: And let me explain something. You go all the way up the chain of command --
O'Reilly: General! You need to look at the Malmedy massacre in World War Two, and the 82nd Airborne who did it!

Was this an attempt to remove O'Reilly's assertion that US troops were at fault?

(Update): Think Progress has more on O'Reilly " How Blogs Are Destroying America"tonight: "We're sure it will be an informed, reasoned discussion, especially considering O’Reilly doesn’t even read blogs...read on"



The Therapist:
Spunky septuagenarian tells wrong-way traffic to 'go to hell' on way home

Santa Maria Ca.--79 year old Ellie Cook knew exactly what she was doing when she helped acquit accused singer, Michael Jackson.

"I listened to the testimony, "she said. "The luring, the sedentary effects of alcohol, the preparatory behavior. The hard core pornography. The lewd and lascivious acts. All the signs were there, and I believed them--but you don't sit near me, with your son's posterior in my legal purview, and give me a fresh look--cause I'll make those tiny glutes famous, sunshine."

Cook noted that a local Denny's had neglected to give her an unsolicited senior discount, and that the incident "played only a minor role" in ignoring the accuser's claims of being Jackson’s wanton, DNA receptacle.

"It was that little chick that blew it for the boy," she said. "Come up with a sideways glance toward the Santa Maria Sanhedrin, and it's Vitiligo Vertigo for the Gav-man, honey.”

Cook's tenacious mettle, while not enough to make her foreman, duly impressed her colleagues nonetheless.
"I was absolutely stunned," said juror # 10. "Charge after charge; molestation, preparatory alcohol distribution, lewd contact, the works. Ellie was unflappable. I could hear her remind herself that the mother's attitude was the issue. She's the true iron woman."

Cook's reputation continued, as she buckled up into to her 1974 Volvo and wrongly headed south in a northbound lane.

"See? Listen to that cursing," said Juror # 10. "Even now I can hear her say, I don't care if the accuser has a Jackson-funded man-port installed on that fanny, his mother's gonna have to eat that precocious smirk all the way to her kid's head shrink. You don't treat me like a dog, missy"

Cook is expected to activate her dormant plans for a book, tentatively titled, Sass Your Grandma? Let's Take A Little Walk Through The Megan's Law Database.

 

US troops reportedly gathering on Syrian border

Global News Matrix

A United Arab Emirates daily, citing unnamed sources, reported Wednesday the United States was massing troops on the Syrian-Iraqi border.

The pro-government al-Bayan daily quoted unidentified Arab officials as saying that Egypt and Saudi Arabia have reliable information from Damascus of U.S. military mobilization on the Syrian-Iraqi border.

The sources also told the paper the U.S. forces have repeatedly crossed the Iraqi border with the pretext of chasing infiltrators and Iraqi insurgents.

"I was absolutely stunned," said juror # 10. "Charge after charge; molestation, preparatory alcohol distribution, lewd contact, the works. Ellie was unflappable. I could hear her remind herself that the mother's attitude was the issue. She's the true iron woman."

Cook's reputation continued, as she buckled up into to her 1974 Volvo and wrongly headed south in a northbound lane.

"See? Listen to that cursing," said Juror # 10. "Even now I can hear her say, I don't care if the accuser has a Jackson-funded man-port installed on that fanny, his mother's gonna have to eat that precocious smirk all the way to her kid's head shrink. You don't treat me like a dog, missy"

Cook is expected to activate her dormant plans for a book, tentatively titled, Sass Your Grandma? Let's Take A Little Walk Through The Megan's Law Database.



Iraq Insurgents go on Rampage

Four car bombs and a man with explosives strapped to his body killed at least 61 people and wounded more than 100 in three Iraqi cities Wednesday as hundreds of U.S. troops pushed through a lawless region near the Syrian frontier...

Juan Cole also asys: The continued US inability to protect members of the new governing elite has been an important roadblock to stability in the country.... The jihadis are making themselves martyrs in order to give other young men a reason to fight. It is a recruitment drive. Since guerrillas have managed to kill about 14 US troops in recent days, moreover, it is a way of signalling that the US is not 10 feet tall, but is rather vulnerable. If the US has this much trouble with about 2500 foreign fighters in Iraq (and over 20,000 Iraqi ones), imagine the problems if the jihadi recruitment drive succeeds, and the foreign contingent doubles or triples.

I emailed John Tierney to ask him if its ok to report on today's suicide bomber's. He said that he's waiting for Rudy to get back to him so he can get back to me.