He served one year in Iraq and I thank him for that. Unfortunately, like all the other defeatists, he has decided to surrender after only two years on the run.
On Thursday, a year and a half after going absent without leave before his second deployment to Iraq, Army Spc. Mark Wilkerson plans to return to Fort Hood to face his fellow soldiers and superiors.
"I just could not in good conscience go back to a war I felt was wrong," Wilkerson, 22, of Colorado Springs, Colo., said Thursday at Cindy Sheehan's protest camp site.
About 50 protesters joined Wilkerson at Sheehan's site near President Bush's ranch. Roughly a dozen in the group planned to travel with him about 40 miles south to the central Texas Army post near Killeen.
Wilkerson, who said he never left the country but won't reveal where he was, has consulted with an attorney but does not know exactly what penalties he faces. Others have served time in military prisons.
Simple desertion has been decreasing in the military in recent years — about 2,500 troops last year simply didn't show up for work, down from almost 5,000 in 2001, according to the Pentagon public affairs office.
Wilkerson was just 17 when he enlisted in the Army. He wanted to follow in the footsteps of his father and grandparents, who also served in the military. Then after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he felt even more sure of his decision, he said.
It's hard to criticize someone who went to Iraq--especially when I did not. Also, because I can understand the draw of celebrity when the leftist mobsters and media get their clutches on you. But he signed up and, therefore, broke his word to his fellow soldiers that needed him, the commanders that needed him, the President that needed him and the nation that needed him.
I hope his time in prison is safe and passes quickly.
To all those on the left who said that 'of course' they decry the attacks on the property and persons of Republicans (as detailed by Aaron very well here), when in terms of prominent Democrats at least, the rest of us only hear the quiet chirping of crickets, here's your chance.
The comments are open. I know that a number of left-wingers troll the site, so I'm waiting for you to denounce this. I'll even read something that paul writes. I'm even willing to wade through the "Well what about (insert mythical crime supposedly perpetrated by the Bush administration here)?" just to see if you actually, honestly, truly, in your heart, disagree with this despicable, sick, criminal behavior.
The miniseries will take viewers behind closed doors at the CIA, the FBI and the White House and into the world of Richard Clarke, Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney, Sandy Berger and CIA Director George Tenet, among others. Viewers will follow the international manhunt for elusive bomber Ramzi Yousef (Nabile Elouahabi, Eastenders) and meet several key players in the 9/11 saga, including: John O'Neill, the career FBI agent who spent years zealously chasing bin Laden; then-ABC newsman John Miller (portrayed by Barclay Hope, Stargate SG-1), who interviewed bin Laden; Emad Salem and other key Muslim informants who aided the U.S.; and Ahmed Shah Massoud, commander of the Northern Alliance, a crucial American ally and the person bin Laden feared most.
The 9/11 Commission Report instantly became a national bestseller when it was published in July 2004. Writer Cyrus Nowrasteh (The Day Reagan Was Shot) uses this historic document as the basis for a powerful story with action as gripping and far reaching as the source material itself. Shot in Toronto, Morocco, New York and Washington, DC, actors portray the famous and infamous, along with the formerly anonymous and often heroic people thrust onto history's stage. Beginning with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and ending on the morning of 9/11, the miniseries draws on detailed information from the Report and other sources to take viewers on an unforgettable journey through the events that presaged that fateful day -- to understand what went right and wrong, and what can be learned from this crucial eight-year period.
Former ABC News anchor John Miller, now the FBI's Assistant Director of Public Affairs, was also a consultant on the project. His book, The Cell, co-authored with Michael Stone, was optioned by ABC for use in the teleplay. In addition, The Relentless Pursuit by Samuel Katz was also optioned.
The Path to 9/11 is executive-produced by Marc Platt (Empire Falls). The producers are Hans Proppe (Anne Frank) and Cyrus Nowrasteh (also the writer); and Governor Thomas H. Kean (Chair, The 9/11 Commission) is senior consultant. The director is David L. Cunningham. The miniseries is a production of UHP Productions, Ltd., and will be distributed by Touchstone Television.
Don't you love how the Dems can just say anything they want calling people "liars" and "jerks" and "incompetent" etc. But let Rumsfeld challenge them and they whine and cry! How can these people deal with terrorists if they cannot deal with an American election???
Democrats chastised Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld Wednesday for questioning the historical grasp of Bush administration war critics, accusing him of engaging in "dangerous business."
