The new Zombie Tools Vakra with its good pal, the AR-15.

The legendary heroics of Gurkha warriors lives on to this day. Last September 2nd, 40 train robbers found themselves outnumbered by a lone, retired Gurkha soldier. Yesterday (India’s Republic Day) he received further honor and accolades for his gallantry by the Indian government, bestowing upon him its Sourya Chakra, Bravery Award, and Sarvottam Jeevan Raksha Medal.

Story, via BlackFive:

The band of about 40 robbers, some of whom were travelling as passengers, stopped the train in the Chittaranjan jungles in West Bengal around midnight. Shrestha– who had boarded the train at Ranchi in Jharkhand, the place of his posting–was in seat no. 47 in coach AC3.

“They started snatching jewelry, cell phones, cash, laptops and other belongings from the passengers,” Shrestha recalled. The soldier had somehow remained a silent spectator amidst the melee, but not for long. He had had enough when the robbers stripped an 18-year-old girl sitting next to him and tried to rape her right in front of her parents. He then took out his khukuri and took on the robbers.

“The girl cried for help, saying ´You are a soldier, please save a sister´,” Shrestha recalled. “I prevented her from being raped, thinking of her as my own sister,” he added. He took one of the robbers under control and then started to attack the others. He said the rest of the robbers fled after he killed three of them with his khukuri and injured eight others.

During the scuffle he received serious blade injury to his left hand while the girl also had a minor cut on her neck. “They had carried out their robbery with swords, blades and pistols. The pistols may have been fake as they didn´t open fire,” he surmised.

The train resumed its journey after some 20 minutes and a horde of media persons and police were present when it reached Chittaranja station. Police arrested the eight injured dacoits and recovered around 400,000 Indian rupees in cash, 40 gold necklaces, 200 cell phones, 40 laptops and other items that the fleeing robbers dropped in the train.

Police escorted Shrestha to the Railways Hospital after the rescued girl told them about his heroic deed. Mainstream Indian media carried the story. The parents of the girl, who was going for her MBBS studies, also announced a cash award of Indian rupees 300,000 for him but he has not met them since.

“Even the veins and arteries in my left hand were slit but the injury has now healed after two months of neurological treatment at the Command Hospital in Kolkata,” he said showing the scar. “Fighting the enemy in battle is my duty as a soldier; taking on the dacoits in the train was my duty as a human being,” said the Indian army nayak, who has been given two guards during his month-long holidays in Nepal.

“I am proud to be able to prove that a Gorkha soldier with a khukuri is really a handful. I would have been a meek spectator had I not carried that khukuri,” he said.

Read the whole article.

Bishnu Shrestha, a brave Gurkha soldier in Indian Army who defeated 40 train robbers while returning home after the voluntary retirement from the Indian army, is going to be awarded with Sourya Chakra, Bravery Award and Sarvottam Jeevan Raksha medals during the Indian Republic Day celebration on January 26

Photo credit

There are many ways to deal with an adversary in the world of international politics. No matter how you deal with enemies who want to destroy you, it is important to maintain aloofness and not play out your hand too early, for in the arena of politics and war it is a mistake to be regarded as foolish or naïve by your opposition.

President Obama has set his own standards for dealing with ruthless enemies, from rules of engagement to reassuring our enemies that he wishes them no ill feelings. The inexperience and naiveté astounds both our enemies and probably soon to be former allies.

President Obama has once again lived up to his reputation as the quintessential Narcissist, who is so enamored of his own voice that he can’t resist telling our sworn enemies our strategic retaliation plans and of our plans to reduce our nuclear arsenal. In the NYT our president stated that by relaxing our nuclear potential and executing a policy of increasing the isolation of Iran and North Korea will make them see the folly of operating outside of accepted international norms.

Both India and Pakistan have joined the league of nuclear nations under similar conditions; and now Mahmoud Ahmadinijad and Kim Jong-il continue to laugh at the restrictions and mock the United States. Now rogue nations and our sworn enemy Radical Islam of ambiguous nationality have come to realize a Community Organizer who is both naïve and idealistic with Muslim sympathies is as good an opportunity as they will ever have to improve their position.

In a surreal move, our President has ordered that any references to Radical Islam be deleted in government and military papers to avoid Muslim nation assuming that we regard them through the prism of terrorism. This move has been well received by our enemies, especially Radical Islam and their media proxy CAIR. Of course these terms are used daily within the Muslim media.

