Bless the Beasts and Children

“Captain Clayton Combs has been fighting hard in Diyala for about ten months, much of it side-by-side with Iraqi soldiers from the 5th Division. Each time I’ve come into contact with the 5th, they seem far better than most. American officers and sergeants who work with the 5th have good things to report about them, saying that although the 5th still has far to go, and cannot sustain itself logistically, it can fight.

Captain Combs said this particular Iraqi unit, the 3-25, has never run away from combat, and never refused to close on the enemy. Combs said, “I’ve fought with 3-25 for 10 months in Diyala and they have always come when I am in trouble. They always go on patrols when I ask. They never back down.”

I asked Captain Combs to repeat what he said, making sure he knew I was planning to quote him directly. A veteran like Combs would be unlikely to append his name to such words if he weren’t dead serious. Captain Combs repeated his words and stuck by them. He then demonstrated that faith when we took off deeper into the danger zone with nine soldiers from 5th IA: just Captain Combs, Iraqi soldiers and me. As we passed through the village, Captain Combs pointed out the nice houses, saying the people had been simple farmers with comfortable homes and lives.

Until al Qaeda came.

I told the Iraqi commander, Captain Baker, that it was important that Americans see this; he took me around the graves and showed more than I wanted to see. He said the people had been murdered by al Qaeda. I made video of him speaking, and of the horrible scene. The heat and stench were crushingly oppressive and broken only by the sounds of shovels as Iraqi soldiers kept digging.

Go look at the pictures, they are grim, but I believe important for everyone to see. Some of Michael Moore’s “freedom fighter’s” did this.
Jenny Hatch

Mark Steyn
QUOTE:

“On the eve of Independence Day, the people of this great republic declared their independence from the United States Senate under the stirring battle-cry, “No legislation without explanation!” The geniuses who’d cooked up the “comprehensive” immigration bill’s “grand bargain” behind the scenes in the pork-filled rooms had originally planned to ram it through in 48 hours before Memorial Day. And, right to the end, the bipartisan Emirs-for-life of Incumbistan gave the strong impression they regarded it as an affront to be required by the impertinent whippersnappers of the citizenry to address the actual content of the legislation.

Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., dismissed critics of the bill as “racist.”

Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, complained that the peasants had somehow got hold of his phone number, and he felt “intimidated.”

Sen. Trenthorn Lotthorn, R-Lottissippi, said: Who cares if they call? They could call 1-800-BLOWHARD (and leave off the “D” for “Deal’s already done”) 24 hours a day, and he still wasn’t going to listen to them. “To think that you’re going to intimidate a senator,” he scoffed, “into voting one way or the other by gorging your phones with phone calls – most of whom don’t even know where Gulfport is.” (Gulfport is a port in the Gulf emirate whose grateful people Sultan Trent has ruled o’er lo these many years.)

More artfully, the Democrats’ leader, Harry Reid, instead of insulting his old base, invented a new one. Among the torrent of calls from racist intimidatory talk-radio listeners who don’t know where Gulfport is, Sen. Reid had somehow managed to get through to the one constituent worth staying on the line for, a man who supports the bill. Who is he? Well, according to the Senator Majority Leader, his name is, er, “Tommy.”

Tommy Hilfiger? Tommy Lasorda? Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra with vocal refrain by Jo Stafford and the Pied Pipers? Tommy Lee in the director’s cut, where in the hitherto deleted scene right at the end he says to Pamela Anderson, “Sorry, honey, I’d love to carry on for another 20 minutes but I gotta call Sen. Reid in Washington. If you hardworking Canadians are going to do the jobs Americans won’t do, I need to get your X-visa sorted out”?

Ah, but Sen. Reid explained that he couldn’t identify the Tommy in question in case he was arrested and deported. This Tommy has to stay “living in the shadows,” like Tommy Lee in the bit where he’s partly obscured by Pamela’s embonpoint. Alas, this heartwarming vignette left many cynics unmoved.

On the radio, Laura Ingraham suggested that “Tommy” might be entirely fictional and merely Harry Reid’s imaginary friend. I proposed to Laura that “Tommy” might like to start dating John Edwards’ “coatless girl,” whose Dickensian tale of woe figures in every Edwards stump speech: Apparently she goes to sleep shivering every night because her daddy was laid off at the mill and she can’t afford a winter coat. If Tommy and the coatless girl married, he could buy her a coat for $9.99 at Wal-Mart, and she could fill in a routine Spousal Application form with U.S. Immigration, which only takes 10 years to process, as opposed to the cumbersome and time-consuming 24-hour instant amnesty visa for seasonal fruit-pickers and seasonal jihadists contained in the Senate bill.”