Several members of Congress had been urging Rumsfeld's resignation before he asserted to the American Legion that opponents displayed the kind of thinking that delayed military action against Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany.
Rumsfeld said the world faces "a new type of fascism." And he warned against repeating the pre-World War II mistake of appeasement.
Rumsfeld's speech in Salt Lake City Tuesday, in which he also said that administration critics suffered from "moral confusion," prompted angry reactions from Democrats hoping to win back the majority in Congress.
"It is a dangerous business to accuse those who disagree with you of moral and intellectual confusion," [that's politics!] said Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. "Debate in our democracy is based upon respect, not vilification." [ah, yes. the whole "shut up!" rebuttal]
Said House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi: "If Mr. Rumsfeld is so concerned with comparisons to World War II, he should explain why our troops have now been fighting in Iraq longer than it took our forces to defeat the Nazis in Europe." [can she explain why our forces are STILL in Germany 60 years later?]
Rumsfeld said it "was apparent that many have still not learned history's lessons." Aides later said he was not accusing the administration's critics of trying to appease the terrorists but was cautioning against a repeat of errors made in earlier eras.
Nevertheless, Rumsfeld's remarks were seen by many Democrats in Congress as fighting words.
Sen. Jack Reed, a member of the Armed Services Committee, said Rumsfeld has been "substituting sloganing for strategy" [and "substitution sloganing for strategy" isn't a slogan???] and delivered a "calculated political argument" to make people believe that to support a war against terror requires support of the administration's policies.
"I think the analogy is very, very weak," Reed, D-R.I., said of Rumsfeld's comparison of Iraq to World War II.
Rummy struck a nerve with this and the administration needs to drive it home in the next 60 days.
(This is just a whimsical post of links to odd Cyberlaw stories. And no, Cyberlaw is a legal subject, it is NOT about those shameful dreams you have with the cast of L.A. Law, please keep those to yourself.)
That's what we will soon hear...just a guy with a Muslim-sounding name decides to start mowing down people in front of a Jewish Community center in SF (and others, including people on "Bush" street) with his SUV:
-- Two people, one of them a child, were seriously injured on the 3500 block of California Street in Laurel Heights.
-- Three people were hit at California and Fillmore streets. Witnesses said they included a man with a broken hip and a woman with a gashed head.
-- Two people were seriously hurt at Bush and Pierce streets.
-- One person was seriously injured at Bush and Buchanan streets.
-- One person suffered minor injuries in an incident at 1850 Fillmore St.
-- Two other people suffered minor injuries when they were hit at Pine at Divisadero streets.
-- Two people were hit and suffered minor injuries at Divisadero and Bush streets.
To understand the lefts' mindset, all we need to do is go right to the criminal mayor, Gavin Newsom*:
"This was so senseless and inexplicable,'' the mayor said afterward.
A man who is possibly a Muslim starts running down people. Utterly inexplicable...it's not like it happened before...oh, wait; it did:
Authorities say 23-year-old Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, who drove a silver Jeep Grand Cherokee into The Pit at the UNC-Chapel Hill campus around noon Friday, may have acted to avenge American treatment of Muslims.
Police intend to charge Taheri-azar, who graduated from UNC in December with a dual degree in psychology and philosophy, with nine counts of attempted murder and nine counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, said Capt. George Hare of the UNC Department of Public Safety.
The FBI joined the case because Taheri-azar, a native of Iran, "allegedly made statements that he acted to avenge the American treatment of Muslims. The ongoing investigation will work to confirm this," said Special Agent Richard Kolko, an FBI spokesman in Washington.
*It's funny, he actually BROKE THE LAW by marrying homosexual couples and yet I don't see any Democratic protests or demands for him to be "frog marched" anywhere.
The pieces are not fitting together the way Fat Back Murtha and the Democrats/Media are hoping they would. Sgt. Frank Wuterich (the hottie), who is currently suing Fat Back Murtha for defamation, was actually recommended for a medal only weeks after the Haditha attack. This seems to support the Marines account of events and not what the leftist Democrats and the media wanted it to be:
The platoon commander for the squad of Marines who killed as many as two dozen Iraqi civilians during an attack in Haditha last year recommended later that the sergeant who led the attack receive a medal for his heroism that day, according to military documents.