Many Americans feel that a president’s first priority is to the people of the United States and not the sensitivities of enemies who boast every day about their desire to kill us and enslave our women and children. President Obama told Nicholas Kristof, a NYT reporter, in 2007, that the Muslim call to prayer is “one of the prettiest sounds on earth at sunset”, and then recites the prayer in Arabic, can logically cause Americans to doubt his intentions. Denying the existence of an enemy or obfuscating his mission with vague ambiguities can in effect leaves our citizens and military vulnerable.

The incongruity of our political situation and the vulnerability that results fro denying the presence of danger reminds me of an incident of denial and coincidence in the Peace River Country nearly 35 years ago. A customer of mine who lived along the Alaska Highway was hunting moose with a bow. I hunted with a bow when I was too young for my parents to trust me with a firearm and I was proficient enough to kill moose and elk with the bow; but it often meant hours of tracking that sometimes continued on to the next day. Once I was old enough to pack around an old military 8mm Mauser, I never picked up my bow again. To this day, I have only owned one rifle; although the only original part is the receiver and it has been altered to fire an ‘06 brass; it still has the eagle and Swastika stamps on the bolt and receiver, they made excellent rifles and me owning this one is a mark of freedom’s triumph over National Socialism.

I don’t begrudge the archer his sport: I admire his dedication and sportsman’s attitude. Although, when guiding Grizzly hunters who wanted to use a bow, I assured them that I was backing them up with my rifle; there was no debate open to that situation.

None the less, my customer, (a horse customer, not a hunting customer), was trying to call in a moose to a lick a few miles behind his home. He was hidden in some brush on the ground and there is nothing unusual about his method, except while using the call of a sexually frustrated cow pleading for the amorous attentions of a macho type bull, a two year old Grizzly walked up silently behind him.

Now as far as Grizzlies go, the most dangerous bears are the sows with cubs, the two year olds, and the geriatric Grizzlies. No one needs an explanation of why sows with cubs are especially dangerous, except to say that boar Grizzlies are known for eating cubs in a primitive method of population control and eliminating future competition for food and breeding rights; this is probably one of the reasons why sow Grizzlies can be more ferocious when they have cubs than other animals with young. The old ones, like me, can’t run as fast as they once could, their claws and teeth are worn out and broken and they are not the formidable beast they once were; consequently, humans eventually come to be more attractive as a food source; we can’t run with any speed, our swimming skills are laughable and we are weaker than a three month old cub, in other words we are easy pickings if they can overlook the odor of soap and the stench of civilization. The two year old youngster that has been just kicked away from the sow so that she can, hopefully, have another cub or two or three is another dangerous animal. If the cub didn’t learn his lessons well, he often faces starvation during that two year old year. Thus the human becomes more attractive as a food source: the elk and moose are wary, smart, and can run like hell. Humans in the mountains, tend to run like a blind fat man, how easy can it get?

This two year old was starving and was attracted to the strange moose calls from near the spring and thought he might just make the kill that would keep him alive. He snuck within a few feet of the sounds and there was a stinking human; throwing natural caution aside, he reached out with one paw and slapped the human in the head. Fortunately, the head remained attached (I once investigated the kill site of a Charlois Bull, with my friend Knarley Manners, the community wolf hunter, a Grizzly had caught the bull unaware and with one swat took the bull’s head off, the head landed 20 feet away, we’re talking about a 2200 pound bull); but the scalp flew down over my friend’s face and flipped him over on to his back. The starving two year old once again seized the initiative and jumped on my friend’s body and began ripping away the flesh of his chest in a ravenous effort to relieve his hunger.

Normally, a bear will bury a fresh kill under six feet of dirt and leaves to let it get ‘high’ before enjoying their meal. Apparently this is because they don’t have a cook stove and their teeth aren’t capable of the marvelous mastication abilities of human teeth.

Realizing he was now in a desperate situation, my friend reached for his knife.

Usually, cowboys, trappers, hunting guides, and men who make their living in the bush will carry a folding knife because of safety issues. The drama and look of the straight knife is forsaken for the inherent safety features of a folder. For some reason, my friend had a straight knife that day, and although he was temporarily blinded by the blood and his own scalp draped over his face- he made a valiant last ditch effort to stab at least once with his straight knife. The knife plunged into the bear and severed the carotid artery; the bear ran fifty meters and fell down dead. My friend placed his scalp back in a fairly correct position, walked out to the Alaska Highway and thumbed a ride to the hospital.

