http://powerlineblog.com/archives/016314.php

December 26, 2006

Troops halp Jon Carry in Irak

On his visit to Iraq, Senator Kerry apparently got something like the silent treatment from the troops who are "stuck" there. WDAY's Scott Hennen quotes a message from a friend serving in Iraq:

This is a true story....Check out this photo from our mess hall at the US Embassy yesterday morning. Sen. Kerry found himself all alone while he was over here. He cancelled his press conference because no one came, he worked out alone in the gym w/o any soldiers even going up to say hi or ask for an autograph (I was one of those who was in the gym at the same time), and he found himself eating breakfast with only a couple of folks who are obviously not troops.

What is amazing is Bill O'Reilly came to visit with us and the troops at the CSH the same day and the line for autographs extended through the palace and people waited for two hours to shake his hand. You decide who is more respected and loved by us servicemen and women!

Scott comments:

Again I say..."GOD BLESS OUR TROOPS!!"

I think it's fair to say that the photo qualifies for consideration as part X of James Taranto's series on the troops responding to Charles Rangel's reiteration of John Kerry's calumny (see today's incredible part IX of Taranto's series here).

UPDATE: Scott writes that he'll be filling in for Sean Hannity on his radio show Wednesday and Thursday, and promises to talk about the photo. Scott is one of the best local talk radio hosts in the country. Check him out on the Hannity show this week.

JOHN adds: I suppose Kerry was able to console himself by remembering the warm reception he got in Syria.

To comment on this post, go here.

UPDATE: Various moonbats have questioned the provenance of this photograph on the ground that the EXIF data for the photo indicate that it was taken at 12:57 on January 9, 2006. Aha! say the moonbats. It's a fraud! Only one problem: the photo couldn't possibly have been taken on January 9, 2006. The EXIF data also say that it was taken with a ViviCam 8400, a model which wasn't released until February 2006. Also, on January 9, 2006, John Kerry wasn't eating with troops in Baghdad or anywhere else. According to the Associated Press, Kerry left on January 9 for a twelve-day trip to the Middle East. His first stop was London, but he didn't have any appearances there until January 10, and that, according to the AP, was not with soldiers. At 12:57 on January 9, he was in transit between the U.S. and England, likely on an airplane over the Atlantic.

What happened, of course, was that the camera was new and its owner hadn't set the time and date function.

This silly episode is a great illustration of the moonbat mentality. We'll have more to say about it tomorrow.

AFGHANISTAN -- The Taliban's 30 simple rules

http://www.westfargopioneer.com/asap/index.cfm?page=asap_view&id=D8M4R7IG0&forumcomm_check_return

A new set of instructions recently went out to Taliban fighters. JASON STRAZIUSO takes a look at the 'rules,' along with a few more suggested by a NATO spokesman.

A Taliban fighter in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/John Moore)

Published Wednesday, December 20, 2006
By JASON STRAZIUSO

Every army needs its rules, and the Taliban is apparently no different.

The ultraconservative militia began distributing a new set of 30 rules to its fighters in Afghanistan and Pakistan over the fall, proffering a grim view of a Talib's duty.

The regulations range from the organizational (No. 9: No jihad equipment may be used for personal means) to the health-conscious (No. 18: No smoking).

Some rules hint at a group of fighters that might actually respect human rights: Rules 15-17 nominally forbid tormenting innocent people, searching homes or taking money or personal belongings.

But other rules openly advertise the militia's cruel ways and help explain why 20 teachers have been murdered this year in Afghanistan: Rule No. 25 says teachers must be warned, then beaten, and then killed if they continue to teach.

Right behind it, Rule No. 26 says aid organizations and the projects they undertake -- new roads, schools or clinics -- are not to be tolerated. It also spells out that schools must be burned, explaining why close to 200 schools have been attacked in Afghanistan this year.

Rule No. 19 says fighters may not take young boys without facial hair into their private quarters -- a public acknowledgment, NATO officials say, that the sexual abuse of young boys is a problem within the Taliban's ranks.

"The rule regarding behavior toward young boys shows this has been a problem," NATO spokesman Maj. Luke Knittig says.

___

NATO'S AMENDMENTS

After watching the rules make their rounds in the region, NATO's top spokesman in Afghanistan, Mark Laity, offered up a few additions of his own to Afghan and Western reporters attending a news conference last week.

Laity, who's nicknamed the rules "The Book of Disgrace," said the Taliban edicts are extremely revealing, "because they actually admitted they were to kill teachers and systematically block clinic- and madrassa-building." (A madrassa is a religious school.)

Laity says his extra rules give you the whole story of the Taliban's repressive tactics, including the fact that the 115 suicide attacks in Afghanistan this year have killed far more civilians than the Afghan or Western security forces they were aimed at.