Lt. William T. Kallop wrote in a praise-filled memo that the incident on Nov. 19, 2005, was part of a complex insurgent ambush that included a powerful roadside bomb followed by a high volume of automatic-weapons fire from several houses in the neighborhood. He lauded Sgt. Frank Wuterich for his leadership in the "counterattack" on three houses while the unit received sporadic enemy fire.
The proposed citation indicates that Kallop -- the only Marine officer at the scene as the incident unfolded -- believed the unit was under a coordinated insurgent attack when Marines stormed civilian homes and opened fire, killing women and children. Whether Marines felt threatened and believed the homes to be hostile is a central element of their defense against potential criminal charges.
It goes on...
Neal A. Puckett, an attorney for Wuterich, provided the documents and the Marine's regular fitness report dated Jan. 19 to The Washington Post, saying they support his client's version of events, and show that officers in the unit believe Wuterich and the other Marines did the right thing in the Haditha attack. Wuterich has since been promoted to staff sergeant. The award was approved by the Kilo Company commander and was sent to battalion and, later, regimental headquarters before being put on hold at the division level, Puckett said.
Lt. Col. Scott Fazekas, a Marine Corps spokesman, said Marine officials found no record of the award. Fazekas also declined to discuss the Haditha incident.
While residents in the Iraqi neighborhood have said the Marines went from house to house in a rage, killing civilians in cold blood, Kallop complimented Wuterich on his calm demeanor and suggested that the incident led the Marines to valuable intelligence. Kallop arrived on the scene after the initial explosion.
"Sgt. Wuterich ensured that he had 360 degree security and led a counterattack on the buildings to his south where his Marines were still receiving sporadic fire from," Kallop wrote in support of a Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal with a combat distinguishing device for Wuterich. "That counterattack turned the tide of the ambush and killed a number of insurgents still attempting to fight or attempting to flee the area."
August 30, 2006 -- EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is adapted from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's speech yesterday at the American Legion National Convention.
THE American Legion has achieved a great deal for our country since its founding in the months following World War I.
That year, 1919 turned out to be one of those pivotal junctures in modern history - the beginning of a period where, over time, a very different set of views would come to dominate discourse and thinking in the West. A sentiment took root that contended that, if only the growing threats that had begun to emerge in Europe and Asia could be appeased, then the carnage and destruction of World War I might be avoided.
It was, as Churchill observed, a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last.
There was a strange innocence. Someone recently recalled one U.S. senator's reaction in September 1939, upon hearing that Hitler had invaded Poland to start World War II: "Lord, if only I could have talked with Hitler, all this might have been avoided." Think of that.
Once again we face the same kind of challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism.
Today, another enemy - a different kind of enemy - has also made clear its intentions - in places like New York, Bali, London and Madrid. But many have still not learned history's lessons.
We need to face the following questions:
* With the growing lethality and availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that somehow vicious extremists can be appeased?
* Can we really continue to think that free countries can negotiate a separate peace with terrorists?
* Can we truly afford the luxury of pretending that the threats today are simply "law enforcement" problems, rather than fundamentally different threats, requiring fundamentally different approaches?
* And can we truly afford to return to the destructive view that America - not the enemy - is the real source of the world's trouble?
We hear every day of new plans, new efforts, to murder Americans and other free people. Indeed, the plot recently discovered that would have killed hundreds - possibly thousands - of innocents on planes from Britain to the United States should have demonstrated to all that the enemy is serious, lethal and relentless.
But we find ourselves in a strange time:
* When a database search of America's leading newspapers turns up 10 times as many mentions of one soldier at Abu Ghraib who was punished for misconduct than mentions of Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith, the first recipient of the Medal of Honor in the War on Terror.
* When a Newsweek senior editor disparagingly refers to the brave volunteers in our Armed Forces as a "mercenary army."
* When the former head of CNN accuses the American military of deliberately targeting journalists and the former CNN Baghdad bureau chief admits he concealed reports of Saddam Hussein's crimes when he was in power so CNN could stay in Iraq.
* And when Amnesty International disgracefully refers to the military facility at Guantanamo Bay - which holds terrorists who have vowed to kill Americans, and is arguably the best run and most scrutinized detention facility in the history of warfare - as "the gulag of our times."
Those who know the truth need to speak out against these kinds of myths and lies and distortions being told about our troops and our country. This watchdog role is even more important today in a war that is to a great extent fought in the global media - to not allow the lies and the myths be repeated without question or challenge, so that at least the second and third draft of history will be more accurate than the quick first allegations.