At almost the same time, another friend of mine, a trapper who was a little unscrupulous and had a dubious reputation, and tended to get in trouble with the law now and then for making moonshine and such was doing something illegal once again. He was trying to smoke a Grizzly out of a freshly dug den in a side hill. He had a brush fire at the bottom end producing a lot of smoke, while he was waiting at the top end with his rifle.

This is probably the oldest method of killing bears, our great ancestors surely did the same technique, except they and our native people, yes we are all related by experience and blood, were waiting with spears and bows rather than high powered rifles. The kill was probably never guaranteed and there was a good chance that someone or several could die in the melee.

My friend felt fairly safe with his rifle, while he waited for the bear to stick his head out the upper entrance. He became impatient and thought the smoke wasn’t heavy enough or hot enough so he piled on more brush and sticks to up the ante. He then resumed his position waiting for the bear, for it was only seconds before the bear made his appearance. He hit my friend at a dead run from behind. Surprise! The bear wasn’t sleeping in his den; he had been out for a walk. My friend was now on his back and the bear was extremely agitated. The bear lunged at my friend’s neck and face and he threw his left forearm over his face to protect himself; fortunately, he was wearing a thick parka and that tended to protect him while the bear was biting huge holes in his arm. While his left arm was being mauled, he tried to get his folding knife out of its sheath on his belt under his parka with his right hand. Every time he would grasp the knife and start to get it out of the sheath, the bear changed tactics and went for his abdomen, he would then protect his abdomen with his right arm and the bear would bite through the parka and into his right arm, after several switches, without getting his knife out, he decided to roll over and play dead, since he seemed to be losing the battle all to quickly with his present strategy.

After my friend rolled over the bear put my friend’s head in its mouth and shook him like a dog shaking a squirrel. At that point he passed out and when he woke up he was buried under snow, dirt, and leaves. He didn’t really want to crawl out from under his slow cooker; but if he was going to survive, he had to get out of there.

When he crawled out from under the debris the bear was gone. My friend stumbled to his snowmobile and drove 26 miles to the highway and caught a ride into town to see if anyone was at the hospital.

The hospital staff, being a fun loving bunch, put them both in the same room; I suppose it was in the forlorn hope that they could fine tune their bear wrestling skills by comparing notes.

Soon the moccasin telegraph notified me of these two lonely souls holed up at the local hospital; I figured it to be a twofer hospital visit, two visits for the price of one visit. A Conservative should always seek value for your effort or money.

They were in extremely good spirits, the hospital staff kept them in stitches with bear jokes, of course that wasn’t too hard, they each had over 500 stitches. They told me they were starting a bear club; but they were finding it hard to build the membership because of the initiation ceremony. They asked me if I wanted to join and I told them I would need to think on it for a while, I’m still thinking.

On one hand we have a hunter who was going by the book, much like a politician might while leading a country. He is attacked and by a stroke of luck and the sheer will to survive, he survives. Could he have been more prudent, yes indeed, when in Grizzly country, you are never supposed to leave you’re back exposed. The Grizzly often attacks from behind, waiting in a tree is the safest but this story serves to illustrate how being preoccupied with something leaves you vulnerable to another attack.

In the other attack, the man was doing an illegal act, but his primary mistake was to have tunnel vision and forget about the possibility of the bear not being in the den. Again, against all odds he survived by luck and sheer will.

President Obama has tipped his hand and told our terrorist enemies and more importantly the countries that fund and arm them that we will never respond to attack with a nuclear response. It is a small concession, that accomplishes nothing except for the opportunity to do some political posturing on the world stage; however for a country who has the money to finance such an attack and apparently there is no small number of Islamic martyrs who are more than happy to get a direct pass to the promised land with all the cool babes. Such an admission will not decrease the chance of a maniac sponsoring such an attack; it only serves to embolden his resolve, for if there is nothing to fear, why should you hesitate.

President Obama’s latest policy of ignoring the Radical Islamist by direct obfuscation of facts and by refusing to acknowledge the nature and purpose of our enemy only serves for him to posture on the world’s political stage and for the welfare of our country to be gambled upon by the naïve and foolish presumptions of a Narcissist; who actually believes his voice and demeanor has the ability to charm the Radical Islamist as successfully as the women who could faint on cue during the campaign.

There is one glaring problem with these presumptions by the president, the Islamic Radical is not stupid and like the Grizzly, he will exploit every advantage you leave available to take the opportunity to kill you

China’s Navy is going through a massive, blue-water build up too.