"When you looked at (the set of rules) you knew it wasn't the full story," the NATO spokesman said. "The 30 rules told you part of the story. The extra five told you the whole story."

Laity says that while his five additions are fictional, they represent the Taliban's actions just as much as their rules mandating the killing of teachers.

"While the extra rules are made up, the actions I'm referring to are sadly all too real," he says.

___

THE ADDITIONS

Here are rules No. 31-35, as proposed by Laity:

Rule 31: Suicide bombings will be a standard tactic and indiscriminate killing of civilians is regarded as irrelevant. However Taliban should not talk about this publicly because it is offensive to Afghan culture and morality.

Rule 32: In order to protect ourselves from ISAF forces, Taliban should hide amongst civilians and as a standard tactic use women and children as shields against attacks.

Rule 33: Taliban should have no hesitation about abusing Afghan hospitality by using intimidation to force their way into citizens' homes.

Rule 34: Taliban should further exploit Afghan hospitality by using their homes as bases to launch attacks on ISAF and Afghan forces.

Rule 35: Taliban should lie to the public to both exaggerate their successes and minimize their failures.

___

Jason Straziuso is an AP reporter based in Kabul.

___

http://www.debbieschlussel.com/archives/2006/12/american_islami.html

December 26, 2006 American Islamic "Youth Mentor" Tied to HAMAS, Fired by Even Ex-Rep. McKinney Printer Friendly By Debbie Schlussel Much is being made of Muslim U.S. Congressman-elect Keith Ellison's speech, this weekend, at the Dearbornistan annual convention of the Muslim American Society (the Muslim Brotherhood) and the jihadist Islamic Circle of North America. But not much mention has been made of another speaker at the event, Raeed Tayeh. Billed as a national "Muslim youth mentor" and speaking on "Intimidation at School: How to Deal with It," Tayeh is an odd choice . . . or perhaps a deliberate one. I know of Tayeh well because in 2002, I debated him on both FOX News' "O'Reilly Factor" and MSNBC's "Hardball," when he was leading a worldwide Muslim boycott of Starbucks on the "grounds" that Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is Jewish and had denounced anti-Semitism. Tayeh was also promoting Caribou Coffee, owned by mostly Saudis and employing high-level officers who support homicide bombings of Jews and American soldiers in Iraq. Raeed Tayeh: Extremist, National Muslim Youth Mentor At the time, Tayeh was the spokesman for a sketchy organization called American Muslims for Global Peace and Justice, which had ties to Al-Qaeda and an extremist Southern California mosque and was reportedly rejected by the IRS in its attempts to get 501(c)(3) status. The organization and its website have since disappeared. I saw Tayeh, again, in 2004, just after several Americans were beheaded by Muslims in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. He was MCing a Dearbornistan fundraiser for HAMAS-front charity Islamic Relief Worldwide, at which the "entertainment" was young Muslim American boys wearing American, British, and Israeli flags simulating beheadings on each other. Tayeh, a former employee of the HAMAS-front group Islamic Association for Palestine, worked for several organizations tied to Islamic terrorist organizations and his activities are well-known in support of anti-Semitism. Even wacko ex-Rep. Cynthia McKinney a/k/a "Jihad Cindy" fired Tayeh in November 2001 for writing an anti-Semitic letter to Capitol Hill newspaper, "The Hill," questioning the loyalty of Jewish Members of Congress and the Senate. Before that, he was filmed at a pro-HAMAS, pro-Hezbollah rally in front of the Clinton White House shouting statements about how Palestine was "from the river to the sea" (ie., all of Israel). Also of note, Tayeh was a "mediator" on behalf of convicted terrorist Fawaz Abu Damrah (see also, here), Imam of the Cleveland Mosque, who deservedly now rots in jail. Tayeh is, indeed, an interesting choice for a "mentor" for anyone. That these Muslim organizations would choose this open supporter of terrorism, jihad, and bigotry to "mentor" their kids, tells us everything we need to know about them. And everything we already knew. Posted by Debbie at December 26, 2006 01:03 PM

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/homeland.php?id=516072

Exclusive: CAIR and That 80 Percent
Stephen Schwartz
Author: Stephen Schwartz
Source: The Family Security Foundation, Inc.
Date: December 20, 2006

FSM has reported in the suspicions surrounding CAIR for quite some time, and among Americans who are paying attention, these suspicions are well known. Yet as time goes by, CAIR's national façade is breaking down through inveterate reporting, such as this piece by FSM Contributing Editor Stephen Schwartz. Read here of their latest revealing mistake.

CAIR and That 80 Percent

By Stephen Schwartz

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is infamous as a U.S. lobby for radical Sunni Muslims. It has a history of backing Hamas, the Palestinian terror movement. But it has been especially adroit, since the atrocities of September 11, 2001, at presenting itself as a civil-liberties organization mainly concerned with alleged abuses of American Muslim rights.