In this "long war," any kind of moral and intellectual confusion about who and what is right or wrong can severely weaken the ability of free societies to persevere.
Our enemy knows this well. They frequently invoke the names of Beirut and Somalia - places they see as examples of American retreat and weakness. And as we have seen most recently in Lebanon, they design attacks and manipulate the media to try to demoralize public opinion. They doctor photographs of casualties, use civilians as human shields and then provoke an outcry when civilians are accidentally killed in their midst.
The good news is that most of the American people, though understandably influenced by what they read and see in the media, have inner gyroscopes and good centers of gravity.
And I am confident that over time they will evaluate what is happening and come to wise conclusions.
One soldier, who recently volunteered for a second tour in Iraq, likely captured the feelings of many of his peers. In an e-mail to friends, he wrote:
"I ask that you never take advantage of the liberties guaranteed by the shedding of free blood, never take for granted the freedoms granted by our Constitution. For those liberties would be merely ink on paper were it not for the sacrifice of generations of Americans who heard the call of duty and responded heart, mind and soul with 'Yes, I will.' "
I believe the question is not whether we can win. It is whether we have the will to persevere. I believe that Americans do have that steel. And that we have learned the lessons of history, the folly of turning a blind eye to danger, and of ignoring our responsibilities.
Today and tomorrow was planned to be the lynching of the Bush Regime over the failures of the federal government--the failures we exaggerated and amplified to take the spotlight off the tragedy that was Democratic leadership at the local and state level).
Now, with perfect timing, Colorado (RED STATE) investigators revealed that Karr's DNA does not match that of Jon Benet's murderer. What is fishy about all this is that the DA (who is part of Bush's police state) knew that the DNA didn't match on Saturday and waited two days to disclose it to the media.
This is carbon copy of the playbook employed during Dick Cheney's attempted manslaughter cover-up.
Obviously, KKKarr is one of KKKarl Rove's stooges. KKKarr made this claim to first divert the corporate media's attention from the illegal, imperial Iraq war. Then the Colorado DA sits on the negative DNA match for two days to release it on the Katrina Anniversary*.
This is a call to revolution. We need to pray and hope for more 9-11's to overthrow this dictator. A few lives are a small price to pay for the millions we would be saving.
Plus, John Mark KKKarr looks like and abortion clinic bomber. Has anyone investigated that?
*The one small benefit is that this fiasco covers up the revelation that Richard Armitage was the leaker in the Valerie Plame national security crisis; all of our accusations were baseless, but hopefully no one will figure that out.
In all the world nothing feels worse than the grief that we feel when a loved one dies. During such a time, words alone cannot alleviate our grief. The most that someone can do for us is to cry with us and to lend a shoulder to cry on.
The Bible tells of the time when a man named Lazarus died. His sisters Martha and Mary grieved. Lazarus had a friend named Jesus who went to Martha and Mary after Lazarus died. How did Jesus respond to their grief?
”When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, ”Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. ”Where have you laid him?” he asked. ”Come and see, Lord,” they replied. Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, ”See how he loved him!”*
Jesus wept. The ultimate preacher did not respond to Mary’s grief with words from a religious text. He cried instead. As the Jews pointed out, Jesus loved Lazarus. It would be correct to say that Jesus loved Mary, too. The one who claimed that he was “the way, the truth and the life” felt the same grief that Mary felt. And it would be reasonable to believe that Jesus gave Mary his shoulder to cry on.
What does this story mean to us today? Well, if God loves you like people say that He does, then He is going to be crying with you during your times of grief. He will do so even if you deny that He exists, because His love for you does not depend on you believing in Him.
In short, when you grieve, you do not grieve alone, whether you know it or not.
*John 11:32-36 (NIV) Last Tuesday my wife's family was shaken by the sudden deaths of two loved ones.
One was my sister-in-law Bessy. The other was Brian, a quadriplegic man whom Bessy attended to around the clock. The two of them died in an automobile accident.
Thus, I spent this past weekend attending two funerals.
So, when I write about grief, I do so as one who is currently grieving.
He served one year in Iraq and I thank him for that. Unfortunately, like all the other defeatists, he has decided to surrender after only two years on the run.
Don't you love how the Dems can just say anything they want calling people "liars" and "jerks" and "incompetent" etc. But let Rumsfeld challenge them and 
-- Two people, one of them a child, were seriously injured on the 3500 block of California Street in Laurel Heights.
The 