What could go wrong?

India has plans to add about 100 warships to its navy over the next decade as it seeks to modernise its armed forces, and develop its low-cost shipbuilding capabilities.

Captain Alok Bhatnagar, director of naval plans at India’s ministry of defence, said on Thursday that 32 warships and submarines were under construction in the country’s shipyards. Work on 75 more ships, including aircraft carriers, destroyers, frigates and amphibious vessels, would begin over 10 years.

New Delhi is sensitive to lagging behind Beijing’s naval might in the region. China has three times the number of combat vessels as India and five times the personnel. Officials are wary of port developments in neighbouring Pakistan and Sri Lanka that offer Chinese warships anchorages and potentially greater control of the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea.

However, India has one of the fastest growing navies in the world. Its fleet of about 120 vessels is the fifth largest. At the weekend, it launched a locally built nuclear-powered submarine, based on a Russian design, to join only a few countries with the technical prowess to produce such a war machine.

President Obama’s foreign policy is a complete failure. There’s no white-washing it, and his administration would do better to admit it than to spin the reality. That reality is:

• Iran is still closing in on starting its nuclear bomb factories (if it hasn’t already).
• Pakistan is still on verge of collapse, and
• North Korea is 100% unstoppable

There are many MANY more problems to be sure (not the least of which is the confusion over whether or not we’re all support the pursuit of success in Iraq after Obama and Democrats told us to oppose it for the past seven years). Afghanistan is the land of foreverwar. Somalia and East Africa are in anarchy, and much much more. However, those three foreign policy failures threaten not one, not two, but THREE major wars if Obama can’t produce results soon. Clocks are ticking. Nations are literally preparing for total, “all-out war.”

Obama’s foreign policy-the idea of forcing enemies to unclench their fists by offering them open hands is not producing results (could it be the Iranians are left handed?). Even Barack himself recognizes that the effort to “talk” to Iran is failing, and despite years of promising to meet Iranian leaders without preconditions, he’s announced that Iran has but till the end of the year to demonstrate considerable efforts towards peace. Israel probably doesn’t have that long, shouldn’t wait for President Obama’s pipedream, pie-in-the-sky, hail Mary effort to stave off total, all-out regional war. The Israelis are literally facing the threat of another genocide. They know it, and because Obama’s foreign policy has not produced a single positive result with Iran, there is no practical reason to wait. War is coming to the Middle East-a war that will make the invasion and occupation of Iraq look like kids play.

In Pakistan, President Obama’s stepped up air strikes and Special Forces raids have killed so many civilians that locals actually look at Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban more favorably! They’re backing the Taliban’s offensive that is threatening to collapse that country. If Pakistan falls to extremists or collapses into anarchy, then a war with India is very likely. Any war with India threatens 1-2 billion people with nuclear Armageddon. Obama’s efforts to prevent this have produced zero results. He must change the course of events.

In regards to North Korea, even the BBC is admitting now that nothing shy of total war will stop the unchained dictatorship. No amount of sanctions, no harsh letter from the UN, no speech about fake outrage is going to stop or even deter the weapons exporting nation. They’re military is among the biggest and most dedicated in the world, and while armed with antiquated weapons, their artillery alone could kill 2million people in the South Korean capital at any given moment. If North Korea is not stopped (and it doesn’t look like Obama’s charm can do it), then a regional arms race must begin. Japan must build anti-ballistic missiles, and perhaps even nuclear weapons. China must then increase its abilities with both. The chain reaction proliferation threatens billions of lives. It would be far cheaper in blood and treasure for the world to lose a million troops in an attack into North Korea than to lose a billion or two billion to a regional nuclear war, and if Obama’s charm doesn’t start paying off soon, history will make the decision.

We’re told, “These things take time.” No. They don’t. It’s very easy to see if one side of a conversation is interested, willing, or even capable of barter. Once that’s determined, then the ugly balance sheet must come out. There’s no way around it. He has to ask himself what is the cost of inaction vs what is the cost of action-however horrific. In each of the three cases above (Iran, Pakistan, and North Korea), the price of inaction far outweighs the cost of direct military attack. That’s why it’s so important for diplomacy to work, to start showing results, and to stop being reduced to a Monty Python joke.
“STOP! Or we shall be forced to say ‘stop’ again!”