Steyn is right every time!
Jenny Hatch

Why We Went to War in Iraq

“When he was in office and responsible for protecting us, Al Gore was absent from the war on terror. As Vice President, he was part of an administration that failed to respond to the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993; that cut and ran when al-Qaeda ambushed US Army Rangers in Mogadishu; that called for regime change in Iraq when Saddam expelled the UN weapons inspectors but then failed to remove Saddam or to get him to allow the UN inspectors back in; that failed to respond to the murder of US troops in Saudi Arabia or the attack on an American warship in Yemen; that reacted to the blowing up two US embassies in Africa by firing missiles at an aspirin factory in the Sudan and empty tents in Afghanistan; that refused to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden when it had a dozen chances to do so; and that did not put in place simple airport security measures, its own task force recommended, that would have prevented 9/11.

In short, to every act of war against the United States during the 1990s, the Clinton-Gore response was limp-wristed and supine. And worse. By refusing to concede a lost presidential election, thereby breaking a hundred-year tradition, Gore delayed the transition to the new administration that would have to deal with the terrorist threat. As a result of the two-month delay, the comprehensive anti-terror plan that Bush ordered on taking office (the Clinton-Gore team had none) did not arrive on his desk until the day before the 9/11 attack.

Yet, it is characteristic of Gore’s myopic arrogance that he would wag his finger at the Bush administration for its failure to anticipate the 9/11 attack. “It is useful and important to examine the warnings the administration ignored,” Gore writes in his self-referentially titled new book, The Assault on Reason. As if to underscore his own hypocrisy – he then adds: “not to ‘point the finger of blame’….” Of course not.”

Jenny Hatch

Larry Johnson: So wrong so often that he’s actually becoming a nearly-pitch perfect predictor of what’s right
Jeff G Chimes in on the British Terror of the past few days. As usual he is spot on with his analysis of the analyzers on MSNBC.

“Me, I’m no expert on any of this stuff, quite frankly. But then again, I’m rarely invited on news programs to give “expert” analysis about how that the Brits are getting all stupid with fear over nothing, even as car bombs are turning up on the West End, and “Asian” men are trying to drive SUVs loaded with gas canisters into airport terminals.

Once again, Johnson’s wannabe-hipster pessimism — which is temperamentally tied to the grand conspiracy scenarios he and his acolytes like Olbermann cling to like Lindsay Graham might a victory sombrero — has led him to look like an utter “denialist” (hi, Commissar!), one who, if his track record is any indication, wouldn’t be able to spot imminent Islamic terrorism were it wearing a “Hi, I’m a Jihadist” name tag and galloping towards him on a camel wrapped in explosives and sporting a riding blanket made entirely from roofing nails and the severed heads of western journalists.

****

update: COBRA is meeting now, and the UK terror alert level is now at “critical,” meaning authorities believe a new attack is imminent.

Reached for comment, Larry Johnson reminded people that he is ex-CIA, and so who are they gonna believe — him? Or some hysterical government officials and their lackey “witnesses” in whose interests it is to scare the population with a lot of hooey about suspects running away from the scene while their skin falls off…?

Reality-based.

(h/t) Allahpundit, who has been updating continuously, and who will be keeping you up to date on the story long after I’ve left for Target to pick up some deli and dill pickle spears.”

Jenny Hatch
More at Huff Po: Go Here

My daughters arrived home from camp this morning. Sounds like they had a fabulous time. Shelly, as a 7 year camper finished up her last year. If she goes again it will be as an adult leader. Allison really enjoyed her 4th year. That was my favorite year as well. We had so much fun!
One story from my camping days. My friend Jennifer and I quickly developed a reputation as trouble makers (Running a row of adult leader bras up the flag pole will do that do ya), and later in the week, when one girl who had been terrorized in the woods had to go home everyone assumed that it was Jennifer and I who had wore the Hockey mask and went running after that girl with a hatchet. She was so freaked out that they sent her home. We did not do it, another 4th year girl had, but everyone assumed that we had. So when they went looking for the perpetrator, the adults ran over to our cabin where they innocently found us playing that addictive card game, B*** S***.
Good times.
Luckily, our stake allows no pranks at camp and the girls spend the week doing kind things for each other.
Here are a few pictures:






I asked Shelly why she did not show up in any shots and she said it was because she took all of the pics. I’ll try and bum a couple pictures of her from friends.
Here is beautiful Bailey Colorado:

Jenny Hatch