The situation of CAIR and its partners in the "Wahhabi lobby" was accurately described by Bahrain-born Omran Salman in The Philadelphia Inquirer on August 31, 2006: "On August 10, British police arrested 24 Muslim suspects in a plot to blow up 10 U.S.-bound jetliners over the Atlantic. If successful, the attack would have killed thousands of people. The terrorists were motivated by religious extremism. Rather than just condemn the plot and address the scourge of Islamic extremism, Muslim groups such as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and the Muslim American Society (MAS) sought to both legitimize terror and portray Muslims as victims. Do these organizations really represent Muslims in the West? Hardly. It is their apologia of Islamic extremism, ra ther than discrimination or religious hatred in Western society, which most victimizes American Muslims."

CAIR is also well-known for its attempts to suppress the voices of moderate Muslims. On November 9, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) hosted Ahmed Rehab of the CAIR office in Chicago, on the tough-minded and well-named interview show Hard Talk. CAIR was so proud of this media encounter they posted it to their website. But therein, an interesting exchange is to be found.

BBC moderator Stephen Sackur said,

"[L]et me just quote to you Shaikh Hisham [K]abbani of the Islamic Supreme Council of America. He warned the [U.S.] State Department as long ago as 1999 that there was the real possibility of terror threats coming from Muslim extremists in the United States. Two years later we have 9/11."

Rehab reacted with the automatic lunge toward personal attack especially distinctive to CAIR:

"REHAB: 'I take his words as demagoguery because when he talks about eighty percent - '

"SACKUR: 'You may take it as demagoguery, but as I say, he foresaw 9/11 two years before it happened.'

"REHAB: 'But my point is, when he says "eighty percent" and he puts a number as that; a very specific number: "Eighty percent of America's mosques are being led by extremists," I mean, did he run a survey? If so - where is the survey? And what are the methodologies used in the survey? And so you can't really just come out there and slap a number on the table without you having done any real research, having not interacted within the community."

The essence of this colloquy will be recognized by most non-Muslim experts on radical Islam in America, as well as by millions of ordinary American Muslims. Kabbani, a Sufi spiritual figure, is remembered for his public charge in the 1990s that 80 percent of the main mosques in the U.S. are controlled by the fundamentalist and violent Wahhabi sect, which is subsidized from Saudi Arabia and inspired al-Qaida. This does not mean that 80 percent of American Muslims are radicals - only that the main institutions of the Sunni majority are under such control.

Mr. Sackur, in his query, had not mentioned Kabbani's statements about the 80 percent factor - accusations backed up by the leading Shia Muslim clerics in the U.S. and which I and other moderate Muslims also have asserted. Mr. Rehab leapt at it because he and CAIR are extremely edgy regarding exposure of this radical ratio among American Sunni Muslims.

But it is shameless of CAIR's representative to then demand that Kabbani, or any other Muslim in America, first take a poll and explain its "methodologies" before commenting on the condition of American Muslims. Religious communities are not political parties and do not operate according to polls or polling methodology. The resort to such rhetoric shows that CAIR sees American Islam more in the mold of a leftist movement or an aggrieved ethnic group than as a component of a global religion.

American Muslims who complain about the 80 percent domination of Sunni mosques by Wahhabi radicals have "surveyed" American Islam existentially and experientially. Neither Kabbani nor anyone needs to produce statistical studies to back up this observation, because such realities are learned by the merest participation in the life of the religious community. Every American Muslim knows that radicalization is a reality, but most are too intimidated by CAIR and its cohort to do anything about it.

If a Christian leader made the elementary observation that Protestants outnumber Catholics in America, nobody would be stupid enough to demand that a poll be taken to establish this fact. It is part of the landscape and every Christian knows it.

Similarly, if a Jewish advocate comments that American Jews are divided between secular, Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox traditions - leaving aside some marginal elements - nobody would ask if he or she had taken a poll to determine such an obvious fact.

To emphasize, Kabbani, the Shia clerics, and others know through daily observation that 80 percent of American Sunni mosques are controlled by extremists. An inventory of reprisals against counter-jihadists, insults to moderates, threats to dissenters, and preaching of anti-American sermons would be useful but is not necessary to prove the case. Further, it is ridiculously insulting for CAIR's Rehab to claim that Kabbani had "not interacted within the community" of American Muslims. Kabbani is a Muslim preacher, a native speaker of Arabic, and an indefatigable writer on Islam. Every breath he has taken for years represented interaction with the community.

Kudos to BBC for confronting Ahmed Rehab and CAIR with the truth about the 80 percent problem in American Islam. CAIR should not imagine for a moment that their feeble rhetoric will get them a pass forever, notwithstanding their success in convincing too many other media representatives that they are moderate and benevolent, when they are neither.