India believes the Taliban and other Islamic extremists already have some control on nuclear sites in the frontier province:

India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has told President Obama that nuclear sites in Pakistan’s restive frontier province are “already partly” in the hands of Islamic extremists, an Israeli journal has said, amid considerable anxiety among US pundits here over Washington’s confidence in the security of the troubled nation’s nuclear arsenal.

Claims about the high-level exchange between New Delhi and Washington were made in the Debka, a journal said to have close ties with Israeli intelligence, under the headline “Singh warns Obama: Pakistan is lost.” The brief story said the Indian prime minister had named Pakistani nuclear sites in the areas which were Taliban-Qaida strongholds and said the sites are already partly in the hands of “Muslim extremists.” A sub-head to the story said “India gets ready for a Taliban-ruled nuclear neighbor.”

Amid all that some experts in the US are pissed off that Obama and his lackeys are shrugging their shoulders at Pakistan and the Taliban:

“It is quite disturbing that the administration is allowing Pakistan to quantitatively and qualitatively step up production of fissile material without as much as a public reproach,” Robert Windrem, a visiting scholar with the Center for Law and Security in New York University and an expert on South Asia nuclear issues told ToI in an interview on Thursday. “Iraq and Iran did not get a similar concessions… and Pakistan has a much worse record of proliferation and security breaches than any other country in the world.”…

And as the Taliban gain strength, they also gain the upper hand and are now going mano y mano with Pakistan forces:

Taliban insurgents in Pakistan’s Swat valley may be preparing to fight the army on the streets of the scenic district’s main city, as soldiers and guerrillas adopt surprising conventional war tactics. … Shaukat Saleem , a Mingora resident who escaped from Swat on Friday, said the Taliban had blocked roads in the city with trees and boulders. They’ve mined the streets, dug trenches, made bunkers and occupied many civilian homes, he said. He said that he saw “lots” of Taliban as he was leaving the city, who stopped him for questioning at 10 to 12 of their checkpoints.”

The Long War Journal is reporting that we have struck inside the frontier province of Waziristan again against Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists:

The US has struck at Taliban and al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan’s Taliban-controlled tribal agencies for the third time this week. Twenty-five Taliban and al Qaeda operatives are reported to have been killed and several more were wounded in an airstrike in North Waziristan.

Predator strike aircraft fired two Hellfire missiles at a Taliban madrassa and a vehicle in the town of Khaisor, which is just outside of the town of Mir Ali, Geo News reported. The strike reportedly detonated an ammunition dump at the madrassa, causing a massive explosion. No senior al Qaeda or Taliban leaders have been reported killed.

The town of Mir Ali is a known stronghold of al Qaeda leader Abu Kasha al Iraqi, an Iraqi national who is also known as Abu Akash. He has close links to the Taliban, a senior US intelligence official told The Long War Journal in January 2007. He serves as the key link between al Qaeda’s Shura Majlis, or executive council, and the Taliban.

His responsibilities have expanded to assisting in facilitating al Qaeda’s external operations against the West, a senior US military intelligence official told The Long War Journal in October 2008.

Included in the Long War update is the fact that the Abu Kasha network has been hit three times by the US and that we have stopped telling Pakistan about the strikes since the intelligence just gets passed onto al-Qaeda forces.

Failed Presidential Candidate and war hero/anti-war hero Senator John Kerry is adamant that strict conditions be put on aid for the weak Pakistani government. That government is begging that the terms be removed so that it can maintain some sort of control over its people, its region, its ballistic missiles aimed at the billion people in neighboring India, and its 100 nuclear bombs.

Democrats like Kerry…don’t seem to care.

The Daily Times of Pakistan also reported that about 200 Taliban stormed terminals storing NATO supplies in North-West Frontier Province capital Peshawar on Sunday, killing a guard and torching a dozen vehicles.

Last Thursday, Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S., Husain Haqqani, said in Washington “the world is not a problem for America to fix” and that the aid package before Congress was too “intrusive” and disregarded Pakistan’s ability to be self-accountable for the funds.

“A company at the verge of failure is quite clearly able to get a bigger bailout than a nation that has been accused of failure,” Haqqani said at the Atlantic Council. “That’s something that in this town needs a review.”

I said if I thought Obama did something right, I’d say so. So here you go, all you Obama devotees. Obama *did something right!*

But I doubt most of the O faithful will be celebrating, since what Obama did was hold tight with the Bush legal argument that the Afghanistan detainees held at Bagram Airfield did *not* have Constitutional rights… unlike those held at Gitmo via the vague and damaging SCOTUS decision.

President Obama sided with the Bush administration Friday, saying detainees in Afghanistan have no constitutional rights.

In a two-sentence court filing, the Justice Department said it agreed that detainees at Bagram Airfield cannot use U.S. courts to challenge their detention. The filing shocked human rights attorneys.

“The hope we all had in President Obama to lead us on a different path has not turned out as we’d hoped,” said Tina Monshipour Foster, a human rights attorney representing a detainee at the Bagram Airfield. “We all expected better.”

Mata Musing: Ms. Foster is exec director of the International Justice Network.

The Supreme Court last summer gave al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the right to challenge their detention. With about 600 detainees at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and thousands more held in Iraq, courts are grappling with whether they, too, can sue to be released.

After Obama took office, a federal judge in Washington gave the new administration a month to decide whether it wanted to stand by Bush’s legal argument. Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd says the filing speaks for itself.

“They’ve now embraced the Bush policy that you can create prisons outside the law,” said Jonathan Hafetz, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who has represented several detainees.

What’s the difference we all ask? Well, the Obama justice department argues that the detainees at Bagram are being held as part of an ongoing military action, and that’s cool because it’s in Afghanistan and not Cuba… or what is considered an overseas war zone. In fact, it has already been called “Obama’s Gitmo”.

Same ugly critters being caged, but on different grounds. Everyone feel better now about habeau corpus? LOL

Needless to say, the human rights types, IJN and ACLU are not pleased… So let me say this on record now for you all to see. *Thank You* President Obama for doing exactly the same thing Bush did, and royally PO’ing these terrorist protectors! And too bad you couldn’t carry over that same mentality to the thugs at Gitmo.

So how about we ship ‘em all to Bagram and end the Gitmo argument?

Speaking of Gitmo, the NYTs William Glaberson reported on the Pentagon report ordered by the Obama administration on his second day in office. A report that confirms the Gitmo detainee facilities is in compliance with Geneva Convention regulations.

The report, by Adm. Patrick M. Walsh, the vice chief of naval operations, describes steps that could be taken to allow detainees to speak to one another more often and to engage in group activities, the government officials said. For years, critics have said that many detainees spend as many as 23 hours a day within the confines of cement cells and often were allowed to exercise alone in fenced-off outdoor pens.

The report is being presented to a White House that some government officials have described as caught off-guard by the extreme emotions and political crosscurrents provoked by its plan to close the Guantánamo prison. Some critics said the report’s conclusions could intensify the debate about the prison, and put the Obama White House for the first time in the position of defending it.

~~~

The administration’s plan to close Guantánamo includes a new effort to decide whether detainees can be released, transferred to the custody of other countries or prosecuted. In the report on the conditions at Guantánamo, Admiral Walsh reviewed many accusations of abuse that critics have made about the prison, said one Pentagon official who has seen the report.

The report concluded that the Pentagon was in compliance with the requirements of the Geneva Conventions. The review included some of the most contentious issues, including the forced feeding of hunger-striking detainees and claims that many prisoners were suffering from psychosis as a result of conditions in the detention center.

According to one official, the report noted that some detainees had difficulty communicating from cell to cell, a contention that many detainees’ lawyers have also made. The Pentagon has long insisted that no detainees are held in solitary confinement. Military officials have said instead that the prisoners are held in “single-occupancy cells.”

Some Pentagon officials have continued to press the case that the Bush administration’s approach to detainee issues — and the Guantánamo Bay prison itself — should not be abandoned. The report is likely to accelerate that behind-the-scenes struggle.

The White House had no comment Friday.

Fact is, Bush created a “humane detention camp”, as put by one Pentagon official. And frankly, they are concerned that if the men are moved, they may go from a humane camp to an inhumane camp.

Naturally the ACLU, IJN and other terrorist rights supporters poo pooh the Pentagon report, calling it a “whitewash”.

Now we’ll see if a President Obama wants to accuse his Pentagon of a “whitewash” as well. If not, looks like he’ll be running out of criticisms of “the past eight years” as it pertains to Gitmo.

All of a sudden, six nations are building aircraft carriers (the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, India and China.) For over half a century, most of the carrier building took place in the United States. Russia built some, without much success, towards the end of the Cold War. Britain and France built a few, and several other nations (like India and Brazil), bought second had British carriers so they could maintain one or two in service.

But now six nations are planning or building new carriers, most of them a bit smaller (about 60,000 tons) than the larger U.S. ones (100,000 tons).

Britain & France

India

Brazil

“The terrorists’ aim in Mumbai was precisely this – to get the Pakistani army to withdraw from the western border and mount operations on the east,” said Ahmed Rashid, a journalist and author who has written extensively about militancy in the region.

“The terrorists are not going to be sitting still. They are not going to be adhering to any sort of cease-fire while the army takes on the Indian threat. They are going to occupy the vacuum the army will create.”

~~~

A Swat militant boasted that “we are doing our activities wherever we want, and the army is confined to their living places.”

“They cannot move independently like us,” said the man, who was reached over the phone and gave his name as Muzaffarul Haq. He claimed the Swat militants had no al-Qaida or foreign connections, but that they supported all groups that shared the goal of imposing Islamic law.

“With the grace of Allah, there is no dearth of funds, weapons or rations,” he said. “Our women are providing cooked food for those who are struggling in Allah’s path. Our children are getting prepared for jihad.”

AP writer, Nahal Toosi writes today of a newly expanded control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan by Taliban militants. It is especially worrisome since this is new territory outside their normal operational control. The 2000 approx fighters – both Afghan and Pakistani – have managed to overwhelm what residents did not flee by a campaign of violence, beheadings and fear.

In some places, just a handful of insurgents can control a village. They rule by fear: beheading government sympathizers, blowing up bridges and demanding women wear all-encompassing burqas.

They have also set up a parallel administration with courts, taxes, patrols and checkpoints, according to lawmakers and officials. And they are suspected of burning scores of girls’ schools.

In mid-December, Taliban fighters killed a young member of a Sufi-influenced Muslim group who had tried to raise a militia against them. The militants later dug up Pir Samiullah’s corpse and hung it for two days in a village square – partly to prove to his followers that he was not a superhuman saint, a security official said on condition of anonymity.

A lawmaker and the senior Swat government official said business and landowners had been told to give two-thirds of their income to the militants. Some local media reported last week that the militants have pronounced a ban on female education effective in mid-January.

Locals blame a truce with the militants by the regional government officials. The truce fell apart within two months, and the militants were allowed to regroup.

Yet the Pakistan government – at any level – fails to learn their historic lessons. There is no negotiating with the global Islamic jihad movement. And if they offer to talk? Beware… they are either buying time to reorganize, or distracting the world from another arena in their global strategy for an Islamic rule state.

The Muslim world grows more complex daily as factions continually morph their relationships… at one time standing for a common cause, and at others waging war on each other for power and control.

For the global Islamic jihad movement, the underlying cause remains the same: a world under Shariah law. And the militants do not believe this can be achieved thru parliament, and actually oppose those that wish to achieve the same goal in this method.

From a Nov 2008 article by Sartaj Khan, Behind the Crisis in Swat comes a complex history of generations of class warfare: Khans, Pakhtun, Sayyeds and Mians. Enter a new social element to the area… three militant groups – Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) [Sufi Mohammad, former JEI], the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) [now headed by Baitullah Mehsud] – all expressing the desires of the middle class and landless under the guise of “Islamism”.

The TNSM built its support on the criticism of two issues vital to society: the judicial system imposed on the Provincially Administered Tribal Areas (PATA) and the corrupt electoral and political system of Pakistan. The TNSM rejected electoral politics. Sufi Muhammad saw no hope in society’s Islamisation through parliament and opposed the Islamic parties that want to bring changes through parliament. In a speech in Kalam, he said: “There is no room for the vote in Islam and the concept of democracy which some religious political parties are demanding is wrong.”

This concept of democracy being un’Islamic is not new, and in fact has been repeated over and over by others…. including Bin Laden, The Islamic Army in Iraq, the Army of the Mujahideen, and other senior Taliban leaders.

Now… I told you that story to tell you this:

The more one reads of this segment of Islam, the more one understands that truces and negotiations are nothing more than a sign of weakness to be exploited for the next battle’s gain. And this struggle for power via Shariah law is not limited to Sufi, Wahhabi, Shia or any single sect. The common simplistic view of the ill-informed westerner (i.e. Shia good, Sunni-bad or AQ the enemy, others okay) must go away.

Now these jihad movements have increased their controlled territory in Pakistan. The tribal areas regional govt’s are powerless. The PPP/PML-N govt is weak, ill-focused and too willing to talk instead of rein in the militants. Pakistan’s Army instead amasses on the Indian border – another US ally – allowing the more dangerous enemy’s foothold to increase in the NWTA.

In the meantime – in another part of the Muslim world – “Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a religious decree on Sunday that said anyone killed while defending Palestinians in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip against Israeli attacks would be considered a martyr.”

A group of influential conservative Iranian clerics launched an online registration drive on Monday seeking volunteers to fight against Israel in response to its air assault on the Gaza Strip. About 3,550 people registered Monday with the Combatant Clergy Society’s Web site. The weeklong online campaign gives volunteers three options on ways they can fight Israel: military, financial and propaganda.

The group, which has considerable political and economic power in Iran, did not provide further details on the program including how it would contact the volunteers or implement the program.

Lest ye believe the assault against Israel is not just territorial, Hamas is quick to label it jihad. From circa Mar 2007:

The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas rejected on Monday criticism by al Qaeda’s second-in-command and said it was still committed to Israel’s destruction despite a power-sharing deal with the Fatah faction.

“We will not betray promises we made to God to continue the path of Jihad and resistance until the liberation of Palestine, all of Palestine,” Hamas said in a statement, in a clear reference to Israel as well as to the occupied West Bank.

In an audio recording posted on the Internet on Sunday, al Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahri accused Hamas of serving U.S. interests by agreeing to respect past Palestinian peace accords with Israel in a recent Saudi-brokered unity government deal with moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah.

The enemies of the west, of freedom of choice, of democracy aimed at the US and our allies is amassing on many fronts. They assail Israel directly, recruiting help from other Muslim states. They do so while the disengaged and disbelieving world sits back and tut tuts Israel… saying “use restraint”.

They assail other US allies, India and Pakistan – by setting them against each other, and undermining Pakistan’s structural weakness in government from within.

And while many are blind to the intrinsic threads and goals of these different battlefronts, it is dangerously unwise to recognize this global theatre of a small segment of Islam.

It’s integral to national security that our new POTUS can see this global strategy by the enemy – one that doesn’t only go by the name of “al Qaeda” and live along the Afghan/Pakistan border. The goals of Iran/Hamas/Hezbolla cannot be realistically separated from Pakistan/Afghanistan.

It’s even more important that this POTUS learn from the continued failed truces with those who prefer to die before compromising with the west and democracy. If our new POTUS is incapable of seeing this, these groups will start succeeding on each of their individual battle fronts. Iran/Hamas/Hezbollah will accomplish annihilating Israel, and the jihad movements will fell apostate Muslim governments and instill Shariah law in a boundless Caliphate from Spain to China.

And only after the smoke has cleared from those battles will they turn on each other for ultimate control. But by then, the US will have few allies left… as we have deserted them in their time of need.

WOW! Great idea: spend your entire life posturing to run for President, then spend your Senate career being a professional Presidential candidate instead of a senator, and when you finally get the job…

THEN READ UP ON IT

Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled that Senator Obama is finally getting national security briefings, reading up on the dangers in the world by reading 4yr old books about 20yr old subjects. I’m really thrilled. I’d of course prefer he read MY BOOKS, but maybe he’ll get around to it. More than anything, I really would have loved-I MEAN LOVED(!!!!) to have been a fly on the wall at the first NatSec briefing of his cabinet appointees. Oh MAN that had to be a conundrum!

“We have to leave Iraq 18 months from now per the campaign pledge, but the DoD says they can’t do it logistically. Hillary Clinton at State says it’d ’cause chaos and force a third invasion of Iraq (OUCH, tough sell to the DNC base!). Intel guys are saying that 1) AQ was in Iraq before the invasion, 2) AQ chose to make Iraq the central front in the gwot (not Bush), 3) AQ is being decimated by Bush’s Surge so leaving now let’s AQ revive in an oil-rich/money rich country. They also tell me that Iran’s gonna be making 40+nukes a month starting in January, India is moving troops to border w Pakistan & both sides are on their bi-annual brink-of-nuclear-war escapade. Oh, and despite the speech in Germany…ain’t nobody in the world gonna stop the anarchy in Africa or SE Asia.”

WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE!

Suggestion: Appoint Dennis Kucinich to form a Dept of Peace and abolish the DoD. Yeah, that’s the ticket!

Poor Obama. He honestly had no clue & actually believed the leftist rhetoric. He followed Kos and Huffpo instead of the Milblogs and Flopping Aces. If he HAD been reading FA, then he wouldn’t need to be such a “voracious” reader of dated books. I’m only shocked he’s not skipping to the Cliff’s Notes.